The Hackathon Spirit

The goal of any hackathon is to encourage participants to learn, build, and share.

  • Learn

    • Learn new things.

    • Step outside of your comfort zone.

    • Experiment and make mistakes.

    • Don’t be afraid to ask for help from fellow hackers, mentors, or organizers

  • Build

    • Build cool stuff.

    • If you’re not able to finish your project by the deadline, that’s totally fine.

  • Share

    • Communicate with fellow hackers and teams.

    • Collaborate with others and help each other out.

Competition Rules

  • Only current students of Chapman University are eligible to participate in the competition as hackers.

  • Team sizes limited to a minimum of one person and a maximum of four people.

  • Every team is eligible to submit one project to one of the four development tracks (Artificial Intelligence, Cybersecurity, Healthcare, Sustainability).

  • All team members must be present during event check-in, judging, and the awards ceremony. Leaving the venue during the event to work elsewhere is fine.

  • Teams are encouraged to receive feedback and support from organizers, volunteers, sponsors, and others.

  • All project work must be done within the 48-hour hacking period (5pm on April 25, 2025 to 5pm on April 27, 2025). Teams can use an idea they had before the event.

  • Teams can work on ideas that have already been done. If somebody wants to work on a common idea they should be allowed to do so and should be judged on the quality of their hack. These days it’s hard to find something that’s fully original and teams might not know an idea has been done before anyway.

  • Teams can work on an idea that they have worked on before (as long as they do not reuse any code).

  • Teams can use libraries, frameworks, or open-source code in their projects. Working on a project before the event and open-sourcing it for the sole purpose of using the code during the event is against the spirit of the rules and is not allowed.

  • Adding new features to existing projects is allowed. Judges will only consider new functionality introduced or new features added during the hackathon in determining the winners.

  • Teams can be disqualified from the competition at the organizers’ discretion. Reasons might include but are not limited to violating one or more of the above competition rules.