About the challenge

A hackathon is an event where teams collaborate on a project, or "hack", given a certain time limit. At StormHacks, teams of 1-4 collaborate over 24 hours to brainstorm and innovate solutions to real-world problems. Or they are free to work on whatever fun/silly ideas they have in mind, the door is open. We will be inviting various mentors, judges, and guests working in the tech industry to share their expertise and knowledge to our participants. Winning teams will be selected based on various criteria that will be revealed closer to our event.

Make your first hackathon special at StormHacks 2024. In past events, 46% of participants have been new hackers— SH24 is one of the top places for you to join other beginners in tech and self-starters for life-long learning, challenges and more.

One of the most challenging things about a hackathon can be developing your final submission, especially for hackers who are aiming to build their design skills, sharing their ideas and stories through visuals and experiences. This can often lead to people feeling left out or discouraged from evenentering their first hackathon, especially if you're entering on your own.

For all you designers, we're hosting prizes and workshops to help support your no-code solutions and prototypes!

The hackathon will be packed with activities such as wellness workshops, games, trivia and more all throughout the event! You can even win some prizes through some of our mini contests.

Requirements

What to Build

We will be providing hackers with themes/topics at the opening ceremony of the event. Hardware projects are allowed, and we are so grateful that MLH is able to provide the materials/supplies.

We have four tracks:

  1. Health and Wellness
  2. Environment and Sustainability
  3. Social/Connectivity
  4. Artifical Intelligence

What to Submit

  • You MUST submit a github link
  • To showcase your project you can either:
    • do a live presentation (5 mins maximum)
    • record a demo of your slides and upload it to devpost (5 mins maximum)

Hackathon Sponsors

Prizes

$CAD 6,445 in prizes
First Place
1 winner

Sony XM5 ($500) + 1 year subscription of NordVPN (for the best private browsing experience) + NordPass (secure password management) + Incogni (safeguard online privacy) + MLH Pin

Second Place
1 winner

Airpods 3rd generation + MLH Pin

Third Place
1 winner

Razer mouse and Deepcool mat + MLH Pin

Runner Ups
3 winners

1 year subscription of Wolfram|One Personal Edition ($375) + 1 year subscription to Wolfram|Alpha Pro ($375) + $25 Amazon Gift Card

Best Beginner Project
1 winner

Logitech Desktop
Speakers + Deepcool mat

Design 1st Place
1 winner

Elgato stream deck mini + 1 year subscription of Wolfram|One Personal Edition ($375) + 1 year subscription to Wolfram|Alpha Pro ($375)

Design 2nd Place
1 winner

Logitech G305 gaming mouse + 1 year subscription of Wolfram|One Personal
Edition ($375) + 1 year subscription to Wolfram|Alpha Pro ($375)

Best Health/Wellness Hack
1 winner

$25 Amazon gift card

Best Sustainability Hack
1 winner

$25 Amazon gift card

Best Social/Connectivity Hack
1 winner

$25 Amazon gift card

Best AI Hack
1 winner

$25 Amazon gift card

Most Creative Adobe Express Add-On
1 winner

Wacom Wireless Drawing Tablet & JBL Go3 Speaker
Adobe Express is an AI-first, all-in-one content creation app that makes it fast, easy and fun to design and share videos, images, PDFs, flyers, TikToks, logos and more. Best of all, it’s free to get started.

Add-ons in Adobe Express are simply extensions and integrations that are built upon very powerful APIs. These APIs provide access to the user’s document, connections to third-party tools, and so much more. You can extend the functionality of Adobe Express using add-ons to unlock new capabilities and workflows. Check out these add-ons to see what other cool ideas developers have implemented!

For this hackathon, we want you to build a creative add-on for Adobe Express. Users are looking for add-ons that involve assets like stickers or icons, work with presentations and data visualization, and work in roles like marketing and e-commerce. Build an Adobe Express add-on this weekend for a chance to win a Wacom Wireless Drawing Tablet and JBL Go3 Speaker for you and each member of your team!

*You can also submit to this prize category if you have a prototype idea for an add-on or have a partially completed add-on. As long as you’ve built with Adobe Express, we want to see your hack!

Best Domain Name from GoDaddy Registry
1 winner

Hack from Home Kit
GoDaddy Registry is giving you everything you need to be the best hacker no matter where you are. Register your domain name with GoDaddy Registry for a chance to win a Hack from Home Kit! Each Kit contains wireless earbuds, blue light glasses, selfie ring light and a pouch for easy transport.

Best Use of TinyMCE
1 winner

3D Printing Pen
TinyMCE is a rich-text editor that allows you to create formatted content within a hacker-friendly interface. Adding a Rich Text Editor component has never been easier! Alongside functionality like bold, italics, underlines, hyperlinks, or titles (to name a few), the editor also allows users to enable HTML tags, MarkDown or CSS. TinyMCE even gives you the ability to edit your text elements directly with no code, similar to the way you would edit a word document but with even more practical hackathon use cases.

TinyMCE also has dozens of plugins that allow developers to customize their user’s experience. From implementing accessibility checkers, autocorrect, and enhanced image editing to utilizing emoticons, adding responsive design with auto resize and even a ChatGPT AI Assistant. If your hackathon project accepts ANY type of text input, you can use TinyMCE to take it to the next level.

Signup for TinyMCE for a free trial and get started today, no credit card required! To qualify for the Best Use of TinyMCE prize category, be sure to render the editor with a Tiny Cloud account for a chance to win a 3D Printing Pen for you and each of your team members!

Best Use of Taipy
1 winner

Wireless Headphones
Taipy is a powerful yet easy to use open-source Python library for creating full stack web applications! If you’re a Python developer, this library enables you to build interactive and dynamic graphical user interfaces and support them with data-driven backends. All of these functionalities are just a pip install taipy away and can cut your development time in half! Use Taipy in your hackathon project for a chance to win a set of Wireless Headphones for you and each of your team members, as well as a chance to have your project featured on the Taipy website!

Best Use of Kintone
1 winner

Breadboard IoT Kit
Still not sure what backend to use in your hack? Kintone is a low-code web database that lets you set up your backend in minutes. It's beginner friendly, allowing you to customize your Kintone app using nothing but JavaScript and HTML. Your team can snag a FREE microcontroller by signing up for Kintone and visiting the MLH table, and if you use Kintone in your hackathon project, you'll have a chance to win a breadboard IoT kit to power up the hardware hacking for each member of your team!

Sauce Labs Raffle
1 winner

Sauce Labs Swag Bag
Sauce Labs empowers you to develop, test, and deliver top-tier web and mobile apps quickly and efficiently. Their unified platform makes automated testing and error monitoring easy to do, enabling you to save time building your hackathon project! Let Sauce Labs help resolve any issues with your code so you can get back to building an award winning hack.

Make sure your project is hackathon-tested by signing up for a Sauce Labs account and running at least one test on the platform. Include a screenshot of your test results in your project submission to get entered into the Sauce Labs raffle for a chance to win a backpack, beanie, and a bottle of Sauce Labs' famous hot sauce for you and each of your team members!

Scalar
2 winners

(x1) Most lines of code while shipping something - Mystery Prize
(x1) Least lines of code while shipping something - Mystery Prize
*LOC from packages do not count

Verbwire
2 winners

(x1) Best Use of AI & Verbwire API - $45 worth of Premium Verbwire credits per team member.
Note: Goes to teams who use AI and the Verbwire API in building applications.
Feel free to use MagicPilot.ai by Verbwire to build web3 programs using AI.
( x1) Most Innovative Use Of Verbwire API - $45 worth of Premium Verbwire credits per team member

Defang
2 winners

(x1) Best Use of Defang - $30 gift card each
(x1) Best use of Defang (runner up) - $20 gift card each

CSSS
1 winner

(x1) CSSS/Mitchell Gale Award - The Award for the Most Unnecessarily Complicated Solution to a Simple Problem (Rube Goldberg Style)
$25 Amazon Gift card Each

Devpost Achievements

Submitting to this hackathon could earn you:

Judges

Marc Laventure

Marc Laventure
Ceo & Co-founder at Scalar

Jeffrey Leung

Jeffrey Leung
Software Development Engineer at Amazon

Veer Bhatia

Veer Bhatia
Software Engineer at Julius AI

Mojan Hasibi

Mojan Hasibi
Web Developer II at Fortinet Technologies

Tina Tran

Tina Tran
Business Analyst at Lululemon

Vincent Chu

Vincent Chu
Principal Developer at Visier

Warren Ho Kin

Warren Ho Kin
Data Engineer at ICBC

Thomas Nakagawa

Thomas Nakagawa
Software Development Engineer at Highspot

Annie Wang

Annie Wang
Software Engineer & Career Coach at Google

Bhavin Desai

Bhavin Desai
Product Manager at Google

Noble Tan

Noble Tan
Development Manager at EA

Jun Ho Kim

Jun Ho Kim
Senior Software Engineer at Cognosys AI

Naitik Mehta

Naitik Mehta
Founder at StartupBake

Mitchell Gale

Mitchell Gale
Software Developer II at improving Vancouver

Vikas Kumar

Vikas Kumar
Senior Manager at Onsemi

Siddarth Gupta

Siddarth Gupta
Software Engineer 2 at AWS Bedrock

Raghav Thakur

Raghav Thakur
Software Development Engineer at Amazon

Josh Vocal

Josh Vocal
Software Engineer

Vaibhav Sharma

Vaibhav Sharma
Software Developer & IT Support Analyst at UBC

Sam Moradi

Sam Moradi
Product management at Teck Resources

Leean Liu

Leean Liu
Manager & Lead Architect at Cloud Managed Services

Lio Lunesu

Lio Lunesu
CEO at Defang Software Labs

Raphaël Titsworth-Morin

Raphaël Titsworth-Morin
Full Stack at Defang

Ryan Stolys

Ryan Stolys
Co Founder at One Lota Performance

Jeevan Padda

Jeevan Padda
Senior Software Developer at Transoft Solutions

Chengyi Shen

Chengyi Shen
UX Designer at Avanade

Tuệ Hoàng

Tuệ Hoàng
Engineer at UBC

Wenqi Marshall Guo

Wenqi Marshall Guo
Full Stack

Muhammad Ashar

Muhammad Ashar
Research Assistant at UBC

Philip Garabandic

Philip Garabandic
Full Stack & Cloud at AWS

Ashok Choppadandi

Ashok Choppadandi
Senior Data Architect

Judging Criteria

  • General Criteria
    Be creative with your projects and make sure to showcase your skills in the best way possible! A good hackathon pushes hackers to try their best in their own way :)

Questions? Email the hackathon manager

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Hackathon sponsors

Title Sponsor
Gold Sponsor
Silver Sponsor
Bronze Sponsors
Partners

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