HackIllinois is a 36 hour event where college students from across the country create technical projects ranging from websites and mobile apps to Wi-Fi connected microwaves. You can work on creating a useful tool that you wish existed or learning a new skill or language — anything goes!
Eligibility
University students of all skill levels are eligible to compete. We’re looking for a diverse mix of technical students from any major to create exciting, eclectic hacks. If you are an interested high school student, please fill out the application; we will contact you if there are any troubles.
Requirements
Teams’ demos will be judged on several criteria including usefulness, technical difficulty, polish, and creativity. More details about the judging process will be provided closer to the event. Teams will not be told their scores during or after judging, and decisions by the judges and HackIllinois team are final.
Prizes
HackIllinois Top Three Software Hacks
The first place software team receives $1000, the second place team receives $750 and the third $500.
HackIllinois Top Three Hardware Hacks
The first place hardware team receives $1000, the second place team receives $750 and the third $500.
Affirm's Best Reverse Engineering Hack
$500 in cash and Affirm backpacks
Answers' Best Use of the Gravity API
$500 in cash
Apple's Best iOS or OS X App
iPad mini 3 for each member of the team
Best Use of the Bloomberg API
Philips Hue bulbs
Best Use of the Capital One API
$250 Amazon gift card per team member
Most Dropbox-y
Raspberry Pi Kits
Best Use of the Dwolla API
1st place 20.00, 2nd place $ln(20.00), 3rd place $log100(20.00)
Factual's Best Use of Location Data in a Mobile Context
Medieval swords and cash prizes
GE's Best Use of Image Recognition
SoundLink Color Bluetooth Speaker
GoDaddy's Best Small Business Application
$250 Best Buy Gift Cards
Best Use of the Goldman Sachs API
Bose Speakers
Google's Best Hack
Four Nexus Players and Game Pads
IBM's Best Hack using Bluemix
Arduino Starter Kit
Best Use of the IMO API and Twitter Contest
API Prize: 1st place: Gaming Bundle: Turtle Beach Ear Force PX22 Headset, Razer DeathAdder Ergo PC Mouse, and Razer Vespula dual-sided mouse mat, 2nd place: Razer Bundle: Razer DeathAdder Ergo PC Mouse, and Razer Vespula dual-sided mouse mat, 3rd place: Turtle Beach Ear Force PX22 Headset
Twitter: 1st place: Anker 40W Intelligent USB Power Block, 2nd place: DKnight Magicbox Bluetooth Speaker, 3rd place: $20 in Starbucks and Subway Gift Cards
Interactive Intelligence's Most Innovative Integration of the ININ API
$500 Cash
Best Use of John Deere's API
The first place team receives $800, second place receives $500, third receives $250 and fourth receives honorable mention!
KCG + 3Red Best Networked Game
Winners get a cash prize of $600 for the best networked game
Best Hack Using the Mailjet API
Four Fitbit Charges
Meru's Most Thought-Provoking and Innovative Hack Around SDN
The first place team wins a GoPro Hero HD camera and second place wins a $50 Visa gift card
Microsoft's Best Use of Azure
Dell Venue Tablets
Nuage Networks' Best SDN/Cloud Related Project
Two iPad Minis and $100 Amazon gift card
Palantir's Best Data Visualization
Sonos wireless speaker for each member of the team
Best Pebble Hack
Four Pebble Steel gift boxes
Best Spark Hack
Spark Maker Kits
Thalmic's Best Myo Hack
Four Myo armbands
Thiel Capital's Hack with Product/Business Potential
$1000 cash prize to further your project
Trunk Club's Most Innovative Way to Connect to Someone
A Wearable Technologies kit which includes arduinos, raspberry pi and conductive fibers
Best Twilio Integration
Arduino Yuns
Best Use of Wolfram Technologies
$500 cash prize
Yelp's Best Local Focus
Four Leap Motion Controllers
HackerRank
Winners get a box of t-shirts!
Best Use of Strap and Best Pull Request
Best Use of Strap Prize: Chose one of these three packages
The Wearables package: includes a Pebble, Jawbone Up, Asus Zenwatch and Misfit Shine The IoT package: includes Estimotes, a Raspberry pi kit, Spark.io kit, and Tessel kit Amazon gift cards: 4 Amazon gift cards each worth $100
Best Pull Request Prize: Choice of an Oculus Rift, Apple Watch (an 'I owe you', obviously), Moto 360 or a Chrome Book
Devpost Achievements
Submitting to this hackathon could earn you:
How to enter
Each team is permitted one submission that must be received by 10:00am on Sunday, March 1st, 2015. Code submitted for judging must be produced only by team members and written during HackIllinois from the starting time on Friday, February 27th, 2015 to the submission time. If you are continuing a previous project or using old code written by you, let us know on the project submission form. Third party libraries are allowed without notice provided that they are publicly available to any participant. All code you create at HackIllinois is owned by you, and may be made open source at your discretion. By submitting a project, you and your team grant the HackIllinois team the unrestricted right to use your submission material, at no cost, for promotional purposes of future HackIllinois events.
Judges
HackIllinois Judges
Jay Freeman
Cydia
Greg Baugues
Twilio
Judging Criteria
-
Creativity
How original is the idea? How creative of an approach do they take? -
Technical Complexity
How well do they use technologies together? How complex is it? -
Utility
How useful of a product is it? Is it something that you see people using in thier everyday lives? -
Accessibility
Is it simple and straightforward? Or is it bulky and hard to understand? -
Awesomeness
Is there a wow factor? -
Polished
For the final round, judges will be looking at all the previous criterion as well as how clean the product is - in terms of design, appearance, and sophistication? -
Presentation
For the final round, judges will be looking at all the previous criterion as well as how well the team presents the project?
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