Hack SoCal was founded as one of Southern California’s first student-run, co-ed high school hackathon. The event lasts 24-hours, overnight as a targeted number of 150 attendees work to build a software project that addresses a real-world problem. Our mission is to encourage students within the Southern California area to pursue computing and technology and promote diversity in this ever-growing field.

• Ambition of Problem
  Scale and complexity of the problem being explored.
• Technical Difficulty
  Is the hack technically interesting or difficult? Is it just some lipstick on an API, or were there real technical challenges to surmount?
• Polish
  Is the hack usable in its current state? Is the user experience smooth? Does everything appear to work? Is it well designed?
• Quality of Presentation
  Ability for the judges to clearly understand (a) what the desired functionality is, and (2) see that the functionality is behaving as expected.
• Usefulness
  Is the hack practical? Is it something people would actually use? Does it fulfill a real need people have?