CODEBREW IS CISSA’S ANNUAL FLAGSHIP HACKATHON FOR STUDENTS.

Ticket Purchase: CODEBREW 2025 TICKETS

Official website: here

Team Registration: ONE person from each team to fill out this Google Form

Online venue/Discord (team-finding, announcements, socials): CODEBREW 2025 DISCORD

In-person venue: Copland Theatre, The Spot. If you'd like to meet up with your team members physically and work on your project together, we have rooms available for you here!

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It’s 2025 and CISSA is once again hosting our annual flagship hackathon, Codebrew 2025: Revisiting the Past!

We welcome all students, regardless of skill level, to work through an exhilarating and rewarding 72 hours in a team environment to experience the joy of coming up with innovative ideas and building new things.

With the goal of our hackathon being to develop the participants’ technical knowledge, as we lead up to the event we will also be holding workshops on topics related to Frontend (REACT) and Backend (.net) web/app development, as well as an Intro to Devops. Experienced mentors from industry leaders such as Atlassian, Suncorp, Airwallex, CIS, and Shine Solutions will also be present to provide participants with guidance and offer expert opinions on their ideas.

This year’s theme is Revisiting the Past, with an emphasis on building fundamental/core computer science skills that will culminate in unique and creative products. Participants will be able to choose between 3 themes that have been carefully curated:

Track 1: Reinventing The Wheel

For the first track in this year’s series, we want to emphasize a beginner-friendly, user-focused design. As the name suggests, your goal is not to come up with a new, ground-breaking application/website that will blow people’s mind. Rather, the objective is to recreate ideas that have already been tried and tested throughout the years. Think to the apps and websites you yourself use everyday: instead of on creativity, your submission will be assessed based on your ability to understand why those applications are so successful and whether or not you’re able to recreate that desirability. We recommend this track for beginner coders.

Track 2: Ground Zero

In direct contrast to track #1, ‘Ground Zero’ is all about hard skills. In an era of abstracted tools, vibe coding, and all kinds of GPT wrappers, we wanted to give contestants a chance to return to basics and really focus on showing off pure skill and knowledge. The tl;dr of this track is ‘for coders, by coders’: contestants will be asked to create something that is either a tool for the use of other developers, or a tool that would impress other developers. Whether it be with a deep understanding of network protocols, compilers, OS, anything that shows you know your stuff! Recommended for experienced coders.

Track 3: Farmer's Blight

for the hackathon purists: our final track fits the standard experience you’re used to: a simple prompt that narrows downs the scope for your creativity. In this case: agriculture! Your goal is to research and understand issues faced by stakeholders in agriculture and then to design an application that helps address said issue. Contestants will be expected to show the ability to properly research and explain their topic of focus. Recommended for those with a good grasp of UI/UX principles.

• Technical [38 points]
  Project coherence, completeness, use of technical tools and frameworks, code correctness, efficiency, simplicity, readability, maintainable, product design, user-friendliness, target audience
• Presentation and Impact [19 points]
  Quality of video presentation and pitch, magnitude of potential impact, relevance to overarching theme and chosen track, uniqueness
• Track-Specific Assessment [25 points]
  Each track this year has its own unique criteria! See details on the official track guide!