Rules

• Teams must be sized from 1 to 4 people.
• Teams must present their work at the end of the hackathon.
• All projects must have an open licence attached to it.
• All projects must be made according to the below instructions (see How to submit a project).
• Teams will have the full ownership for their work (e.g. code, graphics, presentation).
• The winners are decided by judges who use the below criteria in their decision (see Judging).

Recommendation for team building

Consider having people with different backgrounds. Combine developers with domain experts, add in a service designer and a mad scientist. Greatness is achieved by diverse teams with curious minds and a lot of caffeine.

Submitting a project

How to submit a hackthon project?

Team registration has to be completed by the latest 13.00 on Friday 17.11.

All teams must be registered via this form https://goo.gl/forms/GQelz5IK31Egf6zh2.

Make sure that 1) your team is registered, and 2) you’ve created a Google Drive folder with your project. The above link contains all the necessary information.

Ownership and IPRs.

All the software, data and other materials provided by IBM, Metsä Group, and Syke are provided with respective licensing and terms of use, and are owned by the respective organizations. Please, respect them.

All teams have the full ownership for their work (e.g. code, graphics, presentation). All contributions made by the team are owned by the team members.

All materials which are considered in the competition must have an attached open license. For example, LGPL for software and Creative Commons (CC-BY 4.0) for creative materials. Note that you cannot choose a license that prohibits commercial use or modifications.

All materials which are considered in the competition must be provided to the hackathon organizer (Xamk) before the presentation session. Xamk do not have the ownership for those materials but will hold them for two weeks.

Do not publish the hackathon materials online until 4.12.2017.

You are free to do whatever you like with your work after that. We wish to provide a two week period for teams and sponsor to negotiate for the ownership. That is, the teams can sell, donate, or transfer the ownership as agreed by the both parties.

By default, teams own everything they create. Open license allows sponsor and others to use that work. If a party (other than the owner) wishes to use proprietary licensing or continue the development in private they can negotiate for transfer of ownership. The transfer of ownership is a deal between the team and a sponsor should they agree on terms and conditions. The owner can change the license any time but the change is not ex post facto (i.e. retroactive).

After two weeks, on 4.12.2017, the teams are free to publish their work however they choose, e.g. in Github. They can change the licensing before publishing or not publish the materials at all.

PResenting

You have total of 10 minutes to impress the judges. Use them wisely.

First, you have 5 minutes to do a talk, presentation, show a demo, or whatever you decide.

Second, the judges have another 5 minutes to ask you questions or give you more time to spend.

You can add additional details and examples in your project’s Google Drive. See above for more information on that.

A good hackathon pitch should be connected with the judging criteria. Remember, a hackathon is about exploration and telling people about what you’ve done and found.

Include at least the following in your presentation or talk.

• Team name
• What problem you’re trying to solve, and why it matters
• The solution (in a simple and understandable way)
• Data, technology, designs and/or research to back it up
• How it was made? What is your contribution
• Limitations / next steps

A live demo is nice but not mandatory. If you do a demo, test and double test it before the stage.

Also, take a look at the judging criteria and think how to provide answers.

Judging

The judges represent the domains of forestry, environment, research, business, and technology.

Marianne Luume, IBM

Juha Jumppanen, Metsä Group

Timo Pyhälahti, Finnish Environment Institute – SYKE

Noora Talsi, Xamk

Esa Hannus, Xamk

Criteria

The judges will use the below criteria in their decision. Each aspect has an equal weight but not all judges think the same way. Try to think a little each one and build on your team’s strengths. They will also consider your presentation and dedication.

Idea and problem definition

Make sure you have identified and understood the problem well. Justify why solving the problem matters. Explain what impact it has and why it’s remarkable. Think outside the box, be visionary but be realistic.

Technology and data

Craft beautiful code that works like a charm. Prepare a live demo. Make magic happen with software and data. Consider what data you need, where to get it, and how to make value with it. Show that you can use existing software and make your own. Find unique ways to use technology but keep it simple.

Design

Think about the users. Design the best possible experience for customers, business users, experts, or whoever is your target audience. Apply design thinking, service design or business process design. Consider interactions, motivation, and user psychology. Design is not only the look and feel, it is how something works.

Feasibility

Make sure that what you’ve developed or designed is feasible and possible to put into action. Make a reality check, validate, and reflect. Think about business model, potential benefits (monetary or something else), scalability and costs. If you’re doing concept design think if it can be done and how. Draft a roadmap or provide some action points.

Prizes

There will be prizes for the top three teams.

The award is the same for each member of the team. It doesn’t matter if you’ve got 1 or 4 people in a team. The prize is equal per person to encourage teamwork.

The prizes will be announced in the beginning of the awards ceremony. They will be awesome stuff related to the themes of the event.