All about the Hackathon
The Hack for Earth hackathon is a global online hackathon that will run for two weeks from October 22 – November 7 with focus on finding real solutions to the 17 United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals. Throughout the two week hackathon period all teams will brainstorm, concept develop and work together to create a solution that is in line with the jury criteria and that could be implemented to become real tools for the good of society.
All team members will have access to mentors, workshops, open data, information on relevant subjects and other support from the partner community to be able to create the best solutions.
The hackathon will have 7 challenge categories that you and your team can choose from to compete in:
You and your team will work on the solutions anytime that fits your schedule during the two week hackathon period and then submit your final solution in one of the presented challenge categories by the end of the hackathon. The hackathon will be carried out 100% digitally and start on October 22.
More detailed information about the digital platforms and the next steps will continuously be released on this hackathon information page and on email.
In order to make the hackathon information as easy accessible as possible we have divided all relevant information about how the hackathon is going to work in different sections.
18 October – Register an account on the hackathon platform TAIKAI and the communication platform Discord! (Need to be done by all members in the team.
18-22 October – Every Team Lead in each team creates a project in the hackathon platform and adds all team members into the project. (Make sure all team members have registered an account!)
22 October 17.00 – Opening Ceremony (Livestreamed)
22 October 18.00 – Hackathon starts! (Registration to TAIKAI closes!)
24 October 18.00 – Deadline to submit your team information including challenge to hack on.
7 November 17.00 – Submissions closes! (Hand in your final solution!)
To see the full event calendar click here
You and your team will choose one of the seven challenge categories to compete in. To read more about each challenge category and all UN SDGs covered in each category click here.
There are some important requirements for all team members to think about before starting with the hackathon process:
Each team has 48h to decide on the team name, what hackathon challenge to compete in and to start the work. By 24 October 18.00 all teams need to submit a form with information about your team name, who all team members competing in the team are and what challenge category your team has chosen to compete in.
The submission of team information will happen in the hackathon platform TAIKAI where the final submission and jury evaluation also will take place. More information will come closer to the start of the hackathon.
Discord is a chat platform and will be our main communication tool during the whole hackathon, so make sure you and all your team members join our discord to not miss any important information.
If you have not joined yet, join by clicking on this link! (If you don’t already have a Discord account you will need to create one)
If you have never used Discord before and want to know how it works, click here and watch this video
1) Add your team members as friends and create a DM group chat with your team.
To invite someone to a group DM you need to be Discord friends. So make sure to add all your team members as friends first!
2) Useful Channels
We will use a hackathon platform called TAIKAI for the team registration and the final submission. All team members need to be registered in the platform and each team needs to submit their team information in the platform before 24 October 18.00. TAIKAI is also the platform that the jury members will use to evaluate all the submitted solutions.
🙋🏽Take me to the hackathon platform
🖥 Instructions to how I sign up to the hackathon platform TAIKAI
All solutions in the hackathon are to be judged on the following six criteria by the jury groups. There is no internal ranking between the criteria, they are all equally important. Each criteria will be given a point between 1-10.
Comprehensibility – Comprehensibility of the solution proposal’s value proposition and main use case
Realisability – Realisability of the solution from its current idea stage to implemented solution, used by its intended users in its problem context
Innovativeness – Innovativeness of the idea behind the solution, as well as the intended technology to be used in an implementation of the solution (if applicable).
Scalability – Scalability of the solution if it is implemented and realized.
Solving the SDGs – Does this solution correlate to the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals and how well does it solve the challenge it is intended to address.
Team – Dynamic of the team
All mentors available will be listed on our website under the tab Mentors Here you will be able to find information about all mentors including bios and what expertise they can help out with. You will also be able to get in direct contact with them via access to their Linkedin profile. Some mentors will also hold Q&A sessions and more information on how to join these will be published on the mentor page.
The Hack for Earth Team together with our partner community have created a page listing all resources that you as a hacker can use to help you in your process of creating real tools for the good of the society. To access all relevant tools click here.
If you have any questions, read our FAQ or reach out to us at info@hackforearth.com
With love,
Team Hack for Earth
