Dates

The theme will be announced virtually at 6 PM MDT on Thursday, September 21st, 2023. No submissions worked on prior to this time may be submitted. The submission window closes at 6 PM MDT on Monday, September 25th, 2023. Late submissions will likely not be considered and will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis. After the deadline, you cannot change your Devpost description or Github repository. Judges will examine commit times to ensure compliance.

Eligibility

You may attend CTRL Hacks if you are a Grade 9, 10, 11, or 12 student at the time of the hackathon. Participants located outside of Calgary, Alberta will compete in the out-of-city prize track, while those located inside Calgary will compete within the local prize track.

Team Size

  • You may participate solo or in teams of up to four individuals.

Project and Submission Requirements

No restrictions on what can be made, so long as it is:

  • Related to the theme
  • School appropriate; no sexually explicit, obscene, harassing, violent, hateful, or discriminatory submissions (on the basis of race, ethnicity, nationality, sex or gender, age, religion, disability, etc.) will be tolerated.
  • Not submitted to another hackathon (i.e., we disallow cross-submissions)
  • The project was created within the time frame of the hackathon; starting beforehand is strictly disallowed
  • Any tech stack, framework, or library is allowed
  • Both hardware and software solutions are accepted
  • For this hackathon, ChatGPT and AI are allowed. We advise that you try to solve issues and tackle problems yourself first, but if you are in a bind, you are allowed to use AI to assist you. A project should not be entirely made by AI. Usage of the OpenAI API is also allowed.

You will need to submit:

  1. A link to your code, such as on GitHub or Replit
  2. A maximum-6-minute YouTube video (public or unlisted) explaining your project and what problem it solves

Prizes

See the prizes at https://ctrl-hacks.devpost.com/!

Judging Criteria and Winner Selection

Submissions will be out of 20 marks, and based upon four criteria:

  1. Impact/Pitch (6 points): Does it play a part in the real world? What is the potential positive impact of this project? Was the impact effectively and clearly explained in the pitch?
  2. Theme/Creativity/Design (5 points): Does it effectively fit the theme? Is it a creative and original idea, or is it a copy of an existing product? Also, how well is it designed - does it have good UI and UX? Is it easy to use and work with?
  3. Project Condition (3 points): Does the project work, or is it full of bugs? Does the demo effectively showcase the full functionality of the project? Is there a live demo? How much of the project is flagged as “incomplete and patched in future versions”?
  4. Technical Skill (6 points): How much technical and programming skill was showcased? Did the project utilize several moving components and advanced libraries, or was it just a basic HTML wrapper page for text?