Learn, create, and develop exciting projects and connections at UCSB’s 11th annual hackathon! Mark your calendars for January 11-12th for a weekend of building real-world solutions, competing for incredible prizes, and networking with the coolest hackers, mentors, and sponsors. Our team is excited to welcome hundreds of participants of all skill sets and backgrounds to the stunning UC Santa Barbara campus. Whether you are a first-time coder or a seasoned hacker, we encourage you to enter SB Hacks XI with enthusiasm and curiosity. We hope that you challenge yourself with a fun project, learn something new, and feel proud of what you accomplished at the end of it all.

What you can look forward to:

  • A 24-hour adrenaline rush from problem-solving, coding, and collaborating
  • Hands-on experience using company tech and hardware not accessible elsewhere
  • Personalized mentorship by industry professionals
  • Vast array of workshops to develop your skill set
  • Free food, snacks, and drinks all weekend (one less adult responsibility to worry about)
  • $100 worth of API credits from Anthropic for each hackathon participant
  • Experiencing the beautiful Santa Barbara sunsets, beaches, and weather!

Visit our website www.sbhacks.com for more information!

Requirements

All projects must be submitted to Devpost by 8:30 AM Sunday, Jan. 12. Teams must present their project live in front of judges on Sunday morning.

Judging will last from 9:00 AM to 11:30 AM on Sunday, Jan 12. Anyone who plans to be present during their live demos must be ready by 9:00 AM.

The time limit for all demos is 2.5 minutes. For live demonstrations, judges will have 1.5 minutes to ask any questions after the demonstration is over. Make sure that your presentation shows off your project in a clear and concise manner. In addition, we encourage teams to include a recorded video demonstration in the Devpost submission for judges to review during deliberation. For the live demo and/or Devpost submission, we recommend teams to include a diagram or explanation of their project’s system for judges to review.

Note: The "About the project" section will be considered for judging in the Sponsor/MLH prize categories. If you are applying for any of the Sponsor/MLH prize categories, make sure to fill out all of the parts and give detailed answers.

The rules depend on the specific challenge that you apply for, but in general:

  • You cannot submit a codebase that you have worked on before Jan 11th.
  • Cross submission (submitting to other hackathons) is not allowed.
  • Everyone must follow the MLH code of conduct: http://mlh.io/code-of-conduct.

Hackathon Sponsors

Prizes

$7,515 in prizes
Grand Prize (First Place)
1 winner

Every team member will win a 10th Generation iPad + Apple Pencil and an MLH Winner Pin.

Grand Prize (Second Place)
1 winner

Every team member will receive a pair of Apple AirPods Pro 2 and an MLH Winner Pin.

Grand Prize (Third Prize)
1 winner

Every team member will win an AOC Gaming Monitor and an MLH Winner Pin.

Best Environmental Hack
1 winner

Every team member will win a pair of Beats Solo 4 headphones

Best Student Life Hack
1 winner

Every team member will win a JBL Flip 5 speaker

Best Entertainment Hack
1 winner

Every team member will receive a SteelSeries keyboard

Best Beginner Hack
1 winner

Every team member will receive a Jade Leaf Matcha Kit

Best Use of AI
1 winner

Every team member will receive an PNY 256GB Flash Drive

Best UI/UX
1 winner

Every team member will win a laptop stand

Joke Hack
1 winner

Every team member will receive a pet rock :)

Best use of SingleStore
1 winner

The winning team will receive $500 in cash

Best use of Sycamore (Aryn)
3 winners

The first place team will receive $500 in cash and each member will receive an interview opportunity with Aryn! The second place team will receive $250 in cash. The third place team will receive $125 in cash.

MLH - Best Use of Midnight
1 winner

Midnight is a data protection blockchain that offers programmable data protection capabilities powered by zero-knowledge technology to address the delicate balance between data protection, ownership, and utilization. This ensures that developers can leverage blockchain technology without exposing confidential information or losing control over their data.

To build on Midnight, all you need is familiarity with TypeScript or a similar JavaScript based library. The service is free to use and their developer documentation has all the information you need to get started. Build a DApp using Midnight this weekend for a chance to win wireless headphones for you and each of your team mates!

MLH - Best .Tech Domain Name
1 winner

Make your Team's Achievements timeless: Win a .Tech Domain Name for up to 10 years to Showcase and Expand Your Project, Plus 4 Blue Snowball Mics for Effortless Collaboration on Zoom, empowering you to build even more cool things together!

MLH - Sauce Labs Hot Sauce Raffle
1 winner

Sauce Labs empowers you to develop, test, and deliver top-tier web and mobile apps quickly and efficiently. Their unified platform makes automated testing and error monitoring easy to do, enabling you to save time building your hackathon project! Let Sauce Labs help resolve any issues with your code so you can get back to building an award winning hack. Make sure your project is hackathon-tested by signing up for a Sauce Labs account!

To spice things up even more, we're running the Sauce Labs Hot Sauce naming raffle and selecting up to 4 individual winners at this event. To qualify come up with a cool hot sauce name and submit it to the Sauce Labs raffle form for a chance to win some awesome swag including a backpack, beanie, and a bottle of Sauce Labs hot sauce!

MLH - Best Use of Terraform
1 winner

HashiCorp Terraform is a source available infrastructure as code (IaC) tool that makes building, deploying, and managing your projects even easier! Whether you’re working in the cloud or using local resources, Terraform can make managing and configuring your application simple and organized. From deploying Machine Learning models to spinning up virtual containers for your web applications, Terraform supports a wide array of cloud providers and services, taking the guesswork out of your next hackathon project. Dive into the documentation and discover all the ways Terraform can take the way you hack to the next level!

Terraform’s community edition is free to use with no credit card required! Utilize Terraform in your hackathon project this weekend for a chance to win some awesome Hashicorp prizes for you and each of your teammates!

MLH - Best Use of GenAI
1 winner

Calling all Hackers! It’s time to push the boundaries of what's possible with Gen AI. It's like having a teammate with superpowers that can help you create amazing things. Do you want to build AI-powered apps to make your friends say, "Whoa, how'd you do that?" This weekend, we want you to build projects that bring Gen AI APIs to your end users. Each member of our winning team will take home a FitBit and Wacom Drawing Tablet.

Snag Challenge
1 winner

Teams must solve a big problem in the daily life of a college student to be considered for this challenge. The winning team receives a Snag Bag of Goodies and a $200 Amazon gift card!

Devpost Achievements

Submitting to this hackathon could earn you:

Judges

Umesh Mishra

Umesh Mishra
UCSB

Nabeel Nasir

Nabeel Nasir
UCSB

Ziad Matni

Ziad Matni
UCSB

Timothy Sherwood

Timothy Sherwood
UCSB

Luke Theogarajan

Luke Theogarajan
UCSB

Arpit Gupta

Arpit Gupta
UCSB

Antonis Antoniadis

Antonis Antoniadis
UCSB

Ivgeni Segal

Ivgeni Segal
Snag

Andrew Roberts

Andrew Roberts
Snag

Muaz Abrar

Muaz Abrar
Capital One

Shafique Hassan

Shafique Hassan
Capital One

Benjamin Sowell

Benjamin Sowell
Aryn

Shashank Iyer

Shashank Iyer

Ryan Millner

Ryan Millner
Unwrap

James Avani

James Avani
Hydrolix

Judging Criteria

  • Completion
    Does the hack work? Did the team achieve everything they wanted?
  • Originality
    Has this project been done before at hackathons in the past? How creative is their project in solving the problem at hand?
  • Adherence to Theme
    Does the hack adhere to the chosen track? Does it implement that theme fully or just partially?
  • Learning
    Did the team stretch themselves? Did they try to learn something new? What kind of projects have they worked on before?
  • Design
    Did the team put thought into the user experience? How well designed is the interface?
  • Technology
    How technically impressive was the hack? Does the project demonstrate depth of thought and technical complexity? Did it use a particularly clever technique or did it use many different components? Did the technology involved make you go "Wow"?

Questions? Email the hackathon manager

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Hackathon sponsors

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