What to Submit

Include a video (about 3 minutes) that explains and demonstrates your project in action. Must include responsibilities from each teammate and show how you collaborated interdisciplinary.  Videos must be uploaded to YouTube and made public. They can be unlisted.

Project and Submission Requirements:

(i) What to Create: Entrants must build a demo of their AI solution with cross-disciplinary team representation.

(ii) Functionality: The AI solution must function as depicted in the video and/or expressed in the text description.

(iii) New: Projects must be newly created by the Entrant.

(iv) Third Party Integrations: If a Project integrates any third-party SDK, APIs and/or data, Entrant must be authorized to use them and explicitly show authorization in video.

(v) HIPAA: Solutions may not ask for, include, or collect protected health information (“PHI”), as defined in the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (“ (personal health information, / HIPAA”) and its implementing regulations,) or otherwise break violate guidelines.

(vi) Testing: The entrant must make the project available free of charge and without any restriction, for testing, evaluation and use by the sponsor, administrator and judges until the judging period ends. Entrants must make their project available for testing by: 

·       Including a link to the project code on GitHub or another code repository-sharing service. The code repository should be public or private. If the repository is private, access must be given and indicated in the testing instructions provided with your submission. Code will be used only for submission review, testing, and judging.

·       Include all deployment files and testing instructions needed for testing your project.

(vii) Code Repository: Export your project from watsonx.ai to a Jupyter notebook and provide access to the code repository of your project by making it public (such as GitHub).

Submission Requirements: 

Submissions to the Hackathon must meet the following requirements:

·       Include a demonstration video of your project functionality. Project does not have to be deployed.

·       Include a URL to your code repository (if applicable) for judging and testing by making your code public or by sharing access 

·       Include a text description that should explain the features and functionality of your project.

The video portion of the Submission:

·       should be less than three (3) minutes.

·       must include footage that demonstrates the solution the team built.

·        must include a collaboration statement of how you collaborated with your teammates from different disciplines.

·       must be uploaded to and made publicly visible on YouTube and a link to the video must be provided on the submission form on the hackathon website.

·       must not include third-party trademarks, copyrighted music, or other material unless the Entrant has permission to use such material.

·       Be the original work of the submitter, be solely owned by the submitter, and not violate the intellectual property rights of any other person or entity.

·       Multiple Submissions: An Entrant may submit more than one submission, however, each submission must be unique and substantially different from each of the entrant’s other submissions, as determined by the sponsor and judges in their sole discretion.

Language Requirements

All submission materials must be in English. 

Team Representation

If a team or organization is entering the Gator Hackathon, they must appoint and authorize one individual (the “Representative”) to represent, act, and enter a submission, on their behalf. The representative must meet the eligibility requirements above. By entering a submission on the Gator Hackathon Website on behalf of a team or organization you represent and warrant that you are the representative authorized to act on behalf of your team or organization.

Intellectual Property: 

Your submission must: (a) be your (or your Team, or Organization’s) original work product; (b) be solely owned by you, your team, your organization with no other person or entity having any right or interest in it; and (c) not violate the intellectual property rights or other rights including but not limited to copyright, trademark, patent, contract, and/or privacy rights, of any other person or entity. An entrant may contract with a third party for technical assistance to create the submission provided the submission components are solely the entrant’s work product and the result of the entrant’s ideas and creativity, and the entrant owns all rights to them. An Entrant may submit a submission that includes the use of open source software or hardware, provided the entrant complies with applicable open source licenses and, as part of the submission, creates software that enhances and builds upon the features and functionality included in the underlying open source product. By entering the Gator Hackathon, you represent, warrant, and agree that your submission meets these requirements.

 Intellectual Property Rights.

All submissions remain the intellectual property of the individuals or organizations that developed them. By submitting an entry, entrants agree that the sponsor will have a fully paid, non-exclusive license to use such entry for judging the entry. Entrants agree that the sponsor and devpost shall have the right to promote the submission and use the name, likeness, voice and image of all individuals contributing to a submission, in any materials promoting or publicizing the Gator Hackathon and its results, during the hackathon period and for three years thereafter.  Some submission components may be displayed to the public. Other submission materials may be viewed by the sponsor, devpost, and judges for screening and evaluation. By submitting an entry or accepting any prize, entrants represent and warrant that (a) submitted content is not copyrighted, protected by trade secret or otherwise subject to third-party intellectual property rights or other proprietary rights, including privacy and publicity rights, unless entrant is the owner of such rights or has permission from their rightful owner to post the content; and (b) the content submitted does not contain any viruses, trojan horses, worms, spyware or other disabling devices or harmful or malicious code.

Financial or Preferential Support: A project must not have been developed, or derived from a project developed, with financial or preferential support from the sponsor or administrator. Such projects include, but are not limited to, those that received funding or investment for their development, were developed under contract, or received a commercial license, from the sponsor or administrator any time prior to the end of the Gator Hackathon submission period. The sponsor, at their sole discretion, may disqualify a project, if awarding a prize to the project would create a real or apparent conflict of interest.

Judging Criteria and Winner Selection:

Eligible submissions will be evaluated by a panel of judges selected by the Sponsor (the “Judges”). Judges may be employees of the sponsor or third parties, may or may not be listed individually on the Hackathon Website, and may change before or during the Judging Period. 

Entries will be judged on the following equally weighted criteria, and according to the sole and absolute discretion of the judges:

Potential Value: Includes the potential impact and the extent to which the solution can be widely useful in education and cross-disciplinary studies.

Quality of the Idea: Includes creativity, innovation, and originality of the project, such as solving a challenge in a unique way.

Functionality: Includes how well the idea was prototyped by the developers. Demonstrate functionality and features.

Quality of Presentation: Videos should be interesting and captivating. Include a statement of collaboration and explain how you collaborated with your teammates from different disciplines. Make sure it's creative, professional, and polished.

The judges scores will determine the potential winners of the applicable prizes. The entrant(s) that are eligible for a prize, and whose submissions earn the highest overall scores based on the applicable judging criteria, will become potential winners of that prize.

Tie Breaking. For each prize listed below, if two or more submissions are tied, the tied submission with the highest score in the first applicable criterion listed above will be considered the higher scoring submission. In the event any ties remain, this process will be repeated, as needed, by comparing the tied submissions’ scores on the next applicable criterion. If two or more submissions are tied on all applicable criteria, the panel of Judges will vote on the tied submissions.