Eligibility

- Ages 18+ only

- Santa Clara University Students

- Team Required: 2 to 6 members

- US Only

Gen AI/Use of AI Disclosure

Participants may use any AI tools (e.g. ChatGPT, GitHub Copilot, Claude, etc.) to ideate and/or build their projects. We aim to create an environment that best prepares participants to build at the same speed and level as the industry. You are free to build with any tools and methodology you'd like and are responsible for the output your team produces from it. 

This being said, participants are expected to have an understanding of all submitted code, architecture, tooling, etc. as it will be a large part of the scoring process. Judges and organizers have the right to discredit your project for lack of understanding and overdependence on AI.

Judging Criteria and Winner Selection

• Technology
  How technically impressive was the hack? Was the technical problem the team tackled difficult? Did it use a particularly clever technique or did it use many different components? Is it a scalable design/solution?
• Polish
  Did the team put thought into the user experience? For a website, this might be about how beautiful the CSS or graphics are. For a hardware project, it might be about how good the human-computer interaction is.
• Innovativeness
  Does the hack show the team thought “outside of the box”? Does it have a certain “wow factor” to it? Is it different compared to previous solutions?
• Use of AWS Tech
  Did the project use AWS technologies in their project? Did they sit down and really learn the technologies available to them?
• Project Completeness
  Is there a demo of the product’s functionality? Can major user action flows be completed without significant obstacles? Could the project be productized and sold? Is there a business plan that explains who would consume this product, and how it would benefit them?