Registration to attend the hackathon is now closed. Confirmed hackers, please register your teams on Devpost to submit your hacks. Registering on Devpost does not register you to attend the hackathon.
Welcome to the Spring 2016 hackNY Student Hackathon! hackNY organizes once-a-semester student hackathons at which NYC startups present their technologies and students build original applications based on them. Winning teams have presented at the New York Tech Meetup. Check back here for info, signup for our newsletter or follow us @hackNY for additional details.
The top 3 hacks will present at the New York Tech Meetup! See the Fall 2015 winners presenting on our blog.
Please see the Rules tab for our Code of Conduct.
MongoDB will be generously sponsoring a bus to and from the Spring 2016 hackNY Student Hackathon! The bus will be making stops at UPenn, Princeton, and Rutgers. The bus is now full.
Schedule
Saturday
12:00pm - Doors Open to Attendees; Lunch is Served (main hallway, outside Auditorium)
01:00pm - Opening Ceremonies, & NYC and sponsor API presentations
03:00pm - Hacking Begins (see below for room list)
03:30pm - Introduction to Hacking with APIs Workshop (Room 312)
07:30pm Dinner is Served (13th Floor Lounge)
08:30pm Ladies Storm Hackathons Meetup (Room 101)
Sunday
12:00am Midnight Surprise (13th Floor Lounge)
02:00am Late Night Snack (13th Floor Lounge)
08:00am Breakfast is Served (13th Floor Lounge)
11:00am Devpost Submissions Due!
11:30am Lunch is Served (Main hallway, outside auditorium)
12:00pm Demos Begin
02:30pm Judges Deliberate; Community Announcements; Winners Are Announced!
This page will be updated as information becomes available, check back often!
Hackathon Rooms
If you will be working on an Android or iOS hack, we encourage you to work at the cortex corresponding to that technology. Cortexes are spaces for hackers working with the same technologies to work together, solve technical challenges, and debug.
Please note that some rooms will have special events in them at different times during the hackathon and will have to be cleared during those events. Rooms with special events have been marked.
101 Open for Hacking (This room must be cleared for the Ladies Storm Hackathons Meetup Saturday 8pm-9:30pm)
102 MLH Hardware Lab, and Arduino Cortex
109 Auditorium (Opening and Closing Ceremonies)
201 iOS Cortex
202 Android Cortex
312 Open for Hacking (This room must be cleared for workshops Saturday 3:30-4:30pm)
317 Open for Hacking
412 Open for Hacking
505 Open for Hacking
512 Nap Room (Men)
517 Nap Room (Women)
524 Open for Hacking
605 Open for Hacking
705 Open for Hacking
805 Open for Hacking
905 Open for Hacking
1302 hackNY Staff Only
13th Floor Lounge Meals and Snacks
APIs
The following NYC and sponsor APIs will be demoed at our Opening Ceremonies. Technical Ambassadors representing each API will be around to help if you get stuck. For help with a specific API, see its channel on Slack.
Buzzfeed | #buzzfeed-help| @buzzfeed
Buzzfeed is the social news and entertainment company. BuzzFeed is redefining online advertising with its social, content-driven publishing technology.
Buzzfeed's API includes endpoints to consume comments, articles and several metrics around our posts
Clarifai | #clarifai-help | @clarifai
Clarifai specialize in advanced image recognition through neural networks and deep learning. Our API allows you to give us any image or video, and you can get information about that image or video, such as tags for the image, dominant colors of the image, whether or not an image is NSFW, etc. developer.clarifai.com
Foursquare | #foursquare-help | @foursquare
We're a location technology company that makes the Foursquare & Swarm apps and provides location APIs & services for hundreds of thousands of developers & companies.
If you're building anything with a map, GPS, lat/lons, or locations, Foursquare can help you build it better and easier. developer.foursquare.com
MongoDB | #mongodb-help | @MongoDB
MongoDB will be presenting a brief overview of how to get started with MongoDB and use it in a hack.
Capital One | #capitalone-help | @Capital1Campus
Capital One started with a simple principle – attract talented people and give them the opportunity to be great. Founded in 1988, we harnessed the power of big data to create customized products that disrupted the credit card industry. Over the years, our associates have used our information-based strategy to build a great company, bringing breakthrough banking products and services to consumers, small businesses, and commercial clients. Today, with more than 65-million customers and 40,000 associates worldwide, our Cloud-enabled infrastructure, Open Source culture, and leading-edge data and analytics platforms are fueling Capital One’s position as a digital leader.
Nessie is Capital One’s Hackathon API that gives you access to a multitude of real public-facing data - such as ATM and bank branch locations - along with mock customer account data. Use HTTP requests to set up peer-to-peer transactions, simulate a weekly paycheck, or even schedule bills for customers! This is all structured in a way that resembles how we actually run things here at Capital One. api.reimaginebanking.com
Twilio | #twilio-help | @Twilio
Giphy | #giphy-help | @Giphy
Giphy is a search engine for GIFs. We have a public GIF Search API that allows anyone to easily get our GIF search integrated in their application!
NYC Open Data
The city of New York has over 1,300 open data sets available for you. You can find these at https://nycopendata.socrata.com/. For more information about the Open Data portal APIs, you can get started here: http://dev.socrata.com/consumers/getting-started.html
If you’d like to see the full list of available datasets (as well as those that are planned to be released soon): https://nycopendata.socrata.com/dashboard
Information about the most popular datasets, keyword searches, and embeds are at: https://nycopendata.socrata.com/analytics
The City’s Tumblr with great uses and examples of Open Data in action is at: http://nycopendata.tumblr.com/
TECHNICAL AMBASSADORS
Technical Ambassadors are members of the NYC tech community who visit during the hacking hours to help hackers form teams, refine ideas, work through technical challenges, and stay motivated. You can find them on Slack, and around the event wearing red hackNY hats. They are ready to answer your questions, debug with you, and help your hack succeed.
HARDWARE LAB
MLH's hardware lab, in room 102, features Arduino, Fire Phone, Leap, Muse, Oculus, Pebble, Sparkcore, Myo, and more to check out for the weekend. You can also pick up free AWS credits to use for your hack. You can also check out extra extension cables and power strips.
Eligibility
All projects must be submitted on DevPost by Sunday 11:00 AM, April 3rd. There is no team size limit, but ll team members must be enrolled in an undergraduate or graduate degree program at the time of submission.
All participants are subject to the Code of Conduct signed upon registration to the hackathon.
All team members must be enrolled in an undergraduate or graduate degree program at the time of submission.
Requirements
Participants must submit a project to be eligible to present. Presentation length (typically 2 minutes) will be decided based on how many submissions we recieve
Projects must be functioning demos. Powerpoints and slides are extremely discouraged.
Prizes
$4,198 in prizes
1st Place
Our top 3 winners will present at the New York Tech Meetup! These awards can be won by any kind of hack - webapps, games, hardware projects, and more. Whether your hack is entertaining or useful, we’ll be looking closely at its technical merit, creativity, and overall awesomeness. Prize: $999
2nd Place
Our top 3 winners will present at the New York Tech Meetup! These awards can be won by any kind of hack - webapps, games, hardware projects, and more. Whether your hack is entertaining or useful, we’ll be looking closely at its technical merit, creativity, and overall awesomeness. Prize: $666
3rd Place
Our top 3 winners will present at the New York Tech Meetup! These awards can be won by any kind of hack - webapps, games, hardware projects, and more. Whether your hack is entertaining or useful, we’ll be looking closely at its technical merit, creativity, and overall awesomeness. Prize: $333
The 8-Breaker
This award is given to an extremely creative hack that isn’t one of our friend Tess Rinearson’s “8 Kinds of Projects You Meet at Hackathons” - check out her blog post to read the list. Prize: $200
Most Technically Impressive Hack
This is an award for serious technical work on hardware or software. Doing some extreme math, hardcore coding, or complex building? This award will recognize you, even if your hack isn’t the flashiest from the outside. Prize: $200
Best Hack Design
This award recognizes great visual design and UX. Judges will look at your user interface, graphics, and product design. Prize: $200
Best Hack Using an NYC Startup's API
Supporting the NYC Tech Community is very important to us. This award goes to the best hack using local startup’s API to do something awesome. Prize: $200
Best Hardware Hack
Webapps don’t have all the fun. This award goes to the hack that best incorporates hardware. Prize: $200
Best First Hack
If you’re a team of new hackers, welcome to the world of hackathons! We have a special award to recognize the best hacks by first-time hackers. We’ll look at the technical and creative impressiveness of your hack and your learning over the past 24 hours. Prize: $200
Best Use of Capital One's API, Sponsored by Capital One
Prize: $250 in Amazon gift cards for each member of the winning team.
Best PHP Hack, Sponsored by Datto
This prize goes to the hack with the best understanding of the PHP language.
Best Use of Amazon Web Services, Sponsored by AWS
Prize: 1TB hard drives!
Best Domain Name, Sponsored by Domain.com
Prize: Swag bags with Sparkfun Redboards!
Best Developer Tool, Sponsored by Github
Prize: Awesome Octocat statues
Best use of MongoDB
Best use of Twilio
(3)
NYC Inspiration!
Devpost Achievements
Submitting to this hackathon could earn you:
How to enter
All projects must be submitted on DevPost by Sunday 11:00 AM, April 3. There is no team size limit, but all team members must be enrolled in an undergraduate or graduate degree program at the time of submission.
Judges

Alexandra Diracles
Co-Founder and CEO, Vidcode

Courteney Ervin
Developer, New York Public Library

Renee DiResta
VP Business Development, Haven

Stacey Mulcahy
Senior Technical Evangelist, Microsoft

Minerva Tantoco
Chief Technology Officer, City of New York
Judging Criteria
-
Awesomeness
That's it. No hockey sticks, no market. Just awesomeness. See each prize's description for more information!
Questions? Email the hackathon manager
Tell your friends
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