Congratulations on signing up for the Halloween Hackathon! There are only a few days left until the big day. You should have received an invite to the private #hackathon-oct2018 Slack channel. If something has changed and you can no longer participate in the Hackathon, please send a message to haley_ci on Slack within 48 hours of the Hackathon start time. The goal of this Hackathon is to work together as a team in the same way you would work on projects in a production environment with your future coworkers.

We encourage you and your teammates to work in mini-sprints for the Hackathon. Just like you would have 1 or 2 week long sprints when working on large projects in a company, we recommend that you use half-hour mini-sprints to coordinate your work on this hackathon. This idea breaks down a large task into smaller, more manageable tasks. Using mini-sprints can help you and your team budget your time effectively and communicate with each other on where you are at each stage in the task. Your team will agree on what the goal(s) is for the end of each mini-sprint. The Pomodoro timer is a great tool to help you manage your time during these mini-sprints, using 25 minute work sessions with 5 minute breaks to reconvene with your team to decide on the next tasks.

Please register a Trello account and create a hackathon board for all your team members to collaborate on. Your team will send a few screenshots of your team’s Trello board to factor into your Team Collaboration score. Trello is a useful tool for working in mini-sprints, where your team can keep track of what needs to be done, what is currently a work in progress, and what has been completed. Please also register for a free Zoom account. This is similar to Skype, and it will allow you and your team to participate in the Hackathon Presentations to the other teams and the judges. Please also make sure that you are using Cloud 9 and have an active GitHub account. We would encourage you to work in mini-sprints, and use Trello to promote teamwork Code Institute, Hackathon and transparent project management. It may also be helpful to download the Slack desktop app if you don’t already have it. With the Slack desktop app, you can share your screen with your teammates during an audio or video call.

At the beginning of the Hackathon, please send a private message to haley_ci on Slack that includes your team name, a link to your team’s cloud 9 workspace, a link to the project’s GitHub repository, and a link to your team’s Trello board.

Hour 1 : Planning; dividing up tasks; work; planning check-in with a Hackathon judge Hour 2 : Work in sprints Hour 3 : Work in sprints; progress check-ins with a Hackathon judge Hour 4 : Finishing touches; brief presentation preparation; presentations

In the final half hour of Hour 3, your team will give a short 3-5 minute presentation of your web app, highlighting the technologies used, features, and the user stories. The winning team will be announced on the #hackathon-oct2018 channel within 15 minutes of the final presentation.

There will be a panel of 5 judges made up of CI alumni and staff. They will be checking in with your team throughout the Hackathon, and they will be monitoring your team’s Trello board. At the end of the Hackathon, your team will present to the panel Hackathon judges via Slack screen share.

Halloween theme /15

/15

/10

/10

/10

The Hackathon prompt for the web app will be released on the day of the Hackathon.

Teams will have 3-5 minutes to present their final product to the judges and other teams via Zoom screen share, highlighting the technologies used, features, and the user stories. Following the presentations, the judges will have a Slack audio call to determine the winning team, which will be announced within 15 minutes of the final team presentation.

During the presentations, each judge will score each team in all categories. The average score will be taken from each category to calculate the total score. For ‘Team Collaboration’, this category will be based on the screen shots that your team has sent from your Trello board and your project’s GitHub commit history.

Prizes will be posted to the winning team, which will be announced at the end of the Hackathon. Winners will be contacted for a postal address.