If you missed yesterday’s Ask Me Anything sessions about our upcoming hackathon, #BigHackathon: Summer ’22, no sweat! We’ve put together a list of the questions asked to hopefully answer yours, too. If you read through these and still have questions about our upcoming event, check out our website for more answers.
Private vs Public Repos?
Private repos are acceptable as long as at least one of the judges has access, and all public repos are accepted! We’ll be sure to supply you with the appropriate GitHub handles to share your repo with.
What to expect throughout the hackathon?
Given this is a virtual hackathon, the day-to-day lift/expectation from you (besides developing your app) is fairly low.
We kick off at 10am CDT on Monday, August 15 and from then on you are given free reign to hack your solution! We have a number of presentations throughout the week with BC employees who have a lot of solution wisdom to share, and submissions are due by 11:59pm CDT on August 26.
Our Discord server will serve as our means of communication with you all, and you can expect updates and reminders to be distributed there. You will receive very minimal email contact from us, but you can expect detailed instructions and hackathon information after our kick-off meeting, and detailed submission information and reminders around the submission deadline. If you have any questions, comments or concerns, you can reach out to Heather Barr, Stephen Hilliard or myself (Katie Hoesley) at any time via Discord or DevSlack.
I wrote about my first Web3 hackathon experience recently — if you want to learn more about the hackathon experience, check it out!
What are the lighting talks/events about?
Throughout the duration of the hackathon we have a number of lightning talks/AMA type events meant to help participants create the best products they can! We’ll be hearing from:
- Tommy Ekstrand, BigCommerce’s Manager of Web & Customer Self Service
- Airon White, BigCommerce’s Manager of Product Marketing
- Robert Alvarez, BigCommerce Engineer
- Pat Williams, BigCommerce’s Manager of Partner Solutions Engineers
& possibly more!
To learn more about these events or to register to attend them, visit our website!
Does BigCommerce take ownership over the products developed during #BigHackathon?
No, what you build is yours! Plain and simple.
Do you have any ideas or examples of applications we can browse through?
We will be releasing feedback from internal teams for inspiration. Keep a lookout in our Discord for updates on this!
Are there any examples of past submissions we can reference?
No, the prompt for #BigHackathon is intentionally vague to encourage maximum creativity!
Do you have any advice for first time hackers?
- Spend time wireframing, designing, and planning before development!
- Create feature deadlines and have a project manager or someone in charge of keeping the team on track
- Determine your MVP and shoot for that, then add extra features later
- Have fun, think outside the box & be creative!
Why are hackathon communications on Discord instead of in BigCommerce’s Developer Slack space?
BC’s DevSlack is a space for developers or members of technical teams who build on BigCommerce’s platform to engage with us and each other, and to avoid arbitrarily adding every registrant of this hackathon to that space, we decided to preserve DevSlack’s integrity by using Discord. We do hope anyone who is NOT in DevSlack will apply and join us in there for the future, though! Link to DevSlack application here.
Can we create team channels in Discord?
No, a minor Discord limitation, but we encourage everyone to meet with their teams & are welcome to use Discord to do so or DevSlack, however works best for the team! Your comms are your comms, and Discord will (at minimum) be your team’s way of communicating with the BigCommerce team.
Can we use beta APIs if we have access to them already?
For this hackathon, no. We want to make sure everyone is on a level playing field, and access to cool new APIs might tilt the scales a bit. So, for #BigHackathon: Summer ’22, no beta APIs can be used.
Once we complete our project, do we need to present?
There will not be live demos, but you will record a demo (instructions and requirements will be sent out on Monday after kick-off) and that is what the judges will look at when considering your submission. We will also collect a GitHub repository.
What type of solutions are we looking for?
We expect most solutions to be widgets & apps and are not accepting theme solutions. We’re expecting either a replacement of something that is unfavorable on the platform, or something that resolves a product gap. We also have a rubric that will be shared to have full transparency on how we’ll be judging.
Will the final submissions be public for all other participants to see?
We will likely send out all submission videos to all registrants in some sort of restricted video form (possibly Vimeo with a password, but TBD) so you can all see what your competition created. BigCommerce Developer Relations team might also present some of these videos at an upcoming partner summit! So, make ’em good!
And that’s a wrap! If you’d like to register for #BigHackathon, fill out this registration form.
If you still have questions and our website doesn’t answer them, comment on this blog or tweet at me @Katie_Hoesley. We can’t wait to hack with you!
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