"I might look at a project and think, “Wow, this looks really interesting.” Then I’d make sure the code looked tight and that everything checked the boxes, but storytelling within the video and the text description definitely helps keep the judges engaged and focused,” said Karen Bajza-Terlouw, Databricks.
Kelvin: “The first thing we're gonna do is just play the game, right?” (Editor’s note: Kelvin’s team at Google held a hackathon that asked participants to build games for their submissions.) “It’s a really fun process, I can’t lie! You get so much from that—a sense of the animations and a sense of the performance. Sometimes the demo videos serve as a secondary input because if you're confused about what to do in the game, oftentimes the videos will help you.
Whether that's a blog post explaining your process, or maybe a slightly longer video where you explain what you learned along the way.”
Maria: “I am focused on the kazakhstan telegram screening pitch and description. Technology is just one side of things, but I look to see if there is actually a startup mindset. Do they see the problem behind the solution, or are they just trying to fit their solution to this particular hackathon? We have awarded great projects that were not great from the technical side of things, but we saw potential in the team—a lot of expertise and a lot of background knowledge on this particular problem. Hence we award that because it's a lot of work—it's not just about code.”
Warren: “The first hackathon we did was for a large marketing event, and we asked our participants to build a game that was going to be put on a stage show live. What we were really looking for in this particular case was something that would make a cool stage show. We wanted good graphics, good sound, good animations, a good slide deck, a story, and a cool stage presence. Our goal for this hackathon was really to make that marketing moment happen, so we were evaluating based on that.”