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over 1 year ago

Important: Projects Disqualified

Hi participants,

I am thankful to have you on board and cannot wait to see what you will build. I wanted to send this update to help you avoid an uncomfortable situation.

Today I received some submissions that I had to disqualify. I want to make some things clear:

  • If you lie about using a sponsor, you will be disqualified and banned from any future event. You do not have to use a sponsor technology, but if you do, you will be considered for sponsor prizes which will increase your chance to win a prize. If you do not use our sponsors, simply don't list them in your submission form.
  • If you simply re-use an old project that should generally be okay as long as it matches the hackathon theme (Agentic AI applications). If you submit a recycled, unrelated entry, it tells me you do not appreciate my time and didn't bother reading the instructions. In this case, you will be disqualified and banned. We focus on quality here, not quantity.
  • If you do choose to recycle a relevant project, you might want to integaret sponsor technologies into it to increase your chances to win a prize.
  • You must include a 2-3 minutes demo video where you walk through the solution. Simply recording your screen does not count. Simply recording the submission page without demonstrating your app also doesn't count.

We have a very generous prize pool, excellent sponsors and a stellar jury panel. At this point, given that we have over 300 participants, I will simply disqualify (without notice) projects that don't put in the minimal effort of reading the instructions and following them.

For those of you putting in the work and effort - this is great news. It dramatically increases your chance to win. And even if you do not win, I think we have so many great networking opportunities and opportunities to get noticed by sponsors and the jury. I appreciate you for doing your best.

Just a reminder that I am available on Discord along with some sponsors to support you and answer any questions you might have.

Good luck!