cmd-f 2021 is the third iteration of British Columbia's first and largest 24-hour all-women* hackathon, taking place virtually from March 6th to 7th, dedicated to exploring new technologies and celebrating women* in tech! This year, cmd-f revolves around continuous learning, personal growth, and wellness.

We're here to help break stereotypes and create a safe space for women* interested in tech to gain new skills, build confidence, and discover a supportive community - regardless of your background or experiences. To help encourage learning and tech creation, each project submitted will be a donation to a charity you support.

Learn more (and register) at https://tinyurl.com/cmd-f-2021

*The cmd-f team would like to acknowledge that "female" or "women" is not an accurate description for many people and it may make some feel unwelcome. We use * to specifically and intentionally include cis and trans women, as well as women-identifying non-binary, agender, or intersex people and other gender minorities.

Eligibility

Applications are accepted on a first-come-first-serve basis to all women-identifying students! Please note that any inappropriate submissions that do not align with cmd-f values may be rejected. We're here to break stereotypes and create a safe space for women* where they can learn new skills, build confidence, and discover a supportive community. Whether you're a first time hacker or a veteran, we want to help you take your next steps in tech.

Registration is open to students from ALL SCHOOLS, not just UBC students! We welcome university/college and high school students, as well as recent graduates within 1 year of graduation. 

Teams can have up to 4 members of registered hackers who must be present at the event. There will also be a team-formation event on the day of the event, so don't worry if you don't have a team!

Learn more (and register) at https://cmd-f.nwplus.io/

Requirements

Devpost will be closing at 11:00 AM PST on March 7th, no extensions will be allowed. Please create and submit your Devpost project atleast 1 hour in advance, don't worry if you're not done yet because you can always edit your submission before 11:00 AM PST on March 7th.

A video demo of maximum 5 minutes AND a project GitHub link must be included in the submission to be eligible for prizes.

Plagiarism is not acceptable and teams with plagiarized work will be disqualified - this includes self-plagiarism. We will be checking Github accounts.

Teams can have up to 4 members of registered hackers who must be present at the event.

Please select the one charity of choice you'd like to donate to with your project submission.

Hackathon Sponsors

Prizes

$CAD16,320 in prizes

Telus - Women's Health (2)

DESCRIPTON
a. Design and develop an innovative solution that addresses the concerns and issues of women’s* well-being in the 21st century.
b. Women* play a major role in our society, but staggering lack of data on females as opposed to their male counterparts has led to the design of gender-biased solutions for mental health, physical health, medical care, social life, family life, etc. As we move towards gender equity and inclusiveness in our society, we need a wide spectrum of solutions that are designed with consideration of women’s* needs and well-being.

CRITERIA
a. Idea:
Novelty of the idea proposed
Effectiveness of the proposal in addressing the problem statement
b. Implementation:
Level of technical creativity and/or complexity of implementation
c. Presentation:
Presentation and demo quality

PRIZES
a. The first place team will be awarded a pair of Beats Solo 3 Wireless Headphones and a $100 Amazon Gift Card per participant
b. The second place team (Best Pitch) will be awarded a $50 Amazon Gift Card per participant
c. Both the winning teams will also get preferred consideration for the TELUS GTLP or co-op program.

Best Use of CockroachDB

DESCRIPTION
Build your hackathon project on CockroachDB's open-source and indestructible SQL database. Use CockroachDB in your hack for a chance to win AirPods for each team member (up to 4 members).

PRIZE
Airpods or $200 Amazon gift card for each team member (up to 4 members) and an opportunity to be interviewed on our Twitch stream about your use of CRDB.

Kabam - Best UX/UI Design

DESCRIPTION
Criteria for this prize is Visual quality, Optimization and Well thought-out UI Design.

PRIZES
$100 UberEats gift card for each team member.

Hootsuite - #SocialForGood Award

DESCRIPTION
For your team to qualify for Hootsuite’s #SocialForGood award, your project must make a positive social impact on how we communicate in today’s connected world. This could mean creating a tool that makes the world a more accessible place, creating an app that helps less-amplified voices to be heard, or providing a way for people to connect and organize in volunteering efforts, and beyond.

PRIZES
Prize includes a a 1 hr Q&A session with our CTO for the winning team, a guaranteed interview for co-op positions (or mock interview for practice), and Raspberry Pis.

Apply Digital - Data-First Award

DSECRIPTION
This award will be given to the team that incorporates data-first approaches into their work by leveraging data effectively to enable efficient decision-making.

PRIZES
Each member from the winning team will receive a $100 Amazon Digital Gift Card.

BGC Engineering - Computing for Climate

DESCRIPTION
At BGC, we have a focus on helping our clients understand the impacts of climate change, a threatening crisis so big that it becomes daunting, difficult, and un-relatable. This award will be given to the team that develops a project that makes climate change relatable and communicates why people should care about it. One sub-theme BGC has been working on is to find ways to use climate data and climate models to illustrate how it impacts society and existing ecosystems.

PRIZES
Guaranteed interview for each team member for a co-op or new grad Dev or QA position
Virtual tour of BGC’s Vancouver office – meet our team and see our apps in action
$350 Amazon gift card for each team member (maximum $1,400 value)
Yeti 20oz Tumbler
Stainless Steel Straws

Scotiabank

DESCRIPTION
Best fintech hack/tool to educate young females about Data Analytics & Science!

When thinking about finance don’t just think about retail banking or savings! We want you to think outside the box and be creative.

Teams will be scored based on solution, creativity, feasibility, and presentation.

PRIZES
Each member from the winning team will receive a $200 Amazon Gift Card.

SAP - #EmbraceDifferences

DESCRIPTION
Build a project that follows the theme of embracing differences.

PRIZES
Ember Temperature Control Mug” for each member of the team (up to 4).

Teck Resources - Best 1-min Pitch

DESCRIPTION
This award will be given to the team that incorporates the best 1 minute pitch (video) to their hackathon project. Create the perfect 1 minute "elevator" pitch to sell your project. What's so great about it ? Why is it useful ? Why is it innovative ? What makes it different ?

CRITERIA
- good communication style
- effective communication
- creativity / originality
- ability to translate jargon / simple terms
- 1 min is on top of the 5 minute demo

PRIZES
1 x $500 Amazon Gift Card for the entire team

Arista - Human Connection

DESCRIPTION
The pandemic has seen the growth of collaboration and meeting tools yet still, many of us miss the “human” aspect of interacting in person. Your challenge is to build technology to help develop and strengthen your connections with the friends, family, classmates, or colleagues that you’re geographically separated from.

PRIZES
Each member on the winning team will receive a $50 CAD Visa gift card, an Arista t-shirt and pen, and guaranteed interview if the student wishes to apply for an internship or new graduate position with Arista Networks.

Groundswell - Building a “Groundswell” with the power of Salesforce

DESCRIPTION
We want you to use your thirst for knowledge to learn and utilize something from Salesforce’s vast platform to help turn your ideas into a reality! There is so much more to Salesforce than just CRM—with access to a rich set of Developer-centric resources available at your disposal. You can leverage so many capabilities through their platform to build solutions quickly! Our judges will be looking for creativity and how well you’ve used Salesforce technology to help turn ideas into reality in hours, not weeks.

**To qualify:** Your solution must utilize at least one of Salesforce’s products or services and it must be shown in your Github write up. FOR ALL DETAILS - PLEASE LOOK AT THE HACKER INFO PACKAGE.

PRIZES
Each member on the winning team will receive a Groundswell Backpack, t-shirt, travel packing cubes for your next big trip PLUS a guaranteed interview at Groundswell.

Skybox Labs - Celebrating women* in STEM

DESCRIPTION
Build a technology celebrating women* in STEM throughout history.

PRIZES
In true pandemic style, we are setting you up with a games-night in. Each winner will receive (1) a Steam key to SkyBox original title, Stela; (2) A Humble Choice bundle of games to help build their game library. (3) a $30 gift card to Uber Eats.

Best use of Google Cloud

DESCRIPTION
Build your hackathon project with a suite of secure storage, powerful compute, and integrated data analytics products provided by Google Cloud. See full list of products here: g.co/cloud. Each winning team member will receive a Google Branded Parkland Academy Backpack.

Build your hackathon project with a suite of secure storage, powerful compute, and integrated data analytics products provided by Google Cloud. See full list of products here: g.co/cloud.

PRIZES
Each winning team member located in the US will receive a Google Cloud Swag Bag complete with a beanie, pillow, journal, socks and lanyards.
Google Branded Parkland Academy Backpack

International winners will receive a Google branded Parkland backpack.
Google Cloud Swag Bag or Backpack

Best Domain Registered with Domain.com

DESCRIPTION
Register a .tech, .space, or .online domain name using Domain.com during the weekend. Each team may submit one entry per person on the team. Each winning team member will receive a PowerSquare Qi Wireless Phone Charger & Domain.com Backpack.

PRIZES
PowerSquare Qi Wireless Phone Charger & Domain.com Backpack

Best Hardware Hack Sponsored by Digi-Key

DESCRIPTION
Using your preferred hardware or hardware emulator, build a hack for your chance to win a Grove Beginner Kit, with an embedded Arduino compatible board. 1 prize for each winning team member with 2 winning teams per event!

PRIZES
Grove Beginner Kit

Popularity Prize

DESCRIPTION
Most Popular Hack voted by other hackers!

PRIZES
$1000 in Bubble Credits for each member of the team with the most popular hack!

Pinnacle Prize

Each winning team member will receive tickets to Pinnacle, which invites the world's top 50 collegiate hackathons for an epic finale event in fall 2021. More information can be found here: https://pinnacle.us.org

Devpost Achievements

Submitting to this hackathon could earn you:

Judges

Sponsor Judging

Sponsor Judging

Peer Judging

Peer Judging

Judging Criteria

  • Execution
    The project is a well though-out and creates an impactful solution to the problem.
  • Innovation
    The project is groundbreaking, creative and original, tackles problem with a new angle, on a larger scale and at a higher level.
  • Design
    The design is creative, professional, intuitive, and aesthetically pleasing.
  • Technical Completion
    The project is complete and ready for demo. The team is able to clearly explain their implementation and how the project works. There are no apparent bugs and the project is fairly advanced.
  • Presentation
    The presentation is clear, smooth, and well prepared. It makes a good business case for the project for instance by including relevant statistics.
  • Peer Feedback
    Peer judging will be based on project video demos. Each hacker will need to judge and provide feedback for 3-4 other projects in order for your own project to be eligible for prizes.

Questions? Email the hackathon manager

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Hackathon sponsors

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