OpenHacks is an all-inclusive hackathon targeted towards students all over the world. This hackathon is organized by TheOpenCode Foundation, and all sponsorships are tax-deductible. TheOpenCode Foundation is a 501(c)(3) not-for-profit organization which provides disadvantaged students the education and resources needed to pursue a career in computer science.

All of our sessions are excellent, but our featured sessions are out-of-this-world! The featured sessions are taught by our special guests, who are industry-leading experts in their fields. Be sure to tune in to watch our featured sessions live on YouTube. All sessions will be available for replay after the sessions have finished.

Coding to Make Music: An Artful Design Story by Ge Wang (12:00 PM PT on May 23rd)

This presentation (with many live demos) tells a story about coding to
make music and to build tools for musical expression — taking a journey
through the ChucK audio programming language, the Stanford Laptop
Orchestra, the design of Ocarina for the iPhone, and the underlying
“why?” we make these things.  It is a tale about artful design and a
meditation on we shape technology, and how technology, in turn, shapes
us and our society. No experience is needed; all are welcome.

Locality-Sensitive Hashing by Jeffrey D. Ullman (5:00 PM PT on May 23rd)

Locality-sensitive hashing (LSH) is a collection of techniques that seem almost magical.  Faced with a problem that involves finding the similar pairs from a large set, you can avoid doing work that is quadratic in the size of the set if you do it right.  Avoiding quadratic behavior is vital, since even a "small" set of a million records would imply half a trillion comparisons if done naively.  We shall illustrate the general principle of LSH by considering a particular problem: entity resolution.  We are given a set of records, say of credit-card transactions and bank records, and we want to find which records refer to the same person.  But names, addresses, phones, and other indicators of who you are might not be exactly the same.  There could be spelling errors, people move, and other changes may make the representation of the same person look somewhat different in different records.  We hope, however, that the records representing the same person will look more similar than records representing different people.  We'll talk about a problem of this type that I was once called upon to solve, and the way I used LSH to solve it.

 

Schedule

Gain insights into the different sessions, workshops, and mini-events for you to experience at OpenHacks by looking at our schedule. This schedule is subject to change, and we will be using Slack to notify you of any changes.

Virtual Team BreakfastSubmission Workshop

Time (Pacific Standard Time) Event
Saturday, May 23th  
9:00 AM Virtual Team Breakfast
10:00 AM Opening Ceremony
10:05 AM Opening Ceremony
10:45 AM Hacking Begins
10:50 AM Test Build a Cloud-Connected AR/VR App
11:00 AM Build a Cloud-Connected AR/VR App
12:00 PM Coding to Make Music
2:30 PM Skribbl.io Mini Event
3:00 PM Intro to Firebase
4:00 PM Learn Google Cloud
5:00 PM Locality-Sensitive Hashing
7:00 PM Stretches and Workout Session
9:30 PM Capture the Flag with U.S. Air Force
11:00 PM Video Game Tournament
Sunday, May 24th  
9:00 AM Virtual Team Breakfast
9:30 AM Devpost Submission Workshop
10:15 AM Start Submission on Devpost
10:45 AM Hacking Ends
11:00 AM Deadline for Hacks
11:05 AM Public Voting Begins
11:30 AM Judging Starts
3:00 PM Closing Ceremony

Hackathon Sponsors

Prizes

$4,293 in prizes

Best Overall (valued at $1299)

• Mentorship by industry leading experts through TheOpenCode Foundation.
• Featured front-and-center on TheOpenCode Foundation's social media.
• Certificate of achievement signed by TheOpenCode Foundation's board.
• Unannounced prizes shipped to the team!

Best COVID-19 Hack (valued at $1299)

• Mentorship by industry leading experts through TheOpenCode Foundation.
• Featured front-and-center on TheOpenCode Foundation's social media.
• Certificate of achievement signed by TheOpenCode Foundation's board.
• Unannounced prizes shipped to the team!

Best Use of Google Cloud (valued at $99)

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 Home Mini.

• Google Home Mini
• Recognition from MLH

Best Domain Registered with Domain.com (valued at $99)

Domain.com provides all the domain services you need from registration to hosting to SSL certificates and beyond. Each hacker will receive a FREE domain name and year of domain privacy from Domain.com for their project this weekend!

• Domain.com Backpack
• Recognition from MLH

Best use of MongoDB Atlas (valued at $99)

Create a hack using MongoDB Atlas to host a database in the cloud! Automate the provisioning and deployment process with ease, while focusing all your efforts on your hack. Projects built using MongoDB Atlas will be eligible to win an AirCharge Plus.

Best Presentation (valued at $599)

• Mentorship by industry leading experts through TheOpenCode Foundation.
• Featured front-and-center on TheOpenCode Foundation's social media.
• Certificate of achievement signed by TheOpenCode Foundation's board.
• Unannounced prizes shipped to the team!

Best Product Marketability (valued at $799)

• Clerky's Company Lifetime Package.
• A feature by TheOpenCode Foundation.
• Stipend to market and publicize your project.

Honorable Mention (15)

Devpost Achievements

Submitting to this hackathon could earn you:

Judges

Nathan Thomas

Nathan Thomas

Miami Larry

Miami Larry

Bas Broek

Bas Broek

Ruha Ratnam

Ruha Ratnam

Timz Owen

Ankur Dahiya

Ankur Dahiya

Jigyasa Grover

Jigyasa Grover

Varun Tandon

Varun Tandon

Kunal Jain

Kunal Jain

Peculiar Umeh

Peculiar Umeh

Andrea Wu

Andrea Wu

Alon Grinshpoon

Alon Grinshpoon

Ben Pedazur

Ben Pedazur

Marcin Krzyzanowski

Marcin Krzyzanowski

Andrea Chen

Amanda Slowikowski

Amanda Slowikowski

Judging Criteria

  • Creativity
  • Originality
  • Technical Prowess
  • Presentation

Questions? Email the hackathon manager

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