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Hesburgh Libraries Hackathon 2023

Judges

These are the judges for the 2023 Hesburgh Libraries Hackathon. Judges are selected from across campus to ensure they bring a wide range of skills and perspectives to the judging process.

Shreya Kumar

Assistant Teaching Professor
Computer Science and Engineering

Helen Hockx-Yu

Enterprise Architect
University of Notre Dame

Steve Varela

Director of Teaching & Learning Technologies
University of Notre Dame

Caterina Agostini

Postdoctoral Research Associate
Navari Family Center for Digital Scholarship and Reilly Center for Science, Technology, and Values

Presentations

Presentation Format

Unless approved by the event administrators (typically for medical reasons), all presentations must be delivered in person. Teams will have 4 minutes to deliver their presentation. Judges may or may not ask questions following each presentation.

There is no required format for the presentation. However, we recommend that your team consider using a few slides to organize the main information about your project. We recommend including the following components, which will best help our panel of judges evaluate your contribution according to the 5 criteria of the judging rubric.

  • Team Name — Have you introduced yourselves?
  • Project Title — Have you clearly stated the project name? If the name has a special significance, have you unpacked that for the audience?
  • Project Description — Have you given a succinct but clear description of the project and its value to users? What users, communities and/or markets are you targeting?
  • Innovation & Impact — What is the value proposition of your hack? How is better than other similar products, for example? How will your hack positively change / improve the delivery of information, the acquisition of services, etc., for users?
  • Technical Merit — Have you described the technical aspects of your hack? What does it do and how does it work? What languages, frameworks, libraries, have you used in building it?
  • Demo — Have you demonstrated how your hack works? Have you recorded direct interactions or, at a minimum, used screen shots?
  • Challenges and Opportunities — You may with to end by describing any challenges and opportunities. For example, have you described any interesting challenges you faced or may face if you were to take the project forward? What opportunities exist for, say, taking the hack to market, or marketing it at scale? What are the next steps, if any, for your hack?

Example Slides

Although you are not required to use any slides, or to structure your presentation in a specific way, using a few well-organized slides can help the judges focus on the details of your presentation AND help you get to your demo much faster. We offer the following template as an example of how you might approach designing your slides.

View Google Slides

Slide Deck Tutorials

Interested in learning a few tricks for building impactful decks? View our tutorial on designing and delivering your Hackathon presentation.

Judging Criteria

Each category has a weighted percentage that will be used to calculate the final score for each team.

Category Weight Description
Innovation 30% The project should take a unique, interesting, and creative approach to solving the problem(s) identified by this year's theme. This criterion looks at novel or cutting edge methods for user interaction, data manipulation and presentation, and use of new technology.
Impact 30% The proposed solution should have a significant impact in solving technological challenges posed by the theme of that year's hackathon. For example, solutions might aim to improve the way users organize, communicate, schedule, or perhaps manage information, resources, or people, with regard to that theme.
Usability 15% Usability represents ease-of-use in engaging with content and services. The project should exemplify the highest standards of intuitive and elegant User Experience Design (UX). The project should easily, pleasantly, safely, and elegantly help users.
Technical Merit 15% The application was technically challenging to construct, requiring strong programming skills from the team. The team made wise choices in selecting conventional but creative components and libraries to construct the app. The complexity and elegance of the back-end matches the front-end.
Presentation 10% Through the final presentation, the team should clearly communicate the value of the project. The final presentation of the product to the judges should be professional, well-structured, and meaningful. The team may also wish to describe their process and developmental hurdles and how they overcame them.

Prizes

Prizes

The three main prizes for the Hesburgh Hackathon are awarded to teams who excel in all of the criteria on the judging rubric. 

Prize Award
First Prize $3,000
Second Prize $2,000
Third Prize $1,000
Honorable Mention * $500
Honorable Mention * $500

* Judges may use their discretion in awarding up to 2 additional prizes under the category of Honorable Mention. Winners of the first, second and third-place prizes are not eligible for these prizes. These prizes are awarded to teams who may not have excelled in all of the criteria of the judging rubric but who may have shown exceptional skill in one or more area.