The Imagination Hackathon

We are Melbourne's premier student hackathon - run for students, by students from WIRED Monash.

Teams have 24 hours to design and build something awesome. It can be anything - a website, a mobile application, a video game, or even something hardware. The important thing is that it needs to work when it is presented to the judges.

Whether you are an avid programmer or a first-time hacker, UNIHACK welcomes everyone, regardless of skill level. You will have the opportunity to build, collaborate and learn from your fellow hackers and mentors at the event. The event will also have a number of tech talks throughout to help participants learn new or extend their existing skills.

UNIHACK is organised by WIRED Monash, the IT student society at Monash University Clayton.

View full rules

Hackathon Sponsors

Prizes

$42,180 in prizes

FIRST PLACE

$4000 in cash
Membership to the IBM Global Entrepreneur Program (worth US$24,000)
A Raspberry Pi 3 for each member, thanks to Thoughtworks
A Sphero SPRK for each member

SECOND PLACE

$2000 in cash

THIRD PLACE

$1000 in cash

BEST DESIGN

Adobe Creative Cloud for each member

MOST CREATIVE IDEA

A KAISER BAAS Drone for each member

PEOPLE'S CHOICE AWARD (Sponsored by Microsoft)

A Xbox One for each member

IOT: INVENTED FOR LIFE PRIZE (Sponsored by Bosch)

Up to $500 worth of Bosch products from across the range

UNIVERSAL DESIGN AWARD (Sponsored by Seamless CMS)

A student ticket to TEDx Melbourne for each member

MOST ELEGANT ALGORITHM AWARD (Sponsored by IMC)

A customised WASD V2 keyboard for each member

THE UNICORN PRIZE (Sponsored by Accenture)

A PlayStation 4 for each member

Part of the Accenture's API Challenge - for the project with the most innovative interpretation and visualization of data, elegancy and code quality.

BEST USE OF TDD PRIZE (Sponsored by Thoughtworks)

A $100 iTunes voucher for each member

FUTURE LEADERS PRIZE (Sponsored by PwC)

A seat in PwC's STEM Academy for each member

BEST MARKETPLACE READY HACK (Sponsored by Xero)

A Xero Developer Pack each member

BEST STUDENT SOLUTION (Sponsored by Monash University eSolutions)

A secret prize!

Eligibility

UNIHACK is open to all university and TAFE students in Australia. The only requirement is that you must be an enrolled undergraduate, honours, postgraduate or TAFE student when UNIHACK starts on July 30. We reserve the right to cancel your ticket if you do not meet this requirement.

Requirements

See the handbook for more information.

How to enter

See the handbook for more information.

Judges

Ren Butler
Startup Market Manager, BlueChilli

Jason Cormier
Director of Strategy and New Business, Australia, Mashery

Jo Cranford
Engineering Manager, Culture Amp

Atlanta Daniel
General Partner at Signal Ventures

Remya Ramesh
Experience Design Lead, Seamless CMS

Bernard Schokman
Head of UX & Innovation at Foxley, UX Business Consultant

Dr. Oliver Wolst
Regional President Automotive Electronics, Bosch

Judging Criteria

Originality
Is the hack more than just another generic social/mobile/local app? Does it do something entirely novel, or at least take a fresh approach to an old problem?
Technical Difficulty
Is the hack technically interesting or difficult? Is it just some lipstick on an API, or were there any technical challenges to surmount when building it?
Polish and Design
Is the hack usable in its current state? Is the user experience smooth? Does it work as the creators say? Is it well designed? Our judges will see and/or want to use your prototype - so make sure it works!
Usefulness
Is the hack practical? Is it something people would actually use? Does it fulfil a real need that people have? While you are not required to prepare a business plan, your app should have an audience identified.