Show your love for hacking on Valentine's Day weekend at the University of Pennsylvania. 48 hours, $30,000 in prizes, and 1,200 of the best hackers from around the world. After the Friday evening kickoff, all teams are allowed to begin working on their apps. Once your app is complete, we ask that you make a submission to ChallengePost to let everyone (most importantly your judges) know about your hack. You can submit your app, and an accompanying video if you'd like to, using the Submissions tab above (which will appear after you hit the Register button). All submissions must be in by 9:30 AM Sunday morning.

Eligibility

If you applied to PennApps, recieved an offer to attend and went on to confirm that you will, you are eligible to attend PennApps. If you attended and hacked at PennApps, then you are eligible to make a submission. For Penn students, you are eligible if you signed up on this form and then hacked at PennApps.

Requirements

Make your product, submit your hack to ChallengePost and attend the product fair to show off what you built.

Hackathon Sponsors

Prizes

$29,000 in prizes

Grand Prize

The Grand Prize also includes Pebble Steels, Philips Hue Starter Kits, Leap Motion Controllers.

Second Place

Third Place

Blend Prize

Best Photo Blended - $100 + 100 Snaps

Bloomberg API Prize

Parrot Drones

Dropbox - 'It just works' Prize

100 GB of Dropbox space and a Pebble.

Dwolla API Prize

Raspberry Pi Starter Kits

Facebook/Parse/Instagram API Prize

All expenses paid trip to California (Facebook HQ) to compete against other winning teams from Facebook's worldwide Hackathons at the FB Hackathon Finals.

Google Prize (2)

Best use of any Google service. Nexus 7's and Chromecasts for top 2 teams (up to 4 members per team).

Indiegogo Prize (3)

To compete for the Indiegogo prizes at PennApps, create an Indiegogo campaign for your PennApps project. A panel of Indiegogo staff members will be judging your campaign on creativity, originality, and wow factor. We will take into account how you are using our platform to build a business. Submit your campaign URL at http://bit.ly/1ox8NWx.

1st place - iPad Mini Retina + case.
2nd place - Kindle Fire HDX 8.9 + case.
3rd place - Kindle Paperwhite + charger.

Intel XDK Prize

Best use of XDK, Galaxy Tab 3 for each member (up to team of 4).

Leap Motion Prize

Leap Motion HP SE 17" embedded laptop, interview with Leap Axlr8r, engineering mentorship; if continue to build - featuring in Airspace App Store, marketing materials, early access to next gen tracking and Android SDK

Mashery API Prize

Best app built using the Mashery API Network - $200 Amazon Gift Card + "Evolution of Video Game Controllers" Posters for each team member.

MongoDB Prize

Best use of MongoDB - $250.00 + MongoDB swag

Namecheap Prize

$250 Namecheap Credit to the most "brandable" domain registered during the hackathon

Nexmo API Prize (2)

Best use of Nexmo's API - ChromeBook Touch
Best use of Nexmo's API in a productivity app - Pebble Watch

Octopart Prize

Best Hardware Hack - $250 in hardware from Octopart.

Pebble Prize

Best Wearable Hack - Pebble steels

Philips Hue Prize (3)

Several hue starter kits for the most creative and innovative use of the Philips hue connected lights

Rdio API Prize

Best use of Rdio API - 2 years of Rdio Unlimited to each member.

SendGrid API Prize

Best use of the SendGrid API - 4 Oculus Rifts

DigitalOcean - Best use of DigitalOcean (3)

1st - $4k DO credit + ipad mini retina
2nd - $2k DO credit
3rd - $1k DO credit

GameChanger - Best Sports App

4 Fitbits

Devpost Achievements

Submitting to this hackathon could earn you:

How to enter

- Make your app (any platform is accepted).

- Submit your app to ChallengePost by 10 AM Sunday.

- Attend the product fair and show off your hack.

- Wait for judgement announcements and final demos.

Judges

Josh Kopelman

Josh Kopelman
Partner, First Round Capital

David Pakman
Partner, Venrock

Ryan Bubinski

Ryan Bubinski
Co-Founder, Codecademy

Bob Moore

Bob Moore
CEO, RJ Metrics

Bert Navarrete

Bert Navarrete
GM and Managing Partner, Tiger Labs

Chris Wink

Chris Wink
Co-Founder and Editor, Technical.ly

Mike Maher

Mike Maher
Co-Founder, Benjamin's Desk

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 real technical challenges to surmount?
  • Polish
    Is the hack usable in its current state? Is the user experience smooth? Does everything appear to work? Is it well designed?
  • Usefulness
    Is the hack practical? Is it something people would actually use? Does it fulfill a real need people have?

Tell your friends

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.