Pixels Camp Challenge

The goal of the Pixels Camp challenge is to single out and reward creativity and innovation by providing participants with an opportunity to work together within a time frame of 48 hours to create something awesome.

Eligibility

Any Pixels Camp approved participant can apply, as long as they are on the premises during those 48 hours (within reason – you are allowed to go out and get some air, sleep in a proper bed if you want to, etc.)

Groups must be larger than 2 elements, all of whom must be Pixels Camp participants. Teams are advised to recruit elements with a wide diversity of interests that complement each other in their knowledge areas. The broader the skills in a team, the higher the probabilities to surprise the public and the jury with innovative ideas.

To find your team members you can use Slack or Twitter to speak out to other participants, or you can meet them IRL on site when Pixels Camp starts.

Participants can only join one project at a time.

Ideas, concepts, and team organization are tasks that can be thought out before the event, but the project itself should be developed during the 48 hour period. Although monitoring this is nearly impossible, the jury and other members will be actively looking for proof that the team has worked and developed their ideas on the site.

Schedule

The programming event will last exactly 48 hours, starting on the first day. You can see the full schedule here.

Project Registration

To participate, you have to register your project following the instructions bellow:

• Log in on GitHub, for sure you already have an account.
• Fork this repo.
• Duplicate the project.md file and give it the name of your project (ex: crazy_chickens.md). For aesthetic, please use lower case letters only and underscores instead of spaces.
• Edit the new file.
  • Change title with your project name.
  • Fill out all the required information.
• Do not delete the template file.
• When it's ready, submit a pull request with your changes.
• If everything ok, it will be merged. If not, you'll get a comment from us.
• At this moment, a number will be given to your team. During the merge, a comment will be written with your team number and the file will be renamed to "XXX-project_name.md", where "XXX" will be your number.
• This number should be used to identify your project with the jury.

These instructions are mandatory, and they should be done as soon as you enter Pixels Camp. The deadline is on the second day (Oct 7th) until 2 pm.

Here's an example of what a project file should look like.

Any submissions without records will be discarded and will not be considered during pre-selection.

Don’t take this lightly! You should be as accurate as possible. A bad project description is a handicap you don’t want to have.

Selection Process and the obligatory video

All projects will undergo a pre-selection process via video review. On the second day, as soon as you have your team ready, a clear idea of what your project will do and some code done, you must shoot a small video that summarizes the whole concept, purpose, and technologies used.

The video can’t be longer than 180 seconds (that's 3m), and you must follow these topics:

• What's your project name and number
• Team presentation
  • How did the team meet? Did you meet at Pixels Camp?
  • What are the team tech skills?
• Project presentation
  • What does it do?
  • Did you start it on Pixels Camp? Was there anything done before?
  • What's the audience? Who will be using it and why?
  • Describe the project. Bonus points if you already have something to show
  • What technology did you use?
  • How close are you to finish it?
  • Will you be able to finish it in time to the presentation?

Name your video with your project number (e.g., 32.m4v), and you have to upload it to a Pixels Camp Dropbox "File Requests." folder here.

We don't need a fancy video, don't waste time showing off your amazing video editing skills. A smartphone as a camera and good sound will do the trick. You can use whatever you want as long as you keep it within the 180s limit. Remember! The picture is important, but the audio is probably more important at this stage.

You have to upload it from 2 pm until 10 pm on the second day (Oct 7th)

The goal of this pre-selection is to determine which teams will go on the main stage, since the overall Pixels Camp schedule is very tight and on-stage presentations are limited to 2 hours, and thus it might be impossible to have everyone demo their project live.

Some projects may be called a second time for a live interview with the whole jury for further assessment. This call will occur on the second day from 9 pm and on the morning of the third day. Again, pay attention to our Slack and Twitter.

Pre-selection results will be posted online at the Pixels Camp site and online tools at 11:00 on Saturday – we'll announce that posting primarily via Twitter and Slack, so make sure you're following @pixelscamp, and via our blog and other communication mechanisms we'll have on the site.

The selected projects will be presented on stage by a single representative team member, who'll have 90 seconds to pitch and/or demo your project.

Awards

After the presentations, the jury will bestow awards taking into consideration the following criteria:

• Public vote
• Degree of achievement
• Originality and creativity
• Technical competence
• Innovation
• Awesomeness

Good luck!

Schedule to have in mind

• Register your project: First day to Second day until 2 pm
• Submit your video: Second day from 2 pm until 10 pm
• Calls to jury interview: Second day from 9 pm and third day in the morning