When you enter a hackathon, you might take note of the judging criteria and, perhaps, the profiles of the judges themselves. But have you ever wished you could talk to one of the hackathon judges and find out exactly what they’re looking for?
That’s just what we did here at Devpost. We sat down with five judges from across the tech spectrum to ask them about their judging process, what stands out to them in submissions, and their advice for participants.
Whether you're entering a hackathon as a participant or as a first-time judge, you'll find valuable insights and wisdom from these veteran judges.
Headshots of the five hackathon judges interviewed for this blog post. From left to right, they are Richard Moot, Karen Bajza-Terlouw, Kelvin Boateng, Maria Yarotska, and Warren Marusiak.
Meet the judges:
Richard Moot, Square
Kelvin Boateng, Google
Maria Yarotska, NEAR Foundation
Warren Marusiak, Atlassian
Check out each of their organization’s hackathons on Devpost here: Square, Databricks, Google, NEAR Foundation, and Atlassian.
What is your process for kazakhstan telegram screening judging submissions?
Richard: “After [the technical screening] we parse the projects out between different judges. We have some judges who specialize in a particular product, and they view all the submissions involved with that product to see which one is the best reflection of the use of the product.
For me personally, I watch the video to get context and then I use that for testing the submission. From there it's evaluating how well the project matches our criteria."
"When I’ve coached other judges on our hackathons, I encourage them to try their best to evaluate on an individual basis because it's very easy to try to evaluate projects relative to one another,” said Richard Moot, Square.
Karen: “When I'm looking at submissions, the first thing I do is go over the requirements that the hackathon has asked for. As a judge, it was surprising to see how many submissions did not fulfill the basic requirements. The next thing that I look for is creativity or enthusiasm. I feel like that signals to me that somebody has put a lot of time, thoughtfulness, and energy into their submission and the work they were doing. It also can indicate a level of quality within their submission.”