1. Hackathon – 2019 Code Pursuit

2. Code Pursuit - Guidelines
Ideathon Phase
Focused Ideathon phase to ensure good ideas get to be refined and developed
Mentors
Work with teams to help refine, architect and develop the idea and prototype
Development Phase
Top 10 teams go through development
Infrastructure
D3 provided cloud based infrastructure
Judges
External judges in addition to internal judges at the finals
Ideathon Phase: The primary objective of the D3 hackathon is to generate IP that can be leveraged by UST. When we started of, we decided that everyone must be allowed to code, irrespective of the idea. We wanted to engage as many USsociates as possible. We wanted to give technically inclined USsociates a platform to express themselves. We learned a few things from the last two years. The primary lesson we learned was we need to bubble up the good ideas without having the process be biased to any technology. From the first 3 cycles, we saw that folks who are already technically proficient with the open source ecosystem make more progress in terms of code development, even if their idea may not be as good as some others. We realized that more than products that can be demoed at D3, we as a company are interested in the out-of-the-box ideas, those that can bring about a paradigm shift. In order to do that, we realized that we need to focus on a focused ”ideation” process.
Mentors: In 2018, the strong mentor program was very helpful for top teams. We actually had one in place in 2016, which was leveraged by several teams. Given that 2016’s D3 was focused on AI, we were able to engage Abzooba and their platform to provide that mentorship. Since 2017 had a much broader theme we were not able to do that. That was further exacerbated by the scale of the second D3. We had over 500 teams participate and no platform to provide support meant that we were severely constrained. For 2018, we want the scale but we also want the focus. Too narrow a theme would limit participation, too broad would result in lack of focus and ability to support. This year, the theme is rather broad but given the Ideathon phase and the process we are putting in place, we will have a much smaller number of teams progressing through each gate. Once we have our best ideas selected, we are engaging both internal and external mentors. These mentors will be experts in different domains and one mentor will be assigned to each team who will be actively involved in the incubation of the idea, development and final presentation.
Development Phase: Hackathons as a rule are a short exercise. The idea is to develop a prototype quickly. Most hackathons are conducted over a weekend. But given the constraints of project work and client engagements within UST, we felt this wouldn’t be realistic for D3. However, a long development phase like we had for 2016 and 2017 is not helpful either, another lesson we learned. The 2 week duration from 2018 didn’t work either. This year, the development phase will be three weeks. In effect, only a small number of teams will progress to the development phase. This we hope will allow the teams to better manage their time and two, be ready to start developing once the development phase starts.
Infrastructure: The last 3 years, we have actually invested significantly in infrastructure though it doesn’t feel like that. We feel this has not been very effective for several reasons. One, much of our hard investment was in the area of code management. Two, we provided infrastructure in cases where we had significant constraints, like an ODC which had regulatory restrictions on use of UST infrastructure. Given the broad scope of ideas, it’s also very difficult to provide development infrastructure support to all teams. We want to do this though and are able to do so given our structure this year. Since we will be doing a focused Ideathon phase and a small set of teams will move to the Development Phase, we see ourselves working with the teams and setting up their infrastructure on the cloud like last year. We will provide complete access to the infrastructure and teams will be able to develop directly on the cloud. You can continue to use your personal laptops and UST equipment where available but development will need to be on the infrastructure provided by the D3 organizing committee. This addresses another problem we faced in the prior D3s, where we were not quite sure if the product being demoed was developed during D3.
Judges: To ensure no bias, judges for this year’s Hackathon during the Ideathon, Development and at the Event will be a mix of external and internal judges. External judges will be industry experts, domain experts and technology experts. Internal judges will be senior folks in UST. Mentors will not be judges.
Stage Time: For three years now, we have had short demo sessions at the event. There is a very specific reasoning behind this. In the real world, early stage startups and product ideas get between 5 and 7 minutes of presentation time with Angel Investors and Venture Capitalists. Only funded startups get more time. The reasoning is, if one can’t project the actual value in their product in a minute or so, then either the value is questionable or the developer does not understand the value well enough. Having said that, we have received feedback both years that not enough time was given to the team to demo their product. Given the format this year and the fact that we are more involved as organizers during the Ideathon and development phases, we believe we will more comfortable with the value of the ideas to be presented in the finals. As a result, we will give these teams more time to present. This will be a total of one hour per team at the D3 digital expo. This will give finalist teams adequate time to interact with the audience and the judges and open the floor to the judges and the audience to ask questions.

3. Key phases Submission Evaluation Mentorship
Participating teams submit completed Application Questionnaire
Evaluation
All ideas are evaluated by judges
Top 10 ideas announced
Mentorship
Mentors work with the teams to refine and further develop the idea and prototype
Infrastructure Setup
The Ideathon Phase will consist of three sub-phases. Each sub-phase ends with a gate or a checkpoint. Meaning only some teams will qualify for the next phase.
Application Questionnaire Submission: The application questionnaire will be updated this year. Only completed applications with all of the questions adequately answered will go into the next phase. We will have a separate session on filling out the application questionnaire to ensure participating teams understand how to best fill out the questionnaire.
Questionnaire Evaluation: Completed applications are evaluated by the judges. Between five to ten ideas will proceed to the next phase. A minimum of five and a maximum of ten. The evaluation of the application questionnaire will focus on the following
Innovativeness
Magnitude and scope of problem being solved
Adherence to theme
Ability to go to market
User Experience
Technical Design
Mentorship – The top teams work with the mentors in further refining the idea and building their prototype. Refining the ideas will include identifying the value, scoping a prototype, developing the pitch, developing the technical architecture and design of the prototype and identifying the infrastructure requirements. Top 10 teams will be identified and will proceed to the Development phase. Infrastructure Setup commences at the end of the top 10 announcement. The infrastructure is cloud based, so will be spun out as soon as the Top 10 ideas are identified.

4. Development Phase Development Top 3 Announced
The top 10 teams develop their prototypes and deploy on the D3 infrastructure
Top 3 Announced
The prototypes are evaluated and the top 3 are selected for presentation at the D3 digital expo
Development: Development will be on infrastructure provided by the D3 organizing committee. Teams will have admin access to their infrastructure and will be responsible for managing code within that infrastructure. No separate TFS accounts or version control systems will be setup. The established rules of the Hackathon will continue to be in effect for All development needs to be done by the team. You are free to use open source packages and frameworks. All code developed is considered UST property.
Top 3 Announced: The Top 3 teams are announced at the end of the development phase and after a short evaluation. The Top 3 teams progress to the final D3 event for 2013.

5. At D3 Winners announced on December 6, 2019 1st Place 2nd Place
Prioritized application to UST GV Program
2nd Place
3rd Place
Each team gets an hour of demo and Q&A time. Please remember to set aside time to accept questions from the audience and the judges.
The top 3 teams of the D3 hackathon from this year on, gets prioritized application to the UST GV program. Participation in the program is not mandatory for the winner but they do not have to go through the application process. To know more about the GV program please contact Anu Koshy, who manages the program for UST.

6. Hackathon Timeline August 26th, 2019 December 1-3rd 2019 Announcement
September 6th 2019
September 9th 2019
September 20th 2019
September 23rd 2019
September 30th 2019
October 7th, 2019
October 25th , 2019
October 28th, 2019
November 1st, 2019
November 8th, 2019
Announcement
Registration
Closes
Ideathon
Commences
Idea
Submission
Evaluation
commences
Development
Phase
Top 10
Announced
Top 10 demo
starts
Ends
Top 3
Solution
submission
Finals