Presenting Hack the 6ix Hybrid
Just as our society shifts out of fully virtual and into hybrid in-person life, so is Hack the 6ix 2022. For this year, Hack the 6ix is working to accommodate the widest range of hackers in location and preferences. To do this, Hack the 6ix is hosting a virtual venue and hacking throughout the weekend for all with an optional in-person venue on August 20th held at Wealthsimple Offices in the heart of Toronto. The HT6 team is actively working toward providing an equal hackathon experience for all hackers, regardless of virtual or in-person.
Vision
As a hackathon organized by students from universities across Canada, we hope to bring together the nation’s talent by providing an interactive environment where attendees can be free to innovate and create under the guidance of our industry mentors. We aim to continue to successfully expand our organization to provide more learning opportunities for students as well as more corporate exposure for companies.
Commitment to Diversity
Hack the 6ix is committed to being an advocate for diversity by creating an inclusive and equitable environment for innovation. In 2020 and 2021 we took good strides towards empowering more participation of women in technology through keynote speakers, panels with company representatives, workshops, and networking sessions. We want to continue with the same energy and hope to inspire more young women and underrepresented groups to explore careers in the technology sector and help them achieve their full potential.
Requirements
Entries are considered if and only if submitted via Devpost before the announced closing time.
Along with your submission on Devpost, you need to submit a video that demos your hack. Submissions without a video will be disqualified. The guidelines for the video are as follows:
Preliminary Judging:
Guidelines for Hack Submissions
- Max 4 minutes in length
- Must be in English
- Tell us what your hack does
- Demo your hack
- THIS LIMIT WILL BE STRICTLY ENFORCED
- Guiding Questions
- What made you want to build this hack?
- What was the most challenging part of the hack?
- What is your tech stack?
- Refer to Judging Criteria to optimize what should and should not be in the video
- Where to submit?
- Devpost - Video Link
- Make sure your video URL is from a platform that Devpost supports (YouTube, Vimeo, or Youku). If your video is not hosted on one of these platforms, you'll receive a red error message that says, "Must be a valid YouTube, Vimeo, or Youku url."
- REMEMBER TO MAKE THE VIDEO PUBLIC
- Link to the GitHub repo with the source code
- Devpost - Video Link
- Select any prize categories you want to be considered for
- Ensure that you are submitting to the Hack the 6ix 2022 Event
- Verify that Hack the 6ix 2022 appears on your project page after you submit! If it is not, YOUR SUBMISSION WILL NOT BE JUDGED!
- Do NOT cross submit your project
- Doing so will result in immediate disqualification
- Comply with all event rules in addition to the MLH Code of Conduct
Note: Don’t spend too much time editing the videos. Production quality of your videos won’t affect the judging (unless we absolutely can’t see or hear your video).
Video-making best practices from Devpost
If your team is willing, we'd love to see a team picture - which you can submit through file upload!
Finalist Judging
The top 8 teams from the Preliminary Judging round will present a live demo of their hack infront of a panel of judges. There the top three teams will receive prizes!
Prizes
$CAD14,794 in prizes
Hack the 6ix: First Place
Please refer to the judging criteria on our home page!
Prizes: Nintendo Switches for each team member + 10 x Staples Studio Membership Pass for each team member
Hack the 6ix: Second Place
Please refer to the judging criteria on our home page!
Prizes: Beats Fit Pro for each team member + 10 x Staples Studio Membership Pass for each team member
Hack the 6ix: Third Place
Please refer to the judging criteria on our home page!
Prizes: Mechanical keyboard + mouse (model TBA) for each team member + Free Week of Staples Studio Membership Pass (5 days) for each team member
Buf: Best use of Protocol Buffers
Buf is changing the way that the industry works with APIs by building a better way to work with Protocol Buffers. We believe that REST is no longer enough and Protocol Buffers (Protobuf) are needed to move the industry forward. We’re challenging you to learn and use this new technology. The winning team will be rewarded based on the best use of Protocol Buffers in your project.
**Bonus points for the use of any of Buf’s products (e.g., the Buf CLI).**
Helpful Resources can be found on the hacker guide
Prizes: $2,500 cash prize to the winning team and an interview with Buf
Wealthsimple Foundation Challenge
The financial tools of the wealthy should be accessible to everybody. This challenge is to address the stigma that investing, saving, and budgeting is only for privileged populations.
Your job is to create an inclusive financial product that makes it easier for folks in marginalized communities (such as newcomers to Canada, Indigenous peoples, and modest income families) to unlock the benefits that come from financial literacy and access to traditional financial tools.
Prizes: Resume and LinkedIn Feedback session with the Wealthsimple's lead of early talent and campus recruitment, a coffee chat with the Wealthsimple's director of talent acquisition, and a challenge showcase on Wealthsimple's social media page.
Staples Studio Challenge
The best hack is a project that Staples Canada can implement TODAY to help people work smarter, learn more and grow everyday.
Staples Canada is a one-stop shop for all working and learning needs, so the best hack will make those sales opportunities accessible at different touchpoints or stages across the user experience.
As part of your hack, we ask you to leverage existing products and services that Staples Canada and Staples Professional offer. Participants MUST use at least 2 services as part of their project to be eligible for a reward. And we encourage you to come up with partnership ideas wherever possible.
We are open to all innovative ideas: will this be a video game? A dynamic digital signage? An e-commerce platform? Surprise us!
Additional Resources can be found in the hacker guide.
Prizes: 10 Staples Studio Passes for each team member.
Notebooks, water bottles, and others for each team member.
Hack the 6ix: Best Design
The Hack the 6ix Design team will decide on the best-designed submission, focusing on aesthetics, user experience and intuitiveness.
Prize: $200 gift card for the winning team!
Hack the 6ix: Best Use of Artificial Intelligence
This award will be given to the team that has the best use of artificial intelligence in terms of application (does artificial intelligence makes sense being applied this way?) and technical complexity (how is artificial intelligence being used and is it technically complex).
Prize: $200 gift card for the winning team!
Hack the 6ix: Best Beginner Hack
Is this your team's first hackathon? Congrats on making it this far! We've reserved a special prize challenge for you! To qualify for this challenge, every team member must have attended less than 3 hackathons.
Prize: $200 gift card for the winning team!
Mentor's Choice - Best Business Proposal
Does your project have the potential to become a new startup? This prize is for you!
Prize: $200 gift card for the winning team!
Mentor's Choice - Best Technical Portfolio
Is your team using some super interesting or innovative technology in your hack? This prize is for you! Design/aesthetics is not a factor that is considered for this prize!
Prize: $200 gift card for the winning team!
MLH: Best Use of NLP with Cohere
Cohere makes Natural Language Processing easy to do with their ready to use online platform. Simply sign-up, claim your free $75 credit, no credit card required, and start training your very own language model directly on the web! You and your teammates can each win a Raspberry Pi 4 Starter Kit by using Cohere in your next hack. Wondering what to build? Cohere is great for text and content generation, text-based search, predictive text and so much more. Check out our software & learn pages for more details!
Prizes: Raspberry Pi 4 Starter Kits
MLH: Best Hardware Hack Sponsored by Digi-Key
Using your preferred hardware or hardware emulator, build a hack for your chance to win a Grove Beginner Kit, with embedded Arduino Uno compatible board. Each winning team member will receive a prize!
Prizes: Grove Beginner Kits
MLH: Best Domain Name from Domain.com
Register a .tech domain name using Domain.com during the weekend. Each team may submit one entry per person on the team. Each winning team member will receive a PowerSquare Qi Wireless Phone Charger.
Prizes: Power Square Qi Wireless Phone Chargers & Domain.com Backpacks
MLH: Best Blockchain Project Using Hedera
Hedera is a next generation blockchain technology that’s accessible from familiar programming languages like Java and JavaScript. Their goal? To make Web3 development even more accessible to hackers like you! Build a project on Hedera's test network for a chance to win amazing Glorious Modular Compact Mechanical Keyboards for you and your team!
Prizes: Glorious Modular Compact Mechanical Keyboards
MLH: Most Creative Use of Twilio
Twilio allows you to incorporate mobile messaging, phone calls and a ton of other awesome communication features right into your hackathon project using web service APIs. Are you building an e-commerce website and want to send text notifications or email confirmations once an order is completed? Or maybe your application needs to verify users based on their mobile numbers? Twilio makes all this possible and more. Build a hack that simplifies your life using any one of Twilio’s APIs for a chance to win a Twilio Swag Box and GameGo Console for you and each of your teammates!
Prizes: GameGo Consoles & Twilio Swag Bags
Devpost Achievements
Submitting to this hackathon could earn you:
Judges

Matthew Ham
Software Engineer @ Wealthsimple, 2019 Hack the 6ix Winner

Yuanhui Lang
Director, Analytics Platforms @ OTPP

Elsa Abikhalil
Community Manager @ Staples Studio

Suchit Dubey
Staff Product Designer at Uber Freight

David Paffenholz
Co-founder and CEO of Juicebox

Ishan Gupta
Co-founder and CTO of Juicebox

Rahul Sonwalkar
Cofounder of LiveTrucks(YC S22)

Tanuj Tiwari
Cofounder of LiveTrucks(YC S22)
Judging Criteria
-
TECHNICAL COMPLEXITY (25% Weighting)
How challenging was it to develop the project? Were there significant technical hurdles that required unique solutions? (e.g. how much does it rely on APIs? How much of the heavy lifting are external libraries/API doing?) -
DESIGN (25% Weighting)
User experience, intuitiveness, ease of use, and generally how good the submitted project looks. (e.g. sophistication of design) -
BUSINESS PRACTICALITY (25% Weighting)
The project’s real business applications (e.g. can the proof-of-concept be expanded to create a real, marketable product to consumers). -
INNOVATION (25% Weighting)
How creative and original the submitted project is. (e.g. new uses of existing tech)
Questions? Email the hackathon manager
Tell your friends
This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.