#HackTheCulture is an virtual hackathon series hosted by Impact Ventures exploring the intersection of social change, justice, and technology. Our goal lies in bringing developers, designers, entrepreneurs, and other tech-minded individuals together with activist, community organizers, and policy makers to create innovative solutions to address our most pressing social, economic, and health challenges caused by the current COVID-19 pandemic.
#HackTheCulture is for anyone from any background who is interested in applying their knowledge and skills towards creating innovative solutions to todays most pressing challenges. Not an expert at coding? Don’t trip, we pair you with mentors, subject matter experts and team members with complementary skills. Register today!
*Note only individuals 18+ and U.S. Based are eligible to win prizes*
Participants in #HackTheCulture can engage from the comfort of their homes. That’s right its 100% VIRTUAL and 100% FREE. #HackTheCulture kicks off Sept 22nd – 24th with a week of learning sessions and challenge panels to provide hackers more context to the specific theme challenges. September 25th-27th participants will choose their teammates and begin collaborating to create solutions to our challenge areas. Be sure to register to get access to our live streaming site and detailed scheduled.
The current COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated some of the long standing inequities within the areas of health, social justice, and economic security. Since there are a number of inequities that exist under these three categories, we’re encouraging HTC participants to use their creativity and passion to form an innovative project based on the following challenge statement below.
How might we create technology-driven solutions to address the most pressing Health, Economic, and Social Justice issues impacting our communities.
During the explore phase, participants as well as general public can engage in a series of workshops and lightning talks on subjects relevant to our themed challenges, as well as general topics around participating in hackathons. If this is your first hackathon, this would be the best place to start. You can expect a variety of sessions around technical topics, social issues, inspiration for your projects, ideation and coming up with practical yet scalable ideas, project starter kits, and more!
Talks and sessions will be live streamed and recorded for future reference. You are welcome to join us for any portion of the session. Applications are not required for this portion of the event.
Create is the hacking phase of the #HackTheCulture experience. We’ve designed a comprehensive virtual hackathon for you to collaborate and innovate with industry partners, as well as your peers and new friends. Come up with interesting technical ideas and implement them to be eligible for prizes.
Just because we cant be in person doesn’t mean we cant have fun. We’ll mini events, contests, and engagement activities throughout the weekend to keep you and your team engaged.
This is the moment everyone will be waiting for. You and your team have worked hard all day and night to turn your ideas into impact. We’ve brought together a justice league of subject matter experts, practitioners, and community leaders to do our semi-finalist round of judging. We’ll do this again for our finalist round and prepare their 3-5 min pitch to our guest celebrity judges to choose our final winners as well as our sponsored challenge winners. We love to engage or community as well, so you all will help judge our “Fan Favorite’ as well.
Winners will be announced via a live streamed ceremony. All are welcome to participate! We’ll still notify the winners if they can’t attend.
“Hackathons” are curated events virtual or in-person events where participants team up and build projects that solve challenges in a short amount of time. Teams have access to tools, resources, and mentors to help define, refine, and build their solutions. This year, in lieu of the COVID-19 pandemic, economic downsize, and social unrest Hack The Culture will bring communities together to solve for justice. Hackathons are typically held online over a period of 48 hours. The challenges requires the solutions to involve technology through the development of some form of hardware, software, or application solutions.
Registration date: August 1st – September 25th, 2020
Hacking days: September 25th – 27th, 2020
Submission date: September 27th, 2020
Winner announcement: December 3rd, 2020
Everything will be online! Once you’ve registered, we’ll send you the details on next steps.
Attendees 18+ and U.S. residents are eligible to participate and compete for prizes and giveaways. Anyone can spectate talks and workshops via our live site and social media outlets.
You can register as a participant here.
There is no cost to attend.
The event is a 48-hour sprint kicking off on Friday evening September 25th and ending on Sunday September 27th evening. Since the goal is to bring tangible and meaningful solutions to life, participants should expect to commit Friday evening, most of Saturday, and Sunday morning/early afternoon to the event. Participants do not need to be available 24/7 for the duration of the event but should engage with mentors, lightening talks, workshops, and communicate their availability to team members to get the most out of the event.
Typically hackathons require participants to build something new within a set amount of time (This is what makes it fun). Therefore, you cannot work on past projects. However, using your own open-source or third party libraries is fine, so long as the project is new. If you’re in doubt, ask a mentor.
Each team is limited to have 2-5 members.
Don’t worry! Join us on Discord to share your ideas and network with each other so that you can join a team or form your own.
Yes, mentors will be available throughout the event and you can connect with direct via video. More details will be announced on the #HackTheCulture Discord and Live Stream Site.
Since this is a 100% virtual hackathon and we won’t be able to see your work in person, we’ll require a detailed submission on Devpost (you should receive an invite once you’ve registered). We’ll only be able to work with whatever you write and upload, so make sure you put some effort into that! More details on how submission works can be found on the live stream site and Mentors will be available to assist.
The team that comes up with the solution will own the IP to the project, not the organizing team nor the partner companies.
What makes hackathons great is that there is no pressure. Once the event is over you can:
A) Pat yourself on the back for a job well done
B) Continue working on your project with your team or other participants
C) Decide to turn your project into a new startup business and apply for our Founders Academy program.
D) Whatever you want, no pressure 🙂
