The Resiliency Challenge is a nine-week, virtual hackathon, with three-week sprint challenges aimed at catalyzing student innovation in response to the unprecedented situation facing colleges and communities in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic. Our goal is to bring the talents of the university technology community together with subject matter experts to envision, design, develop, and deliver solutions to help communities, students, and colleges cope with the challenges of the current COVID-19 crisis.
Local government, elected officials, community organizations, and local residents have swung into action delivering daily updates about COVID-19, rapidly mobilizing resources and trying to match these resources to those most in need – from delivering food to the elderly and vulnerable, to educating the public about social distancing, to helping those recovering from addiction who are no longer able to reach their support network.
Students, faculty, and administrators are facing a range of challenges associated with the COVID-19 crisis. Students are still scrambling to recover belongings left in dorms or coping with social isolation as an international student whose flatmates have gone home. Student government and clubs are figuring out how to sustain themselves remotely, performing and visual arts students are struggling alongside faculty to adapt to a virtual world while faculty consider how to proctor tens of thousands of remote exams.
These are the realities we want to tackle with the Resiliency Challenge. We hope you will join us!
HACKATHON SCHEDULE:
|
Build Sprint |
Judging |
|
Sprint 1 |
April 6 – April 24 |
April 25 – 26 |
|
Sprint 2 |
April 27 – May 15 |
May 16 – 17 |
|
Sprint 3 |
May 18 – June 5 |
June 6 - 7 |
HOW TO PARTICIPATE:
Step |
Topic |
Main content |
Step1 |
Registration |
You are here at Devpost, so click the “Register” button and create an account,. Also, opt-in to receive email updates so we can keep you up to date with a ton of important info |
Step2 |
Join Slack Workspace |
Join the Slack Workspace: https://tinyurl.com/resiliency-slack. Poke around, check out different channels, find #mentors and make sure to introduce yourself at #welcome! |
Step3 |
Recruitment of teammates |
If you applied individually, find a teammate on devpost here: https://theresiliencychallenge.devpost.com/participants - set your team settings to “looking for a teammate” and update your blurb to reflect what you are looking to do). You can also search participants by the skill sets that you need for your team! or post in #find-teammates Slack channel. |
Step4 |
Register your team |
Register your team on TAB 2 and indicate whether you're looking for teammates: https://tinyurl.com/covid19challenges. |
Step5 |
Create a team channel in Slack |
Create your own channel in Slack and invite all of your team members to it. If you are working on a project listed in the challenge sheet, search “#proj” and all of the project channels will populate. Join the ones that are of interest to you! This is also another great way to find teammates. |
Step6 |
Read rules and challenges |
Read the rules on DevPost and challenge projects: https://tinyurl.com/challenge-projects |
Step7 |
Build! |
Team development and completion of submission via DevPost. You can reach out to the challenge stakeholders any time in Slack. |
Step7 |
Submit! |
Submit your project – Sprint #3 deadline: June 5th |
OUR CHALLENGES:
We encourage partcipants to tackle problems that directly relate to one of our challenge on our spreadsheeet: www.tinyurl.com/covid19challenges. On the first tab you will be able to view the challenges that are hosted by our partners.
OUR PRIZES:
You have the ability to make a difference!
- There is up to $750 for the top three teams winning Sprint #3
- You may pick from a nonprofit on Charity Navigator or Give Directly
Boston University Specific Prizes:
Continue your projects, build upon your ideas!
Overall Winners
3 winners - $250 cash value
In keeping with the mission of this hackathon, $250 donation per team to a charity of your choice. In addition we will promote and celebrate your project on the BU Spark! social channels
Boston University Spark! Innovation Prize
2 winners - $4,000 cash value
The Resiliency Challenge is offering up to $4000 for two additional teams working on any of the following challenges: ($2,000 per team) 1) Tracking Covid and Covid Disparities: Challenge #'s 11, 12, 15, 26, 28, #32, #36 and 14 2) Census outreach: Challenge #3 3) Getting resources to those in need: Challenge #'s 8, 9, 10, 29, 30, 32, 35, 36, 37, and 38
Boston University Digital Learning and Innovation Prize
1 winner - $4,000 cash value
The Resiliency Challenge is providing up to $4000 so students at Boston University can continue working on project. Challenge #'s that qualify include #'s 18, 19, 20, 21, 22. See all challenges on www.tinyurl.com/covid19challenges.
Working on a challenge you think should qualify? Email us at buspark@bu.edu.
Eligibility
Individual participants over 13 years old can participate but as a university, we are focusing our outreach on college students.
There is no maximum or minimum number of team members, but prizes will be limited to 4 team members
Partial teams are welcome to join and can find teammates on our slack channel or the participants tab on devpost.
We encourage participants to seek teammates who can bring diverse viewpoints and contributions to your output.
There is no maximum or minimum number of team members, but prizes will be limited to 4 team members.
Requirements
The rubric we will be using for evaluating projects is here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1pW2Xba9Sw27JIjasyL3bmc0Ga4Ipy_Ua/view?usp=sharing
The pre-submission form will likely take you ~30-45 minutes and includes requiring a video, so we encourage you budget your time to allow for this before the deadline.
You can see what is included in the pre-submission form by viewing previous submissions posted here: https://theresiliencychallenge.devpost.com/submissions
Prizes
$2,250 in prizes
1st Place Overall Winners
(3)
In keeping with the mission of this hackathon, $250 donation per team to a charity of your choice. In addition we will promote and celebrate your project on the BU Spark! social channels
2nd Place Overall Winners
(3)
In keeping with the mission of this hackathon, $250 donation per team to a charity of your choice. In addition we will promote and celebrate your project on the BU Spark! social channels
3rd Place Overall Winners
(3)
In keeping with the mission of this hackathon, $250 donation per team to a charity of your choice. In addition we will promote and celebrate your project on the BU Spark! social channels
The Resiliency Challenge Honorable Mention
(2)
The Resiliency Challenge honors these projects for their memorable and impactful projects.
Devpost Achievements
Submitting to this hackathon could earn you:
Judges

Langdon White
Engineer-In-Residence, BU Spark!

Julia Mejia
City Councilor, City of Boston

Elaine Nsoesie
School of Public Health

Azer Bestaveros
Associate Provost for Computing and Data Science

Nika Elugardo
MA State Representative for 15th Suffolk/Norfolk
Judging Criteria
-
Deployable
Is the project ready to be deployed and put into use today? How production ready is it? -
Useful
Does it address one of the project tracks and/ or does the project solve a real problem? Does it meet a clearly established user need? -
Scalability
How many people would potentially benefit from the project? -
Responsibility
Did the solution address privacy, ethics, fairness, transparency, and accessibility issues? -
Quality
Is the code of high quality and well documented with instructions files to ensure others can build upon the work done for broader impact? -
User Experience
Does the project have quality and intuitive user experience/ user interface?
Questions? Email the hackathon manager
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