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!

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.

Hackathon Sponsors

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

Langdon White
Engineer-In-Residence, BU Spark!

Julia Mejia

Julia Mejia
City Councilor, City of Boston

Elaine Nsoesie

Elaine Nsoesie
School of Public Health

Azer Bestaveros

Azer Bestaveros
Associate Provost for Computing and Data Science

Nika Elugardo

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

Tell your friends

Hackathon sponsors

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.