With only 11 hours left in the last event of the Postseason, the title of champion is still anyone’s game. By hacking at an official MLH event, each hacker here is earning 2 Attendance Points for their school (just 1 if they go to Duke, sorry!). There’s also 500 Merit Points on the line for hackers to win. This is gonna be a close one.
Out of all the hackathons I’ve been to this season, Hack Duke certainly takes the cake for having the best opening keynote. Douglas Crockford, the inventor of JSON and author of Javascript: The Good Parts, kicked off the hackathon with a talk about paradigm shifts in programming. The rest of the kickoff was pretty awesome too. While we were waiting for some of the last buses to arrive, everyone watched adorable animal videos on the big screen and told more cheesy programming jokes that I can normally handle in one sitting.
There has also been some pretty awesome food and one of the most epic Nerf battles I’ve ever been involved with personally. The organizers here did a great job and definitely deserve some props.
The Merit Points Breakdown
A shade over 500 hackers checked in at Hack Duke today. The organizers will have 500 MLH Merit Points to distribute along with their normal prizes. Here’s what we came up with for the breakdown:
- 1st Place – 80 MLH Points
- 2nd Place – 60 MLH Points
- 3rd Place – 40 MLH Points
- Best Novice Hack – 40 MLH Points
- Best Twilio Hack – 35 MLH Points
- Google Prize – 35 MLH Points
- Coinbase Prize – 35 MLH Points
- Best SendGrid Hack – 35 MLH Points
- Best Payment App – 35 MLH Points
- Under 20 Prize – 35 MLH Points
- Best use of a Microsoft Platform – 35 MLH Points
- Epic Games: Best Game – 35 MLH Points
Keep your eyes open for an announcement with all the winners later this week and good luck if you’re hacking!
– Swift