DevFest is an annual week-long workshop series and hackathon held at Columbia University.

Hosted by Columbia's largest technical student group, ADI, DevFest has always served as an opportunity for students from across the Columbia community with all experience levels to come together and learn about technology. With more than 1300 student attendees annually, DevFest is the largest technology event held at Columbia.

No experience is necessary, and the only requirement for attendees is that they are affiliated with either Columbia or Barnard (students, faculty, etc.).

Visit devfe.st/ to register and join the DevFest '21 Discord server, where we will be continuously posting updates. The schedule and meeting links for each event can be found on this site.

Eligibility

All undergraduate and graduate students, as well as faculty members, in Columbia are eligible to participate.

Requirements

Submitted hacks must include at least two of the following:

  • Product code
  • Product graphics (i.e. screenshots of a prototype)
  • Video of hack being used
  • Video of team explaining the hack (possibly w/o a prototype)

Every team must either do a 2-5 minute live demo OR submit a demo video of their hack (independent from the two "Video" requirements above) to be played during the Judging sesion on Zoom.

If your team chooses to do a live demo, we will send out a form in the DevFest '21 Discord on Saturday, January 30th where you can sign up for a demo slot. You must complete the form before 11am ET on Sunday, January 31st.

If you choose to submit a video hack, please upload your video to YouTube, unlisted, and email the link to devfest@adicu.com with the subject "DF21 Hackathon Submission: <Team Name>" before 11am ET on Sunday, January 31st.

Teams who have submitted a hack but do not demo their project will not be judged.

Hackathon Sponsors

Prizes

$500 in prizes

First Place Prize

The winning team's prize exemplifies Completeness, Capability of Solving a Real-World Problem, and Creativity to the fullest extent.

Runner-Up Prize

The runner-up team's prize exemplifies Completeness, Capability of Solving a Real-World Problem, and Creativity nearly to the fullest extent.

Crowd Favorite

This prize goes to the team with the most upvotes given to them by other attendees during the voting period. ONLY ONE TEAMMATE PER TEAM CAN VOTE ON EACH SUBMISSION!

Best ML Hack

This prize goes to the team with a Machine Learning (ML) hack that exemplifies Completeness, Capability of Solving a Real-World Problem, and Creativity well.

Best Design Hack

This prize goes to the team with a design-related hack, wireframe, or prototype that exemplifies Completeness, Capability of Solving a Real-World Problem, and Creativity well.

Devpost Achievements

Submitting to this hackathon could earn you:

Judges

Abadali Sheikh

Abadali Sheikh
Research Systems Engineer at Columbia University

Harvey Wu

Harvey Wu
Product Engineer at Dropbox

Laura Block

Laura Block
Senior Associate Design & Strategy at Reimagine Digital

Jiamo Li

Jiamo Li
Product Manager at OpenTable

Judging Criteria

  • Completeness
    The extent to which the hack has been tangibly created. Hacks with working webpages, GitHub repositories, and (if needed) prototypes are strongly favored.
  • Capability of Solving a Real World Problem
    How feasible is the hack in solving the problem it is targeting, and how well does it do so?
  • Creativity
    How original is the solution compared to other hacks and products available on the market?

Questions? Email the hackathon manager

Tell your friends

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