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function rules()

PLEASE MAKE SURE TO READ AND UNDERSTAND ALL OF THE RULES CAREFULLY TO PREVENT BEING DISQUALIFIED!!

No Digital Assets Created Beforehand

No assets of any kind that will be used directly in your production application can be created until the start of the official competition period. This includes “ready to slice” graphic design assets, application code, and user stories / test cases. Plan, don’t create. Anyone in doubt can email us to verify.

You can, and are encouraged to, work on the concept for your application beforehand, perhaps on paper, or with simple mockup software like Balsamiq / OmniGraffle. A lot of work can be done beforehand (database /architecture diagrams, UI planning, etc.) so make sure you plan well ahead of time instead of wasting time during the contest.

After the initial 48 hours are up, you’ll be judged on what you’ve completed. No additional features or bugfixes are allowed during this period, or you will be disqualified.

App Accessibility

All apps must be accessible to all judges and audience members at the judging event to qualify. No application that cannot easily be accessed at the event will qualify for this contest. For example, a typical web application would qualify as it is accessible to everyone at the event; an iPhone application would not qualify as judges would not be able to install it on their own phones due to Apple's security certification requirements. This is just an unfortunate limit we need in order to do reliable judging and avoid hangups.

Also, your app must be completely deployed and ready for user participation by 6:00pm on December 11th. This means no errors preventing users from accessing your application (as we need to test it in order to judge it!)

You Will Be Judged

An expert panel of industry judges will review all qualifying (“finished”) applications and decide which belong in the top tier. Code quality will not be judged as code quality is highly subjective, and is not at the heart of this competition. Your application will be judged based on the following categories: Completeness, Usability, Originality, Execution.

Each judge will rate each application on a scale of one to five (1-5) on these criteria and comment on recommendations / possible enhancements, errors, and other issues that they experienced. We strongly encourage contestants to use development best practices but in the end judges are expected to rate applications based on their visible merits. Organizers reserve the right to disqualify any team that is believed to be cheating or not competing in the spirit of the contest.

Date & 48 Hours

The contest is a strict 48 hours start to finish, starting on Friday, December 9th 2011 at 6:00pm and lasting until Sunday, December 11th at 6:00pm. A judging event will be held immediately after the end of the competition at LaunchPad.

Event Start

All participating teams must send at least one member to LaunchPad at 6:00pm for the official start of the contest. There, we will review the rules once more to make sure everyone completely understands what is allowed and not allowed to prevent any disqualification. This is a mandatory meeting for all participating teams. We do not want a team waste away an entire application, only to realize what they've built does not qualify for the contest.

Technology Agnostic

There are no technology requirements, and all teams may feel free to use the technologies that work best for their application. Code your app in PHP, Ruby, .NET, Java, even LOLCODE if like; you will be judged only on the final application itself, not the tech behind it.

Teams of One to Four Humans

Teams should be comprised of between one and four individuals. No more than four people are allowed on a team. To be eligible, teams must register at least 1 week prior to the start of the competition. Please be responsible and ensure all team members are human.

Application Stack Disclosure

Upon completion of the contest, teams should also submit a written version of what compromises their tech stack, including source control, third party libraries, server, database, etc. Third party software is allowed, however make sure to list any and all third party libraries, plugins, or other applications (ImageMagick, ffmpeg, etc) that you make use of. Third party Javascript libraries, Flash widgets, and other component libraries, are allowed.

Stock photography, icon sets, and publicly available templates are allowed. Teams are prohibited from commissioning or otherwise paying for any content that is created specifically for the application as opposed to being publicly available for everyone’s use. Developing a plugin or library before the competition that provides your application’s general functionality is considered cheating (see the first rule at the top of the page).

If you have a question about a particular piece of third party software, ask the organizers.

Use of Web Services

Your application can make use of any non-paid and publicly available third party web services. This means that mashups with established services such as Google, Yahoo, Flickr, Twitter, etc are all possible and allowable. As before, make sure to disclose whatever dependencies on third party services used in your stack disclosure.

Ownership and Open Source

Anything done with your source once the competition is over is up to you. We maintain no ownership over any applications made in the contest. In fact, we hope that a number of participants use this opportunity to launch disruptive ideas, or maybe even the first version of a software startup!

Resources For You

During the coding weekend, we will have the LaunchPad space open from 9am to 6pm for use by any team who wishes to have a collective space for their team. Whiteboards and conference rooms will be open for those needing those resources.