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Two Harvard University Alumni Win Salesforce $1M Hackathon Prize

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Re: Two Harvard University Alumni Win Salesforce $1M Hackathon Prize

#61

Post by Jd »

melvinmt wrote: post #10

One of the comments, kinda what I already expected: "Spoiler: One of those guys used to work for Salesforce! (not kidding, they announced it during the demo). The French guys were followed around during the entire hackathon by a salesforce camera crew (I was sitting right next to them, some of the salesforce people even came over to help them submit to be sure they got it in before the last 5 min was up, kinda knew t…

Bluetooth guy won a couple of previous hackathons and was accused of favoritism even then.

Re: Two Harvard University Alumni Win Salesforce $1M Hackathon Prize

#63

Post by xauronx »

coppenheimer wrote: post #36
melvinmt wrote: post #10

One of the comments, kinda what I already expected: "Spoiler: One of those guys used to work for Salesforce! (not kidding, they announced it during the demo). The French guys were followed around during the entire hackathon by a salesforce camera crew (I was sitting right next to them, some of the salesforce people even came over to help them submit to be sure they got it in before the last 5 min was up, kinda knew t…

This is ridiculous. Really sounds like a bunch of sniveling losers. I participated in the hack, lost don't regret it at all. Well, a little bit because i hate staying up late. next time will plan ahead.And I'm a former salesforce employee and personally know a bunch of the dev relations team. No leg up there. I thought our submission was pretty good, didn't win, oh well. It's almost as if these commenters believed th…

I'm not sure how it sounds like sniveling losers... It's like entering a painting competition, spending hours creating a piece of art and the people running the contest saying "Just put it in that closet, we already have our top 5", without even glancing at it". Developer time isn't free, and although I didn't think we would win, at least having someone take a look at what I gave up a weeks worth of nights for would have sufficed.

Also, if the winners were eligible, that would help. I would have never entered a "Best Salesforce startup of 2013" competition with a week's worth of work.

https://twitter.com/alexwilliams/status/403723331007832064

Re: Two Harvard University Alumni Win Salesforce $1M Hackathon Prize

#64

Post by jimraynor »

My Five Finalists Would Have Been

Salesforce did a really smart job of hiding all other entries apart from the winning ones. I have done a few hackathons on Challenge Post earlier and this is the only one where they are not showing all submissions but only the winning submission in the gallery. While that is food for thought, I feel terrible for myself and some of the other awesome apps that folks built for this hackathon.

So, here are the top 5 apps that would have made the finals if I were judging this solely based on the videos I found on YouTube (and I've been doing software development for over 25 years). Just to be unbiased, this does not even include my own submission

* Smart * Chatter Complete * zip.ly * Incoming * Matt Lacey's app (Can't remember the name)

If I were to pick the top two, it would be Matt Lacey's app and Chatter Complete. I can't believe how those folks missed out.

Discussion at - http://boards.developerforce.com/t5/Salesforce-1-Million-Hac...

Re: Two Harvard University Alumni Win Salesforce $1M Hackathon Prize

#65

Post by xauronx »

priley wrote: post #39
coppenheimer wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is ridiculous. Really sounds like a bunch of sniveling losers. I participated in the hack, lost don't regret it at all. Well, a little bit because i hate staying up late. next time will plan ahead.And I'm a former salesforce employee and personally know a bunch of the dev relations team. No leg up there. I thought our submission was pretty good, didn't win, oh well. It's almost as if these commenters believed th…

I had a great time too. But it unfortunately does look they started Upshot (their startup) way before the hackathon was even announced.. pretty messed up: http://www.meetup.com/Salesforce-com-Integration-Analytics/e...

About a week before Dreamforce, Salesforce had a call with their "premiere partners", and were very unsure about their own rules. They ended up saying "You can submit an existing app or product, but you'll only be judged on your contributions for the hackathon", which was a huge red flag of BS. In light of all of the news, I almost feel like they knew the winner at that point and were trying to cover their tracks a little bit.

Re: Two Harvard University Alumni Win Salesforce $1M Hackathon Prize

#68

Post by eskimoroll »

xauronx wrote: post #65
priley wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had a great time too. But it unfortunately does look they started Upshot (their startup) way before the hackathon was even announced.. pretty messed up: http://www.meetup.com/Salesforce-com-Integration-Analytics/e...

About a week before Dreamforce, Salesforce had a call with their "premiere partners", and were very unsure about their own rules. They ended up saying "You can submit an existing app or product, but you'll only be judged on your contributions for the hackathon", which was a huge red flag of BS. In light of all of the news, I almost feel like they knew the winner at that point and were trying to cover their tracks a l…

Wow, that's messed up. My team and I could have tacked on Salesforce to our existing product (like several of the top teams), but we read over the rules several times and made the conscious decision to build everything from scratch so that our entry would count.

Re: Two Harvard University Alumni Win Salesforce $1M Hackathon Prize

#69

Post by xauronx »

eskimoroll wrote: post #68
xauronx wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

About a week before Dreamforce, Salesforce had a call with their "premiere partners", and were very unsure about their own rules. They ended up saying "You can submit an existing app or product, but you'll only be judged on your contributions for the hackathon", which was a huge red flag of BS. In light of all of the news, I almost feel like they knew the winner at that point and were trying to cover their tracks a l…

Wow, that's messed up. My team and I could have tacked on Salesforce to our existing product (like several of the top teams), but we read over the rules several times and made the conscious decision to build everything from scratch so that our entry would count.

Yeah, we knew this was going to happen after hearing that. We should have just aborted, but decided to be hopeful that it would be tastefully handled. I guess that was too much to hope for.
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