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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

#81

Post by tedivm »

awol_77 wrote: post #80
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…

I know the developers of the healthcare app personally. They competed properly and within the rules, day and night, in preparation for the demo. They have the professionalism and the "wow" factor that you mentioned. Just because you may think it's too polished to be done in a few days by a few people, does not make it so.

There's proof of these allegations- they apparently demo'd the app at a Salesforce meetup several weeks before the competition started.

See- http://www.meetup.com/Salesforce-com-Integration-Analytics/e...

So maybe, since you have this personal relationship with them, you can get the developers to come here and explain how that happened?

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

#82

Post by mynameisvlad »

tedivm wrote: post #81
awol_77 wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know the developers of the healthcare app personally. They competed properly and within the rules, day and night, in preparation for the demo. They have the professionalism and the "wow" factor that you mentioned. Just because you may think it's too polished to be done in a few days by a few people, does not make it so.

There's proof of these allegations- they apparently demo'd the app at a Salesforce meetup several weeks before the competition started. See- http://www.meetup.com/Salesforce-com-Integration-Analytics/e... So maybe, since you have this personal relationship with them, you can get the developers to come here and explain how that happened?

Upshot is not the Healthcare app. They're separate.

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

#83

Post by MrGando »

The Angel Hack in Chile was the same thing earlier on this year, I dunno if there was a lot of money on the table, but still the winners had the app done from long long ago.

I would love to force devs to use git and implement a true hackathon system (Open Source) to run hackathons and avoid cheating.

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

#84

Post by karawoodard »

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…

At least you got to compete. All the girls wanting to compete at Launch Hack got rejected. All hacks are rigged. All the ones worth winning anyway.

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

#85

Post by drakaal »

vyrotek wrote: post #34
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…

I'm not really surprised. Salesforce held contest a few years ago for some of their Apps and based it completely on Facebook Likes of YouTube video presentations. Some teams were definitely felt favored. Some were let in well past the entry due-date (giving them more time to submit better presentations). Other products were bogus and nothing more than photoshop mocks. And some companies cheated and purchased thousand…

I'd like this one. I sell Facebook likes. If you were offering a $1M prize I'd "sell" you a lot of Facebook likes. It would be like if all of England liked me. Which they probably do even if they don't want to admit to it.

I also sell Youtube views, so I could make sure it would be less funny than what you describe.

Popularity contests should be done in person. Harder to cheat if you have to get people to the venue.

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

#86

Post by dlotus »

jmacd wrote: post #46
goldenkey wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not to mention it cost $500 to enter, meaning negative EV, not as bad as the lotto, but still a losers' gamble.

It did not cost $500 to enter. It was either $99 or Free (there was a free entry promotion for most of the time during the run up to the hackathon).

Very few people registered at even the $99 hacker pass level, which is why they ended up making it free. Nobody who wasn't already going to DF paid the full conference price to participate in the hackathon. Quit with the hysteria.

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

#87

Post by coppenheimer »

xauronx wrote: post #63
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'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…

The winners not being eligible is a fairly big deal actually. The negative publicity from this makes it a full on disaster I'd guess.

The accusations that nobody looked at the submissions and the winners were predetermined sound unsubstantiated.. nobody (who's commenting) knows that. Analytics on your videos? Please. I'd love to see the team that has zero video views, they are telling us it was submitted it and didn't watch it once? Our whole team watched ours multiple times, impossible to tell if the judges did any out of the dozens of views. The idea that the apps weren't used and logged into sounds right - with the amount of time they had to judge (a few hours) they would mostly use the video, description, and probably verify the code was uploaded, and winnow it down to five top ones. We fully expected to win or finish without them logging in to our app which required a custom android build. And no matter what, that leaves the majority of contestants loosing.. it's not a conspiracy people, it's math. Not everybody wins...and it could even be some of the best teams lost, thats endemic to every sort of competition.

But we hear from every complainer, "the only possible way I could loose is cheating, I'm so entitled to this, I DESERVE TO WIN THE HACKATHON, WHERE IS MY TROPHY???? I ALWAYS get a trophy!!!". Sore losers? Check.

And, in closing, I'd like to say what nobody on the internet fourims have ever said: I was wrong. Seems like this is a full on shit show, even though I'm quite glad my team participated (and lost). So go on internet - be hysterical about this travesty of justice, you deserve it.

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

#88

Post by sswaner »

bobbles wrote: post #32

So the winning team: 1) Had a member previously employed by the selection team. 2) Had built their project prior to the hackathon. 3) Was actively helped by the Salesforce team during the hackathon. 4) Was ensured a place by other teams not even having their submissions seen by the judges. What a fair and balanced outcome! I fully expect everyone to take this event seriously in the future. /s

In addition, Turian is a showman. His finalist presentation was more flamboyant than Benioff's keynote. I felt bad for the guys who presented after Upshot (they had skipped class at UCLA and Purdue to build a cool job candidate app). Watching the show, I felt that it likely that the judges would be swayed by Turian's command of the stage.

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

#89

Post by xauronx »

coppenheimer wrote: post #87
xauronx wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

The winners not being eligible is a fairly big deal actually. The negative publicity from this makes it a full on disaster I'd guess. The accusations that nobody looked at the submissions and the winners were predetermined sound unsubstantiated.. nobody (who's commenting) knows that. Analytics on your videos? Please. I'd love to see the team that has zero video views, they are telling us it was submitted it and didn'…

"But we hear from every complainer, "the only possible way I could loose is cheating, I'm so entitled to this, I DESERVE TO WIN THE HACKATHON, WHERE IS MY TROPHY???? I ALWAYS get a trophy!!!". Sore losers? Check."

I don't think I ever said that (hint: I know I never said that, or felt that). In fact, I mention that I didn't think our team would win. I don't know why you're getting so angsty about this, like you personally know the judges, saw the process and think Salesforce is a mom and pop shop with the best intentions.

There are a couple teams that I've seen, and I would have been HAPPY to lose to them. Just simply being out classed is awesome, you get to see just how much better you can get.

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

#90

Post by bcjordan »

karawoodard wrote: post #84
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…

At least you got to compete. All the girls wanting to compete at Launch Hack got rejected. All hacks are rigged. All the ones worth winning anyway.

Serious question—are "hackathons" starting to be known as "hacks"? Have heard it a couple of times now.
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