91–100 of 107 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Unrelated to your comment. Nice to know I got voted down for pointing out sexism. I thought I was on YC not Reddit.
They don't work nearly as well with more valuable prizes. In my view, a hackathon is best as a starting point ... for teams, projects and ideas. They are much better chances to "network", particularly for hackers/makers, than so called "networking events", which are usually a waste of time.
Hackathons also work great for startups to introduce developers to their technology & culture, and perhaps recruit them.
The worst hackathons are when the intended outcome is that the winning team(s) go on to start a company with the proceeds of the win and/or are accepted into some newish accelerator/incubator.
In the case of Salesforce and it's extreme prize, the controversy could have been predicted .. there was no way they could police a fair competition (and that was unlikely their goal anyway). Their goal was similar to that of a nightclub that doesn't have the desired demographics, so they gave free cover ($99 "hacker" tickets), drinks and raffle tickets to the desired group (programmers in this case).
While the majority of the conference attendees were wandering around, mingling and generally enjoying themselves, every once in a while, they might chance by the "hackathon room" and look upon the poor creatures as they would monkeys in a zoo.
Quite the spectacle, it must have been..
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 perso…
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'…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
If you dig deep enough, you'll find that the hackathon was sponsored by Fox News and they kept it Fair and Balanced.
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…
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…
I'm starting a fact timeline that we can contribute to. Google spreadsheet probably. maybe it's all the episodes of ms marple my wife watches. Can you say how and when you came across this info? Was it firsthand?