Everything you need to know for Unleashed 2015!

The 2015 Participant Kit is ready to go!

Adelaide Unleashed Participant Kit 2015

Mount Gambier Nexgen Unleashed Participant Kit 2015

Playford Nexgen Unleashed Participant Kit 2015

Onkaparinga Nexgen Unleashed Participant Kit 2015

Within  each the you’ll find everything you need to know from the code of conduct, to what happens at registration, and details about the lovely volunteers and mentors who are there to ensure you have a great Unleashed.

It’s packed full of handy tips for how to have a great hackathon, what you should bring with you, when you’ll be fed, and much more!

Welcome to Unleashed  2015!

Unleashed is South Australia’s annual open data competition part of the GovHack competition that is held in locations around Australia and for the first time in New Zealand.   This year we are pleased to launch the first N3xGen Unleashed to be hosted for 13-18 year. So that’s 3 level of competition you may be eligible for – GovHack International, Unleashed South Australia and N3xGen for our Youth community.

This is your opportunity to shine! This is your opportunity to craft great outcomes from open government data! And this is your opportunity to compete for some great prizes!

Have a good time, conduct yourself well, enjoy working with others, build relationships, and walk away with the feeling that the cause for open data is just that little bit better. Most of all, let’s see some awesome outcomes!

Registration

All participants must register on arrival.   At registration participants and guardians will be provided with an Unleashed name badge and lanyard that must be worn at all times. You will also be given details on Internet access at the venue and Goodie bag with T-shirt and other giveaways.

 What to bring:

Please label your belongings so we can return them to you if you leave them behind.  Here are some of the things we’ve seen people using at Unleashed before.

• Laptop
• Mouse and mousepad
• Headphones
• USB thumb drives, external hard drives
• Phone and charger
• Pen, paper, post-its, notebook, coloured markers, your stationery drawer
• Water bottle coffee cup
• Any medications you may need

Food

We’ll be taking care of your food and beverages while you’re at N3xGen & Unleashed, so all you need to bring along any extra snacks you want.  If you have any special dietary needs, let us know on Eventbrite ticket registration form (or contact us, ASAP) and we’ll do our best to take care of you.

Data

You will find all of South Australian data on the data.sa website at www.data.sa.gov.au .To be eligible for South Australian Prizes you must use at least one data set published the open data portal on data.sa. Some prize categories may have additional data requirements.

You will find the list of national data available for the national GovHack competition at https://www.govhack.org/2015-data/

Check the eligibility requirements of the GovHack National Major Prizes to see if you need to use a specific dataset for the prize category you want to enter. To maximize your chances to win prizes you may want to mash up National and South Australian data, giving you a chance in as many categories as possible.

Developer Kit

A developer kit is available on the GovHack website, which you are welcome to use. You will find all the information on what’s available to you here: http://www.govhack.org/howto/

Submitting your entry

Hackerspace is the Official Unleashed and GovHack competition submission site and allows you to submit all components required for your team’s Govhack entry.   Note: submission elements and times are system controlled so not extensions are available! Teams are required to submit the following as part of their competition entry on Hackerspace http://hackerspace.govhack.org/:

• Register all Team members in Hackerspace (If your team win we can only recognise registered team members).

• A descriptive project page, listing your team members, details about your project, what data sets have been used and what competition categories (local, national and international) that you are going for.  The project page must include your Project Description Data Story.  This is a short description that describes how data has been reused and what your project is about. Submit an image that best captures your concept e.g. a logo or Image.    If you win an award this is what we will use to describe your project

• Nominate your Prize Categories. When you register your Team Project on the HackerSpace you’ll have access to the International and national competition prizes as well as your relevant local competition prizes to compete for.  Teams may register more than one entry; a new project page is required for each entry. You can nominate more that than one prize category for each for each project entry so long as the entry meets the multiple eligibility criteria. At a minimum please nominate one national and one local prize. We encourage projects to focus on a few prizes not all the prizes.  The best way to maximise your chance to win is to use a dataset from the National official list and a datasets from your local competition and to check for any Prize category eligibility criteria such as a specific datasets.

• Outcomes from the project itself (any code, graphics, mashups, applications, website URLs, photos of each  stage to create your artistic representation etc) which must all be made available under an open source/content licence to be eligible for prizes. If judges are able to see and play with it that is useful, but this is a minor component of the judging.       Teams can put the code/source on GitHub, Sourceforge or an equivalent repository system and must make the URL available on their team page for verification. For artistic works you may need to create a photo library or share a link to a Googledocs that contains evidence of the stages of your project.

• Data reused – On your project page you are required to record any data used. This is especially required if the prize categories entered have a data usage requirement for eligibility. Help make judges life easy and add the link to the data.

• A pre-recorded video (maximum three minutes) embedded on your project page that demonstrates your hack in action for the judging panel. The preferred method is to use a screencast with a voice-over narration explaining your hack, why you created it, and what is being show in the video.       Remember that the judging panel is viewing the videos in isolation and doesn’t necessarily have any context around your project. You may mix in other elements with the screencast, such as footage demonstrating the issues your hack addresses, interviews, live action material you’ve filmed, et cetera – but be aware that videos that don’t focus on showing off the hack itself will not be as valued as ones that do.   You are encouraged to include your team name, event location, team members, and to talk about the data you have used and your data reuse story.  Check out the hacker toolkit for some assistance and instruction on how to make a compelling video. Remember: Your video should not take more than a few hours out of your weekend if you keep it simple

Timeframes to register and submit:

• 7pm Friday Local time – Hackerspace opens and prize categories are announced for your region
• 12pm Saturday Local time-all competitors must register as a user on Hackerspace.
• 5pm Saturday Local time – A Team Project Page and your prize category nomination must be completed in Hackerspace.    Record all your team members on your project page and the URL to your proof of concept repository.  No new projects pages can be created after this time.  You are still able to edit your project page after this time.
• 4pm Sunday Local time – Your video should be finalised and a URL linking to your video created to load on your Project page. It may take some time for your video to load once you have started the process
• 5pm Sunday local time –  You MUST have all parts of your competition entry finalised by 5:00pm Local time which includes 1) your team page, 2) your data story description and detail of datasets used 3) your Project outcomes (demo’s, code, graphics, photos submitted, and 4) your video link uploaded.

Competition rules

Prizes

All prizes you can compete for will be announced on 3 July at the NexGen Unleashed 2015 launch party at 7pm! After then you can find the prizes http://www.govhack.org/2015-prizes/. Teams are eligible for some great prizes, including:

• International Prizes categories
• Australian or New Zealand GovHack Major Prize categories
• Unleashed  South Australia Prizes
• N3xGen Local Winner and N3xGen State Champions

You must nominate which prizes you are competing for on your Hackerspace project page. http://hackerspace.govhack.org/

Team Prizes

There are also a few prizes for particular categories of participants. Teams must self-nominate in the HackerSpace which of the following categories best describes their team and declare the eligible members. Team awards can be nominated for if over 50% of your team members identify with the nominated team category. A youth is anyone 18 years or younger. To be eligible for the Best University or Best Public Servant award please add the relevant competitors *.edu.au or *.gov.au email address.

Hackers Vote

A Hackers Vote award will be issued to the highest voted overall project.   There are four weeks you can nominate your Hackers Vote. Only registered team members can vote so make sure all your team members are registered on your project page. You will have 3 voting points which you can allocate over 3 projects (1 point per project).

Spirit Prizes

Unleashed Spirit Prizes are awarded to an individual who make the event awesome just for participating, sharing, laughing and getting into the spirit of Unleashed.    A Local Spirit of GovHack prize for the team that displays the greatest spirit of GovHack, aka the best “hacker” ethos will also be awarded. This means the team who best helped others, shared, learned or applied their skills creatively or cleverly.  Local Spirit prizes are announced on the Sunday night after the competition. Each local winner will be then up for the GovHack Spirit of GovHack Award announced at the Red Carpet Awards.

Judging Criteria

Teams are required to submit the following as part of their competition entry:

All entries will be judged by the  Competition Judging Panels against the following criteria:

• Originality
• The relevance to the team nominated category definition and  prize eligibility criteria
• Consistency with contest purposes including social value
• Quality and design (including standards compliance)
• Usability (including documentation and ease of use)

Judging

The Unleashed and GovHack competition judges will choose all winners. The judging panels for prizes will consist of a mix of Unleashed Crew, government agency representatives and industry sponsors as appropriate for each prize.  All Submissions elements detailed in “Submitting your entry” section of this document must be completed by the required time. No requests for extensions will be considered. Final arbiter is the judging panel whose decision is final. No correspondence will be entered into. This is a competition of skill. Chance plays no part in this competition. Judges are not eligible to compete for prizes.   All other competition rules are available at www.govhack.org/competition-rules-code-of-conduct/