Guidelines

OVERVIEW

A hackathon is a building sprint wherein a set amount of time, professionals from multiple industries such as designers, healthcare professionals, software developers, and creatives get together, share their ideas, and build working prototypes.

All participants in the hackathon must strictly abide by our Code of Conduct. The short version follows: ”Women in Technology Hackathon 2025: Automation. Impact. Security.” stands for inclusivity. We believe that every single person has the right to learn and hack in a safe and welcoming environment despite their background. Be respectful. We do not tolerate harassment and abuse.”

The hackathon will take place between March 28-30, 2025, in person and online. The in-person event will take place at the Startup House Riga, Lastādijas iela 12-k-3, Riga, Latvia. Even though the hackathon will take place in person, the venue will not be available overnight. Each day of the hackathon we'll leave the premises at 23:00.

KEY LINKS:

Slack workspace: https://ej.uz/WITHack2025Slack

Facebook event: https://fb.me/e/2Heo1EtRN

Registration, Idea and team submissions: https://withack25.hacktribe.co/

❗❗ And remember, all publicly provided times are in EET time zone❗❗

SOME KEY DEFINITIONS IN BRIEF

Hacking - Starting from March 28, you will start working on an idea or a project that you want to build during the next 48 hours. You will work in a team to create a working prototype of your idea. Along with the main theme of the event participants will be invited to build their projects under specific challenges. Each challenge offers to specialize your project and work on ideas that fit under its description. Each challenge will also receive its own prize in addition to the main hackathon prizes. Current challenges(more to come):

- Digitalization of Energy and Natural Resource Management Systems and the Interoperability of Various Systems;

- Sustainable Collection and Visualization of Interconnected Sensor Data in the Environmental Sector

- Sustainable Infrastructure and Resources

Workshops - You will have the chance to participate in workshops that will be held both in person and online during the week of the hackathon. On March 27 there will be a workshop on Team Formation and on March 29, during the hackathon, there will ba a workshop on Pitching. More details to follow.

Checkpoint - Each team will have a designated mentor who will check in on them through 1:1 calls at set times to make sure you move in the right direction or connect you with response mentors in case you need some guidance in a specific field. The team lead or another member of the team must attend checkpoints if they wish to submit the final project.

Mentors - we have Expert mentors and Nanny mentors. Each team has a Team mentor (Nanny mentor) but Expert mentors are not assigned to any specific teams.

PARTICIPANTS, TEAMS, TEAM LEADS

We are going to have participants from all over the world and from different industries, all coming together to work on solutions regarding automation, impact and security. So, once you are setting up or joining a team, make sure there are various sets of skills and knowledge covered in order to make a more complete and independent team that is ready to deliver.

NEXT STEPS:

1. Register on the HackTribe platform as a participant and add your idea if you have one! LINK HERE
2. Sign in to Slack and set up your profile: update your profile photo and display name according to your role. For participants display name should be - Name / Team name e.g. Alise/ SecurityExperts. 
3. Get familiar with Slack and all the channels.
4. Have an idea but don’t have a team? Post your idea on #team-formation channel and contact those who are expressing interest in it.Don’t have an idea as well as a team? Browse through the #team-formation channel and on the HackTribe. If you find an idea you like, let the idea author know, start a discussion in Slack, or just write a DM to the author. 
5. The team has to be submitted on the HackTribe platform here and you must have 2-6 team members by the end of the day on Friday 28th of March. You will be able to edit the idea until the idea submission deadline. But no worries, it’s okay to change and adapt your idea, you will have the chance to edit the idea after the beginning of the hack!
6. Each Team Lead has to create the Slack channel for the team #team_team-name e.g. #team_SecurityExperts. The channel has to be public! All team members must join the channel. 
7. At that point you are ready to start working! 
8. ONCE idea submissions are closed, we will assign a Team Mentor to you. Team Lead will be added to the checkpoint channel where he/she will communicate with the Team Mentor. The Team Mentor might join your team channel.
9. There are 4 checkpoints in total. You have to be ready and attend all 4 of them! It’s a must! If for some reason you can’t do it, talk with your Team Mentor! You can choose to organize it online if you wish but we suggest attending at least one of you in person.

Make sure you attend the Opening Ceremony that will start on the 28th of March in person and online at 19:00!

TEAM FORMATION:

Each team should consist of 2-6 members. Remember, mentors are here only to help you and guide you when you are lost, but YOU yourself are responsible for making progress, finding common ground with your team, making decisions, and deciding the next steps!

Team structure: 2-6 participants with complementary roles, one of them is Team Lead (selected by participants). As our hackathon is aimed at supporting new female founders, each team should have at least two female participants in it and it is ok to have an all-female team.

Team Lead will be responsible for making sure that your team meets the deadlines, for overall processes happening in the team. Also, the Team Lead is the main contact person between the team and the Team Mentor. Before the beginning of the hackathon, the Team Lead will be added to a checkpoint channel on Slack where he will be directly communicating with the Team mentor about the checkpoints. The Team Lead or another team member delegated by the Team Lead has to attend the checkpoints.

KEY DATES

March 12 - Registration + Idea Submission Opens via the HackTribe platform

March 21 - Slack is publicly open

March 27 - Team Formation workshop

March 28, 17:30 - Participant registration deadline

March 28, 17:30 - Idea submission closes

March 28, 19:00 - Hackathon begins

March 30, 14:00-19:00 - Project Submission and Awarding Ceremony

FULL AGENDA

The full event Agenda can be found either on the hackathon website or on the HackTribe platform.

MENTORS

Mentors are divided into 2 groups, where each Mentor can have multiple Mentor roles. There are Nanny Mentors (who will check in with teams at Checkpoints) & Expert Mentors (mentors with a specific skill set available for a short call to advise you).

Nanny mentors

The most important role in a hackathon, since you will be the one making sure teams stay on track, get through the hack alive, and get all the help they need! As a team mentor, you should be ready to dedicate around 4-5h each day, as you will handle a number of teams 1:1. The organisers will assign Team Mentors to the teams they will be mentoring.

CHECKPOINT SCHEDULE (ALL TIMES EET)

Response mentors (experts)

They are an expert in their respective field and will be available on the HackTribe platform in order to help the Teams out with their input on problems regarding their fields. The Team Mentor can guide the Team to the specific mentor they might need according to their problem or the Team can search for specific mentors by posting on #ask-mentors channel. When posting on the #ask-mentors channel the team should state as clearly as possible the issue they are having in order to find the most suitable expert for the specific issue.

As a participant, you will get a list of mentors and the times when they are available. You will be able to book these yourself during Saturday!

SUBMISSION DETAILS

We will evaluate teams on the 4 following criteria:

1. Originality of the new product, process, or service

- Uniqueness and features of product/process/service

- Degree to which the product/process/service is disruptive

2. Progress

- Has the team put in extra effort and challenged themselves during the hackathon

- How far has the team progressed with the project during the hackathon

3. The potential impact of the outcome

- Is there a problem being solved by the solution

- is the idea viable outside of the hackathon

4. Demo

- How good is the demo (how hard has the team worked)

Final submission deadline for all the projects is March 30, 14:00 EET.

You will have to create a 3min video presentation of what you have created during the hackathon. It can be:

• A video of you telling about what has been achieved
• A recording of your screen showing what you have created 
• A presentation with a voice-over describing their project

The demo video should include:

• Introduction and team (~30sec)
• The problem you are solving (~30sec)
• Solution and your users/clients (~25sec)
• Demo/prototype you’ve built (sketch of your website/app/hardware/solution/code etc) (~60-65sec)
• What are your future plans (~30sec)

You will have to upload the demo video by 14:00 EET on March 30 on the HackTribe platform

You will also have to fill out a couple of questions where you will provide written answers about your project as the judges will take into account your effort and progress.

The final demos will start on March 30 at 17:00 EET. At least one team member is expected to be present at the hackathon venue to answer the jury questions after your video pitch.

PRIZES & AWARDS

The awarding ceremony starts on March 30 at 19:00 EET. It will be shared via the FB page of Riga TechGirls as a live stream and will take place in person at the Startup House Riga, Lastādijas iela 12-k-3, Riga, Latvia.

Prizes: TBA

ABOUT SLACK AND CHANNELS ( https://ej.uz/WITHack2025Slack )

Slack is the main communication platform for this event. If you don’t know how to do something on Slack, for example, how to create your team channel, we recommend you go through Slack 101 (e.g. how to create a channel on Slack).

Once you are on Slack, make sure to update your profile information according to your role (find your role in the guidelines).

❗❗ A tip! Let’s keep our workspace clean! We really recommend using threads when you want to reply to a message written in a public channel (https://prntscr.com/10bi9v0).

PUBLIC CHANNELS

👉#announcements - most important channel to keep your eyes on. Only super-important announcements by organizers will be published here. Keep your eyes open.

👉# ask-organizers - a place to reach organizers. There are no stupid questions here. Ask anything and we will answer. But make sure you have read the Guidelines, because here are answers to 96% of your questions.

👉#ask-mentors - looking for a mentor help? Here’s a place to find them! Ask here about what problems you have and what exactly you need to be helped with. Your Team mentor can’t have answers to all your questions so this is another place where to find them.

👉#team-formation - have an idea but don’t have a team? Post it here and start the discussion.

Don’t have a team and don’t have any idea? Scroll the channel to see all the ideas posted and comment (as a thread) on those that you are interested in.

👉#resources - feel free to share anything useful, - links to databases, some tools, research etc.

👉#random - a place for non-work related banter, Zoom-call selfies, fun stuff, random gifs etc.

PRIVATE CHANNELS

Channels only for a specific set of people. Closed to the public. If you know you are supposed to be in one of these but you are not, contact organizers.

👉❗❗ #checkpoint-mentor_name - channel for team leads of the specific batch + their Team mentor. These types of channels are private and open only to those who are supposed to be there. A team lead will be added to the channel once the idea submissions are closed and all teams are assigned to Team mentors. We will let you know when that happens, wait for it!

TEAM CHANNELS

Once you have a team, create your own Team channel, with your team name as the channel name. Here’s a screenshot of how to do it (http://prntscr.com/s92d2j).

👉#team-name - All team channels must be public just so any mentor can jump in and help you!!