This is an international distributed hackathon, so you can participate virtually from anywhere in the world! We'll also have local HQs in various cities around the world. More info about hosting or participating in a local event can be found here.
There will be a community voting phase followed by an expert-judging phase. Judges and community voters will create a top 5 list of their favorite apps based on the criteria of an app's usefulness, creativity, completeness, and how well it showcases Go's unique strengths. More info on judging can be found here.
There will be 5 Overall Winners, which will be picked by our judges. There will also be winners for several other prizes, such as the crowd-favorite and the best solo app (developed by only 1 person).
This year's event starts on January 22, 2016 at 5:00pm PST (which is January 23 at 1:00am UTC) and runs for 48 hours. Click here to find out what time that is for you (add your time zone and then find 5pm PST on the comparison bar). Judging and voting take place the following week.
Anything you like - as long as it's a standalone application with its core written in Go! However, it's up to you to make sure your submission is useable and judge-able. For a web app, this will likely mean having a version deployed in production that people can play with. For other apps, you may want to create a screencast or other demo so that people who cannot install your app can still review it during judging.
Our main goal for this event is to connect developers from all over the world, especially those who do not have a strong local Go community. We'd also like to give people who have been thinking about trying Go an excuse to dive in.
Yes! The Go package manager is fantastic, and we encourage you to make use of what is out there. However, when you make your final submission, please credit any packages, applications, or plugins that you use in your application.
You own your code, and it does not need to be open source. However, if you think others could benefit from the code you write, we encourage you to open source it!
No! We'd like to encourage people to jump in and try Go for the first time. We often hear people talk about wanting to use Go in one of their side projects, and this is an excellent opportunity to do so. However, you'll probably want to install Go and mess around with it a bit before the event begins. Here is a list of some great resources for getting started.
You can plan what you're going to build, mess around with relevant packages, and sketch out UI designs. However, you are not allowed to write any code or create any digital assets before the Gala begins.
We will be providing you with a Github repository to use for your entry to the Gala. You must use this repository for development and commit regularly throughout the event. More details on this will be provided as the Gala nears.
In a word - no! The one exception is if you've written a publicly available package that you'd like to use in your application. This special case is only allowed if the package does not provide the majority of the functionality for your application.
Check out our information on sponsorship here and then reach out to us for more details.
Yes! However, you will be ineligible for any sponsor-specific prizes that are offered and judged by your company.
Yes - you can find them here.
Registration will be open up until January 20 at 5:00pm PST (which is January 21 at 1:00am UTC).
Yes - you can find it here.