Check out our original TADHack FAQ on Google Docs here.

Welcome to TADHack Tampa 2022!

We've been thrilled by all of the support and interest TADHack Tampa has received from the local community. Now the big day is here. Let's make this a great event!

About Tampa Devs

Tampa Devs started as a small group of friends in the technology industry who met through latin dance. After realizing the broad appeal and clear need for a developer meetup in Tampa, founder Vincent Tang publicly launched the group with its first event in September of 2021.

Since its inception, our organization has helped members acquire new skills and find success in the technology industry. We strive to create unique opportunities for the local community to learn, grow, and succeed together.

Whether you're a student, experienced developer, community leader, or entrepreneur, innovative partnerships with local Universities, non-profit tech institutes, and startup incubators mean there's something for everyone at Tampa Devs. With more than 1,000 active members on Meetup.com and an average attendance of over 100 attendees at our hosted events, we're proud to serve as a thriving hub for Tampa Bay's developer community.

Hackathon Rules

TADHack Tampa is part of TADHack Global, a Global hackathon focused on programmable communications. In addition to competition rules and information specific to TADHack Tampa, be sure to review the Global hackathon rules at the following link: https://tadhack.com/2022/hackathon-rules/

General Questions

What is a hackathon?

A hackathon is a social coding event where programmers, designers and developers collaborate to solve a problem and compete for cash prizes. It’s one part party, one part work-your-butt-off overnight battle against the clock and the competition.

TADHacks Tampa is a hackathon competition centered around two days of creative engineering and collaborative problem solving. With cash prizes for the best entries, TADHacks Tampa showcases the remarkable talents of Tampa Bay’s software developers and entrepreneurs.

Have you ever built a startup in a weekend?

BUILD: Each team has two days to take a product from initial concept to MVP. Set against a tight deadline, creative ideas and clever design are the best tools in their arsenals. Are you up for the challenge?

LEARN: All skill levels are welcome, whether your specialty is software development, product design, UI/UX, or you’re just getting started. TADHacks provides competitors with great opportunities to learn, share knowledge, and display their unique skill sets.

NETWORK: Connect with Tampa’s vibrant community of software developers, entrepreneurs, students, and innovators. Meet and compete with some of the best technical talent from around Tampa Bay.

Will there be training?

There is no pre-event training, but we’ll have a small team of mentors and volunteers available to answer your questions throughout the event. There will also be some additional information provided at the pre-event mixer, which we encourage everyone to attend.

What do we build?

You can build essentially anything, but judging requires some form of integration with one of the TADHack sponsor's APIs. Creative applications of any of the following technologies are a great starting point for your project concept:

We will also have social mixers at the beginning of the event for those wanting to get ideas.

What sponsor technologies are available to use in my project?

STROLID is leading the creation of vCon, a standard for virtual conversations. Like vCard or iCal, this will become the way the web shares conversation. This is an important standard for all developers, and you’ll learn about it before anyone else at TADHack. We all have tens if not hundreds of conversations every day. Yet most are lost because there is no standard way to store and share them.

Jambonz is an open source CPaaS, think Twilio for free. For TADHack they are partnering with Cognigy, a leader in conversation automation. Cognigy has integrated jambonz into its Voice Gateway product, and between Cognigy’s low code platform and Jambonz you’ll be able to easily create powerful voice bots. See https://www.cognigy.com/about for more details on the Cognigy platform.

Radisys’ Engage Digital Platform has an excellent drag and drop development platform, as well as offering APIs and SDKs. They exposes lots of resources across communications, speech recognition, natural language processing, and video analysis. They want to help you bring your hacks to market. Your hack from TADHack could become your side hustle, and perhaps even your main business. And this news is hot off the press: there’s an additional $5k prize for the best hack using Radisys!

Will equipment and/or materials be provided?

No equipment or materials will be provided at the event. Competitors are responsible for bringing any materials necessary for their hackathon project.

Who can participate? Are there any prerequisites or required skills?

Anyone is welcome to participate in this event. While experience coding and programming is a huge plus, teams will also need people with strong presentation skills and brilliant ideas.

What’s in it for me?

Hackathons help you…

Do I have to stay the whole time?

No, just be ready for judging on Sunday at 2 PM.

What should I bring?

Bring your laptops and mobile phones. You may also bring any additional resources (such as hardware devices) you want to work on.

Note that due to ventilation and fire code, soldering within the Embarc Collective premises is not permitted. The use of solder-free solutions such as breadboards is recommended, or soldering can be done offsite.

Do I retain ownership of my Intellectual Property?

Absolutely: Your team owns everything you create. All submissions remain the intellectual property of the individuals or organizations that developed them.

Protection of Intellectual Property

By submitting an Entry or accepting any prize, you represent and warrant the following: you will not submit content that is copyrighted, protected by trade secret or otherwise subject to third party intellectual property rights or other proprietary rights, including privacy and publicity rights, unless you are the owner of such rights or have permission from their rightful owner to post the content; and the content submitted by you does not contain any viruses, Trojan horses, worms or other disabling devices or harmful code.

Is there a Code of Conduct?

Yes, at https://tampadevs.com/code-of-conduct.

Can I join remotely?

Yes, TADHack 2022 is a global event. However, we highly recommend attending in person as collaboration is significantly easier.

I have a question that’s not in your FAQs. What should I do?

Send a message in the #tadhacks-2022 channel on the Tampa Devs slack. You can join it here: https://bit.ly/tampadevs-join-slack.

Participation and Prizes

Is this event free?

Yes it’s all free! Just register on eventbrite and you are good to go: https://www.eventbrite.com/myevent?eid=423686777557

How do I compete for prizes?

Make sure to sign up on the eventbrite page listing to be eligible for prizes: https://www.eventbrite.com/myevent?eid=423686777557.

You may enter the hackathon under two competition categories:

Hackathon

Got a new idea or an answer to a sponsor’s challenge? You can work on your ideas before the event, or generate ideas during the event from all the great networking opportunities. We will be running webinars on the development themes and providing developer resources before the event, so you have a chance to think up ideas beforehand. Sponsors are just an email away should you have any questions on their resources.

Showcase

A category for products that have already been released commercially or have had significant development. We do this to make it fairer for developers new to this area to win prizes. Entering the showcase category will give you the chance to win some industry recognition. Meet other passionate Telecom Application Development professionals and developer communities that can help take your innovations to new markets.

Additional competition rules are available on the TADHack Global website: https://tadhack.com/2022/hackathon-rules/.

What’s the selection criteria?

Winners will be judged based on the following criteria:

The Contest winners will be selected by a panel of judges. By submitting any TADHack Entry, entrants release TADHack, Sponsors, their respective subsidiaries, affiliates, directors, officers, employees, representatives, agents, and advisors from any and all liability for any claims, costs, injuries, losses, or damages of any kind arising out of or in connection with the decisions of the Judges.

Read more about the selection criteria here: https://tadhack.com/2022/hackathon-rules/.

What’s in the prize pool, and how are prizes awarded?

The local prize pool is $1,250, and the Global prize pool is $25,000. Global prizes are selected and awarded by TADHack Global sponsors.

Local judging and prizes will be awarded on-site. We’ll score the top 3 teams and award $500, $300, and $200 for first, second, and third place respectively.

Contest prizes are non-transferable by the winner. If you accept a prize, you will be solely responsible for all applicable taxes related to accepting such prize.

When do I submit my project for judging?

On Sunday at 2PM, we ask you to submit the project for judging. We will ask you to fill out a form with your project information and the sponsor technologies used. Your team will present their project around 3-4pm Sunday. Your team pitch should include:

When are winners announced?

Since the judging is taking place globally across the world, we find out the Global winners for the $20k prize pool on Monday. The local prize pool results will be announced on Sunday after the judging is over.

We’ll be sending out an email with the winners and publishing a blog post on the tadhack.com website with more information.

Can I start early?

We ask that you don’t build anything before the hackathon. However, feel free to have some boilerplate code or checkout the vendor APIs / signup to use their service ahead of time

Eligibility

TADHack organizers have the right at their sole discretion to determine whether an entrant is eligible for the Contest. TADHack may disqualify, at organizers’ sole discretion, TADHack entries (including, without limitation, content submitted in connection therewith) that (a) are in violation of third party rights or law or regulation, (b) use inappropriate or explicit language or images, or display content that TADHack or Sponsors otherwise finds objectionable.

Teams

Do I need a team?

We suggest creating a team. As a courtesy to attendees, we’ve created a team matchmaking survey to assist attendees in finding other potential teammates. You can fill out the survey here, and view results at this link.

How many people does a team need?

A team should be between 2-5 people. If you don’t have a team yet, you’ll have the opportunity to create one on-site or via the matchmaking survey. Venue and Schedule

Location

TADHack Tampa 2022 will be hosted at Embarc Collective, 802 E Whiting St, Tampa, FL 33602.

Schedule

The event schedule is as follows:

Saturday, October 15

Sunday, October 16

Parking

Street Parking: generally available alongside E Whiting St, reserved via the ParkMobile app.

Garage Parking: County Center Garage (710 E Jackson St, Tampa, FL 33602)

Lot Parking: directly across the street at the Seven One Seven lot (126 S Jefferson St, Tampa, FL 33602)

Check out this parking map here for pricing of parking in the area: https://en.parkopedia.com/parking/locations/802_east_whiting_street_tampa_florida_33602_united_states_7238dhvqgxxvp0y741/?arriving=202209131500&leaving=2022091317002

Do you cover parking expenses?

Unfortunately we do not. Please consider ride sharing if parking costs will be an issue.

Is there WiFi at the venue?

Yes. Connection information will be posted at the venue’s front desk.

Can we stay overnight at the venue?

We unfortunately cannot allow any attendees to stay overnight at Embarc Collective due to the venue policies. At closing each day, all competitors will need to leave the venue.

Where can I keep working after the venue closes?

Downtown Tampa is full of coffee shops and other venues that serve as great co-working spaces.

Can Tampa Devs provide transportation or logistical support?

We don’t provide transportation or a place to stay for the hackathon if you are coming from out of Tampa. Competitors are responsible for organizing carpools and lodging.

Is there food?

Yes!! We’ll be providing three catered meals.

Communications

How do I get onto the Tampa Devs slack?

Use this link to join the Tampa Devs Slack: https://bit.ly/tampadevs-join-slack.

Once you’re in, join the #tadhacks-2022 channel or use this link: https://tampa-devs.slack.com/archives/C042S4XEA15.

Where do I sign up to use the APIs from sponsors for judging?

TADHack sponsor partners have made their API documentation available at the following URLs:

How can I ask the API sponsors for help?

There’s a separate TADHack Slack just for sponsors. Join it here: https://join.slack.com/t/tads/shared_invite/zt-1het1v2df-ZbxnJjEXgmXsI1wFTaJxqA.

Once you join the Slack, here are the links to the sponsor channels:

Radys: https://tads.slack.com/archives/C0458ULKZ7Y Engage Digital: TBA Strolid: TBA

Where can I read more about the hackathon?

You can read more about TADHack at https://tadhack.com.

Mentors and Judging

Where do we go for judging?

On Sunday around 2PM, Vincent/Charlton will hand off scoring sheets to registered mentors.

How can I get involved? Where do we do communications?

Join the #tadhacks-2022-volunteers channel in the Tampa Devs Slack, or navigate to https://tampa-devs.slack.com/archives/C043WCYCRTJ.

Can I compete if I’m mentoring?

Mentors are not eligible to participate as competitors, but may be selected as members of the judging panel.

Can I just show up and spectate and maybe do some mentoring/volunteering?

Absolutely. The venue is open to all, and we welcome your participation.

Sponsors and Press

Can we partner with Tampa Devs for future events?

Yes! Fill out our sponsor interest form at https://tampadevs.com/sponsor and we’ll reach out to you.

Can I post this on our local news channel?

Yes! Our logos, assets, and branding guidelines are available at https://tampadevs.com/press.

Can I post this on social media?

Sure! Feel free to tag @tampadevs and #tampadevs on Instagram, Facebook, and Linkedin.

Can I get photos of the events?

We’ll post photos on the Tampa Devs slack #general channel a few days after the event.

Can I volunteer/get involved with future Tampa Devs events?

Of course! Fill out our volunteer interest form at https://tampadevs.com/volunteer.

QR Codes

Scan the QR codes below for easy access to resources referenced in this FAQ guide.

Checkout our original google doc TADHack Faq here

Vincent Tang

Vincent Tang

Occasional Dance Performer. Runs CodeChefs, a coding podcast for junior devs.

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