Harness the power of cloud services to create applications that connect, educate, and inspire.
A UW Bothell Tradition
UWB Hacks the Cloud is the third annual hackathon at UW Bothell. Check out last year’s event page for more information about the Web Development hackathon and check out what our attendees created! You can also read about the 2018 hackathon on the school news site.
Technical Tidbits
On the first day of the event (Friday April 17th), all of the following resources will be available to all attendees:
- Project mentors to work with students
- Introductory presentations for users who are new to the cloud
- Lightning talks given by technologists from Microsoft, Amazon, and UWB
What if I don’t have any experience with cloud computing?
That is perfectly fine! The hackathon organizers have planned informative talks, assembled documentation pages, and created demo projects to help get you started. All talks will be facilitated over Zoom.
Check out the event website for information about the talks and workshops, including URLs for the Zoom sessions; look for provider information and example projects on the documentation page.
There will be industry mentors on our Discord server on Friday April 17th to help you when you get stuck.
Prizes
$900 in prizes
Student Favorite Prize Pack
Awarded to the team behind the most popular project, as voted on by student attendees and volunteers.
Prize pack details will be announced in April!
Most Innovative Prize Pack (2)
Awarded to the team behind the most innovative project, as voted on by organizers and judges. The project chosen for this award has the most interesting and technically advanced use of cloud services out of all submissions.
Prize pack details will be announced in April!
Most Impactful Prize Pack (2)
Awarded to the team behind the most impactful project, as voted on by organizers and judges. The project chosen for this award has the best impact on social inclusion, health, and/or community improvement.
Prize pack details will be announced in April!
Devpost Achievements
Submitting to this hackathon could earn you:
Eligibility
Any college student aged 16 or older in the Puget Sound may register for the hackathon. All registered individuals must provide a valid .edu email address. Register here: https://bit.ly/HackTheCloud
Students may work in teams of up to 5 people; collaboration is strongly encouraged, but teams of 1 person is still allowed.
To be eligible for prizes, you must do the following:
- Register for the event: https://bit.ly/HackTheCloud
- Register for a DigitalOcean account: http://do.co/studenthackathon
- Create a project which uses cloud computing
- Submit your project on DevPost by the submission deadline on Sunday, April 19th
- Abide by the event code of conduct: https://docs.uwbhacks.com/code_of_conduct.html
Requirements
This hackathon focuses on projects built in the cloud! As such, we expect all submitted projects to utilize cloud technologies as a core implementation component.
In order to show us your amazing cloud computing project, there's some things we need from you in your submission. For each category listed below, there are a few options for fulfilling the requirement, listed in order of preference.
Category 1: README
All submitted projects should have an accompanying document which explains the following:
- Goals of the project
- Desired user experience
- Implementation details and how cloud computing technologies were used to implement the project
- Issues encountered, bugs fixed or still present, and future work to be done (every project has them!)
Category 2: User Experience Example
Show us how users interact with your project! It could be one or more of the following:
- Link to live endpoint (web app, custom API, etc)
- Video recording or screen recording of user interacting with the project
- Screenshots of the UI or other pertinent information
Category 3: Implementation Details
We want to see how the project was created. Any or all of the following could be provided:
- Credentials for a read-only access point for the cloud platform used for implementation, so that judges can explore your configuration (if desired).
- Screenshots of configuration steps in the cloud platform used.
- GitHub repository containing all written code (Lambda/Functions or other programming language-centric products).
The more information the judges have to evaluate your project, the more likely you are to receive recognition for your hard work!
Judges
Lizzy
Incoming SWE, Google
Erica Ferguson

Anish Prasad
Taylor Cumings
Marcela Gomez
Huy Nguyen
Anna Jennings
Chris Johnston
SWE, Microsoft Azure

Saam Amiri
Product Manager, Microsoft
Craig Nishina
SWE, Google
Judging Criteria
-
User Experience
Does this project delight the end user? Is it funny, whimsical, or otherwise pleasing? -
User Interface
Is the user interface (where applicable) easy to use, intuitive, and pleasing to the eye? -
Technical Complexity
Is the project's code and implementation advanced? -
Cloud Computing Usage
Does the project make use of cloud-hosted services or VMs? -
Innovation -- Prize Category
Does this project combine technology, cloud computing providers, and code in a unique and functional fashion? -
Impact -- Prize Category
Does this project create impact for users, communities, and current events?
themes
- Productivity
- Lifehacks
- Social Good