A hackathon is any event of any duration where people come together to solve problems (and it does not have to involve technology). Participants typically form groups of about 2-5 individuals, take out their laptops (if the event is technology themed), and dive into problems. Similarly, a jam is a gathering of people of different backgrounds such as designers, business people, academics, students, and customers who are interested in service and customer experience at various locations around the globe (sources: hackathon.guide; Beirut Service Jam). Sometimes jam is used in the context of service, community, etc.

The hackathon/jam taking place on March 26th through March 28th 2021 will be an online collaboration of folks from various backgrounds and levels of experience coming together to tackle COVID-19 vaccine registration challenges that users are currently facing. Winners will receive recognition and get feedback from industry experts/professionals.

This is an opportunity to come together with our various lenses and experiences to tackle the challenge of a global pandemic, share ideas, and find solutions with the potential to benefit millions of people’s lives. You will learn creative problem solving and get hands-on experience applying user experience (UX) design principles. You might even make new friends/connections :)

Participation in the hackathon is open to individuals aged 18 or older. You don’t have to be a designer or work in tech to join! We welcome diverse backgrounds/experiences and believe these contribute to valuable, unique insights.
You are welcome to bring friends! Part of the first day is getting to know each other. We also encourage people to sign up solo, and we'll be supporting team-forming. Once you register on Eventbrite, you can also join the Slack workspace for the event beforehand and post there to find potential teammates.

Participation is open only to teams of at least two people formed before or at the event, either on their own or with the help of the event organizers.

Other than the scheduled activities, most of Saturday will be the time anticipated for teams to work on their deliverables. They may also collaborate outside of the allotted time frames in preparation for presenting Sunday if they choose to.

As the work leans on the efforts of all team members throughout the weekend, unfortunately you cannot. There will be breaks throughout the event and time to work on projects offline if teams choose to do so. We understand if you may need to hop on/off a bit early or step out for a few minutes/hours to take care of other obligations, such as family and work.

The work created by the team during the hackathon/jam event will be of their own property. The work will be open sourced to the public. If you think your work has proprietary concepts/ideas, please do not publish them. The general IP license used by the event will follow the MIT license policy (click here for more details).

Sign up at our event page at Eventbrite page.Registration is FREE. We will be sending periodic updates and details to the email address you provide for registration e.g., details for the Slack channel. Please be sure to check your inbox (and later the Slack workspace) for updates.

Please check here.

We will be mostly using Zoom for our meetings (Slack and Coda for communication), details will be shared to the email address that you provide at registration on Eventbrite.

A laptop/desktop, access to the internet and Slack/Zoom/Coda/Google applications as this will be a virtual event. Check out our Toolkit page for more details.

We set up a Slack channel (with threads for each of the team) and a Coda.io file. You should recieve Slack invitation once you registered. Check out our Toolkit page for more details.

Check out the Demo page for details.

It is open to your team to decide for the most part :)

We invite you to check out our Home page where we have compiled some articles on some current official vaccine registration websites and what seems to have/have not been working. As things are quickly changing, we also highly encourage doing searches periodically on related news to be up to date with the most current info. We may do this as well in the Slack channel, feel free to share there!

The decision will be made by a judge panel of industry experts and professionals.

The judge panel will be assessing the demos by five areas: development, usability, creativity, feasibility, and presentation.

The team could decide this as long as every member is individually registered in Eventbrite and at least one member of the team will ‘pitch’ their team’s demo during the event.
We look forward to contributions from all team members! And in case you’re nervous, we’d like to share some great points by MLH:
“You might think your project isn’t impressive or it might not be finished so you don’t want to present it. You should present it anyway! Honestly, hackathons isn’t about being the best or being competitive. It’s all about having fun, making friends and learning how to become better at things you care about. Presenting your hack gives you a chance to be proud of what you’ve done, and you should be proud.”

Send a message through Eventbrite or drop a line in the Slack workspace once registered. Please do not hesitate to reach out at any point! Our team includes people of various backgrounds striving to make this event as approachable and beginner-friendly as possible.