Hackathons are a great way to demonstrate the value of a platform. I had the chance to speak with Malcolm Ross, vice president, Product at Appian to share a bit more about Appian’s virtual hackathon to correspond with its upcoming user conference.
Full disclosure: I’ll be one of the judges attending Appian World to judge the finalists, so hope to see you all there!
Alan Shimel: Can you share a high-level overview of the Hackathon?
Malcolm Ross: Appian is holding its first online hackathon in conjunction with DevPost to correspond with our upcoming Appian World conference in late April. We’re looking forward to seeing how participants are able to build and deploy powerful enterprise apps with Appian’s low-code cloud development platform.
Shimel: Who could apply for the Hackathon?
Ross: Whether they’re an existing Appian customer or not, we challenged anyone to build a new app on the Appian platform that enables their business to do more. There’s no specific theme—just show us something that improves their team’s performance and drives enterprise innovation! We asked all participants to submit their applications by March 27 along with a demo video (hosted on YouTube, Vimeo or Youku). This should incorporate a step-by-step visual demo, and additionally, a way to access the working application for judging and testing. Anyone interested in participating received a free 60-day instance of the full Appian Cloud platform to support their development efforts.
Shimel: Who judges the winners?
Ross: A panel from Appian will score all eligible submissions to determine the top three finalists. Finalists will be notified by April 13 and given the opportunity to demo in-person or remotely to an all-star panel of judges, including Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak, Forrester analyst John Rymer and yourself, Alan! We’ll also have some Appian executives involved in the process including Senior Vice President for Strategy Lang Ly, Chief Technology Officer Michael Beckley, Director of Product Strategy Jorge Sanchez and myself.
Shimel: What are the evaluation criteria for the selection of the winning team?
Ross: It’s pretty open-ended for participants to come up with their own innovations. The main requirement was that the users must build a functioning app on the platform by March 27. More about the criteria can be found here.
Shimel: What are the awards?
Ross: There are three cash prizes ($5,000, $3,000 and $2,000) along with admission to Appian World 2019 and promotional of the submissions by Appian on the Appian AppMarket.
First place will receive $5,000 cash and four free passes to Appian World 2019, and the Appian Deluxe Promotion, which includes a featured promo on Appian.com, Appian AppMarket (if the app is in the market) and Appian Community, joint webinar and collateral, a blog post on Appian.com and a press release.
Second place will be awarded $3,000 cash and two free passes to Appian World 2019, and the Appian Promotion, which includes a featured promo on Appian AppMarket (if app is in the market) and Appian Community and a blog post on Appian.com.
The third-place prize is $2,000 cash and one free pass to Appian World 2019, and the Appian Promotion, which includes a featured promo on Appian AppMarket (if app is in the market) and a blog post on Appian.com.
Shimel: What is the timeline for the Hackathon?
Ross: As mentioned, the deadline for entry was March 27. We’ll make sure to notify finalists by April 13 so they have some time to book travel if they would like to meet our all-star panel of judges for the conference. Final judging will be held on April 25 at the Fontainebleau Hotel in Miami Beach, Florida.
Shimel: Where can people find more information about the Hackathon?
Ross: Anyone who’s interested can find more information about Hackathon at Appian.devpost.com or learn more about our Appian World conference at appianworld.com.