Welcome to McHacks 12! 👋

We’re so glad you could make it.

Our live site is divided into two sections:

Check out the events, workshops, and activities happening under Schedule.
View judging criteria and guidelines under Judging.

Discord server for announcements, to chat with other hackers, and to form teams. It’s important for all hackers to be in the Discord as it is the main form of communication between hackers, judges, sponsors, and organizers during McHacks. You can access the Discord Server here.

Check out the McHacks 11 Devpost for previous projects and judging information.

Feel free to get in touch by email at contact@mchacks.ca if you have any questions or concerns!

Happy hacking,
McHacks Team

McHacks Schedule

All times are in Eastern Time (ET)

Saturday, Jan. 25

Sunday, Jan. 26

8:00 am - 10:00 am

MAIN EVENT

Check-In

All RSVP'd hackers must check-in in person during this time to receive their badge and merch. We encourage you to come early to avoid lines.

10:00 am - 11:30 am

MAIN EVENT

Opening Ceremony

11:30 am - 12:30 pm

WORKSHOP

Hackathon 101 & Team Formation

Learn how to make the most out of your McHacks this year! A short and sweet guide to all our activities so you can plan your next 24h perfectly!

11:30 am - 12:00 pm

WORKSHOP

CSE

Inside CSE: Life, Careers, and Opportunities

Lifestyle at CSE, the recruitment process, and more

12:00 pm

MAIN EVENT

Hacking Period Starts

12:00 pm - 2:00 pm

FOOD

Lunch

By Shawarmania

12:30 pm - 1:30 pm

WORKSHOP

Telus

AI and Data Risk: Trends in Tech and Telecom

1:40 pm - 2:10 pm

WORKSHOP

Societe Generale

Societe Generale Workshop

1:40 pm - 2:40 pm

WORKSHOP

NBFM

NBFM Electronic-Trading Workshop

AI and Financial Research

2:50 pm - 3:50 pm

WORKSHOP

NBFM

NBFM Electronic-Trading Fireside Chat

Use of AI in financial markets, Balancing tech innovation and PnL, Biggest challenges in the day-to-day, Work-life balance and managing mental health in high stress environments, How to enter the job market of algorithmic trading

4:00 pm - 4:30 pm

WORKSHOP

MLH

Figma to Code: Mastering Design with Dev Mode

Figma Dev Mode is a new Figma feature designed to create smoother collaboration between designers and developers, as well as empower hackers to level up their own design-skills. The tool provides hackers with a detailed view of design files, including access to specs, assets, and code snippets, ensuring accuracy in the design implementation while saving time in the process. Whether you’re completely new to designing websites or want to expand your existing skill set, this workshop is a great way to learn one of the most developer friendly and professionally utilized design tools on the market.

4:00 pm - 5:00 pm

WORKSHOP

Telus

Optimizing Your App: Backend Tips and Techniques

Learn how to optimize your app's data flow from the backend to the UI. We will take you on an optimization journey where you will learn techniques for increasing your app's performance and scalability at different levels of the stack, with a focus on the backend.

5:00 pm - 5:30 pm

WORKSHOP

MLH

GitHub Copilot Workshop

GitHub Copilot is a cloud-based artificial intelligence tool developed by GitHub and OpenAI to assist users of integrated development environments (IDEs) by autocompleting code, making code suggestions, writing and optimizing code, generating markdown, and more. It is currently the most widely adopted AI pair programming tool and has been proven to increase developer productivity and the speed at which software can be developed.

6:00 pm - 6:45 pm

WORKSHOP

Gumloop

How to Program and Build Companies with AI

A short introduction to large language models. Getting started (zero shot prompting, few shot prompting, prompt engineering, tools, agents, RAG, fine tuning). Existing tooling in the marketplace (ChatGPT, Claude, Cursor, LangChain etc.). Experience from building 3 full stack generative AI projects (a chatbot to help students with learning, a therapy assistant, natural language to SQL) do's and don't, system design and execution. Working at Gumloop, and what users can accomplish.

6:00 pm - 8:00 pm

FOOD

Dinner

By Spicebros

9:30 pm - 10:30 pm

GAME

Smash Tournament

10:00 pm - 8:00 am

REST

Napping Area

Hackers are invited to rest in our Napping Area, a more quiet option to our hacking zones. We encourage Hackers to bring their own eye masks and ear plugs to make the Napping Area even more peaceful.

McHacks 12 Judging Guidelines

Judging Criteria

Execution: Does the hack work? Is it easy to use? Quality of the user interface, design, and aesthetics?
Technical Complexity: How technically impressive was the hack? Was the technical problem the team tackled difficult? Is the technology used in a clever way? Is it complex?
Potential Impact: Could it solve a real-world problem or make a difference in people’s lives? Could it disrupt the status quo? Could it be scaled?
Creativity: Is this idea original? Does it use innovative problem-solving? Has this idea been done at hackathons before or does it already exist?

Stack Ranking

Judges will be assigned a set of projects to review.
Sets will be staggered so that projects will not always be compared against the same competitors.
All projects will be reviewed by 3 different judges.
Judges will only rank their top 3 favourite projects within that set, with points assigned as follows:
- 3 points for First Place
- 2 points for Second Place
- 1 point for Third Place
The top projects will be bubbled up for a second round of judging on the top 3 teams, followed by a final decision.

McHacks 12 Project Submission Rules

All work should be done during the hackathon.
No commits should be made to your code repository (e.g., GitHub) after the project submission deadline 12:00 PM on Sunday, January 26, 2025, otherwise your project will be disqualified.
Projects that were started before the hackathon start will be disqualified.
All work on the project must be completed exclusively by members of your team.
- While you may seek advice or consultation from others, no outside contributors may perform any part of the work.
- Projects involving work completed by non-team members will be disqualified.
All work should be made public on a code repository (e.g., GitHub).
- Projects with code that is not visible to judges/organizers will be disqualified.
Strongly Recommended: Please record a 2-minute video to submit on DevPost. This should be a demo of your hack, not a presentation. This video will be used to verify the quality of finalists/winners and to make final decisions in case of a tie.