Lutetium
Design and learning is awesome, but applying that to a wider world of competition has a lot of attractive elements too. Customer research, DFM, etc are just new design constraints and considerations, and they can be a lot of fun as well.
@Frank Buss well, the goal of the prize is obviously to get more users to hackaday and to get them hacking
@Majenta Strongheart - Gotcha. Loud and clear. More emphasis on practicality and solving real problems, less on dancing cats.
isn't the dancing cat the project with the most likes?
But still, where "customer" could be "my middle-school students" or "dogs at my dog park", I believe
Is there any details on the mentors and how that will work or was that referencing the community as mentors in a general sense?
or "people who like videos of dancing cats"
Sales volume is the validation of utility, or one of them. Had plenty of "great" products that didn't sell well, and some dumb things that sold out. Hard to tell up front.
@Andrew Sowa THAT!
a dancing cat would probably sell very well
@scott.mcgimpsey - yes, and this new prompt means more DFM will be in the Hackaday universe, which means more people will learn about it. Seems on brand and on mission :)
@Majenta Strongheart @Frank Buss That's a great point -- Does the popularity of a project weigh into the judges decisions for Semi-finalists or finalist winners?
@Andrew Sowa yes! I'm excited to share that we will be announcing our judges and mentors very soon and the schedule to the mentor's office hour sessions will be posted on the Hackaday Prize contest page and on our facebook so you can start getting direct feedback from our experienced mentors. Mentors will be hosting office hours type video sessions with 6-8 entrants a session so be sure to sign up once the schedule is posted :)
That sounds very helpful
@Majenta Strongheart - Will the videos of the office hour sessions be available after the fact? Might have some valuable mateial for everyone.
@Scott Swaaley Likes will not be factored in the judging process
facebook?
what's that?
Something all the grandparents us, I think.
oh no not f*ceb*ok
@Dan Maloney Yes! A recording of the video sessions will be available to the community afterwards
Schweet
@Dan Maloney like myspace, but invades your privacy?
It's a feature...
I'm sure MySpace got upgraded. A "let's collect some data and earn money on the side" feature sounds like something a MySpace investor could accept, "everyone's doing it" and all
do we need to dress up for the mentor videos?
just from the waist up
This year's Prize got quite an overhaul, TBH. No World Create Day, no seed money like we're used to, no "stages". I'm wondering if I should try to participate and put some effort in, purely for the "how will this work out?" factor
As long as your camera is above the desk ;-)
@Arsenijs there are seed money
"waist up" it's hardware we're talking here, there's a chance of "ah, we do indeed have a prototype to show, I'll go get fetch it from another room"
sorry, I mean, the seed money changed and IIRC is for the top 20
Sir, we said hardware, not software
I can understand not wanting to handle all those $1 transfers
-20pts if you're not wearing a hackaday tshirt during your mentor session
an a ski mask
or at the very least an Guy Fawkes mask
this leads to another question: does it need to be an electronics project, or would a T-shirt be a valid entry? or a new kind of shovel? would be all "hardware"
long hair, hard disk platters on the walls, at least one working 9 track tape drive in the background and a device with huge vacuum tubes glowing blue and throwing sparks - that is OK to substitute a hackaday t-shirt
Now I want a hard drive platter wind chime.
@Frank Buss I'm guessing, if the T-shirt solves some kind of problem, it's probably OK? If you hurry up, you might get some free flex PCBs =)
it helps me that I'm not freezing :-)
say, a T-shirt with woven-in sensors that track posture
"T-shirt with flex PCB" would be a pretty cool entry
We're getting to the top of the hour, and Majenta probably needs to get back to work. I want to thank her for taking the time to answer all these great questions. Not sure what the best forum is for continued questions, though. @Majenta Strongheart - how should people reach out if they have more Prize questions?
T-shirt with two 20-bit pointers in hex: 2 x b00b5
there were those t-shirts with the dvd keys on them, they solved a real problem
Thanks everyone! Feel free to send any more questions to prize@hackaday.com
Thanks Majenta!
And don't forget next week's Hack Chat on KiCad and FreeCAD, with Hackaday's own Anool Mahidharia: https://hackaday.io/event/164063-kicad-and-freecad-hack-chat
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