// WHAT IS A HACKATHON?

Major League Hacking (MLH) defines a hackathon as: "A hackathon is best described as an “invention marathon”. Anyone who has an interest in technology attends a hackathon to learn, build & share their creations over the course of a weekend in a relaxed and welcoming atmosphere. You don’t have to be a programmer and you certainly don’t have to be majoring in Computer Science."

// WHY SHOULD I GO?

Besides the variety of prizes that will be given away, there are may reasons!

If you've ever had an idea, but thought you didn't have the time, skills, or energy to do it a hackathon is a great place to get started. You can take 12 hours and flesh out your idea, and begin bringing it to life. While you're hacking away, you may make new friends who would like to join your team in creating your app idea. If you need, a little extra help there will be mentors and volunteers to provide advice if you need some extra help along the way.

Around the time you'll be building your app, you'll also grow network. You'll be able to meet some of our company sponsors representatives, meet faculty and staff within the school, and other students who are passionate about programming.

Every minute you spend working on your project, you'll learn something new along the way. And ultimately, that is the main goal of the hackathon. To ensure that students of all skill levels and interests learn while having a good time.

CockyHacks is being organized by three of the University of South Carolina's largest CS organizations (ACM, MIC, WIC).

• Theme
  Did the hack actually serve to help the Columbia/community? What is the impact of your hack on the university community? (only relevant to theme prize)
• Idea
  How unique or powerful is the idea? What potential impact is there with the creation of the idea? Is it clear potential problems have been identified and planned for?
• Implementation
  How well does it work? How technically impressive is it? Was the technical problem the team tackled difficult? Did it use a particularly clever technique or did it use many different components?
• Design
  Did the team put thought into the user experience? How well-designed is the interface? For a website, this might be how beautiful the styling or graphics are. For a hardware project, this might be how good the human-computer interaction is.
• Outcome
  Did the team stretch themselves? Did they learn something new? Did they try out a new technology stack or new type of project?