NextStep Hacks is a hackathon designed by high schoolers, and for students all across the world! This year is our second ever NextStep Hacks, and we have three prize categories that we know will blow you away! Choose to make a project relating to Space, Fintech (Financial), or a Post-COVID World (Health), and get ready to win some amazing prizes along the way!

To participate, make sure to register on our site, join our Discord server, and get ready to have a blast!

Requirements

We require all teams to submit a 5 minute or less demo video.
Your video must be created the weekend of the hackathon.
Your code must be available in some sort of public repository.
We do allow you to submit your project to other hackathons (this weekend only) as long as the other hackathon also allows this.
If you're continuing work on an old project, you MUST specify in your Devpost what was worked on 1) before the hackathon and 2) during the hackathon.

Hackathon Sponsors

Prizes

$221,850 in prizes

1st Place

- Taskade Pro for life
- HackAlphaX T-Shirts
- HackAlphaX Swag Pack
- Access to Wolfram|One Personal Edition for one year
- Access to Wolfram|Alpha Pro for one year
- Ribbon for Outstanding Performance
- Certificate of Accomplishment

2nd Place

- $25 AoPS Coupon
- HackAlphaX T-Shirts
- HackAlphaX Swag Pack
- Access to Wolfram|One Personal Edition for one year
- Access to Wolfram|Alpha Pro for one year
- Ribbon for Outstanding Performance
- Certificate of Accomplishment

3rd Place

- Maple Learn Premium
- HackAlphaX T-Shirts
- HackAlphaX Swag Pack
- Access to Wolfram|One Personal Edition for one year
- Access to Wolfram|Alpha Pro for one year
- Ribbon for Outstanding Performance
- Certificate of Accomplishment

All Participants

- 1 year of free Taskade Pro Plane
- Stickers from StickerGiant
- $120 in credits from SashiDo
- $20 Linode credits
- The Full Course: InterviewCake
- 1 month of echoAR Business Plan access
- Access to Wolfram|One for 30 days
- Tabnine Pro Coupon for one year
- Certificate of Particiption from Give My Certificate

Best Space Hack (powered by Space Force)

The sky is not the limit! Try your hand at making a space-themed application for a chance to win a wireless Bluetooth speaker for you and your team from the U.S. Space Force! We’re looking for amazing solutions to any space-related problems you can imagine. For any sci-fi enthusiast, this is the perfect opportunity to push the limits of your creativity by building the technology of tomorrow, today. We can’t wait to see the solutions you build!
- HackAlphaX T-Shirts
- HackAlphaX Swag Pack
- Access to Wolfram|One Personal Edition for one year
- Access to Wolfram|Alpha Pro for one year
- Ribbon for Outstanding Performance
- Certificate of Accomplishment

Best Fin-tech Hack

- $20 Amazon Gift Card
- HackAlphaX T-Shirts
- HackAlphaX Swag Pack
- Access to Wolfram|One Personal Edition for one year
- Access to Wolfram|Alpha Pro for one year
- Ribbon for Outstanding Performance
- Certificate of Accomplishment

Best Post-COVID Hack

Best Website

- HackAlphaX T-Shirts
- HackAlphaX Swag Pack
- Access to Wolfram|One Personal Edition for one year
- Access to Wolfram|Alpha Pro for one year
- Ribbon for Outstanding Performance
- Certificate of Accomplishment

Best App

Best Idea + Pitch

Raffle Swag Pack (25)

A custom HackAlphaX Swag Pack, courtesy of sticker mule, containing:
- A HackAlphaX Bubble Mailer
- A HackAlphaX Keychain
- HackAlphaX/NextStep Hacks Buttons
- HackAlphaX/NextStep Stickers

All winners of the hackathon will also receive a swag pack (in addition to the 25 that will be raffled off). Raffle forms will be distributed during the hackathon.

Best Domain Name from Domain.com

Register a .tech domain name using Domain.com during the weekend. Each team may submit one entry per person on the team. Each winning team member will receive a PowerSquare Qi wireless phone charger.

Best Use of Google Cloud

Build your hackathon project with a suite of secure storage, powerful compute, and integrated data analytics products provided by Google Cloud. See full list of products here: g.co/cloud. Each winning team member located in the US will receive a Google Cloud Swag Bag complete with a beanie, pillow, journal, socks and lanyards. International winners will receive a Google branded backpack.

Best Hardware Hack Sponsored by Digi-Key

Using your preferred hardware or hardware emulator, build a hack for your chance to win a Grove Beginner Kit, with embedded Arduino Uno compatible board. Each winning team member will receive a prize!

Most Creative Use of Twilio

Twilio allows you to incorporate mobile messaging, phone calls and a ton of other awesome communication features right into your hackathon project using web service APIs. Are you building an e-commerce website and want to send text notifications or email confirmations once an order is completed? Or maybe your application needs to verify users based on their mobile numbers? Twilio makes all this possible and more. Build a hack that simplifies your life using any one of Twilio’s APIs for a chance to win a Twilio Swag Box and GameGo Console for you and each of your teammates!

Devpost Achievements

Submitting to this hackathon could earn you:

Judges

Aditya Kirubakaran
HackAlphaX Founder & Executive Director

Krishnan Shankar
HackAlphaX Technical & Operations Lead

Keshav Majithia
HackAlphaX Financials Lead

Samanyu Bansal
HackAlphaX Growth Lead

Vladislav Gukasov
Senior Software Engineer @ Akma Trading

Albert Lie
Ex-Founding Engineer & Tech Lead @ Xendit (YC S15)

Alexander Kozhenkov
Team Lead at GridGain

Roman Blinov
Python Developer at DataArt

Artur Sheikh
QA Automation Engineer

Yuri Danilov
Head of Development Department at Sberbank PJSC

Tatiana Parshina
Chatbot NLP Developer at Eva.ai

Viacheslav Shago
Senior Software Developer & Tech Lead

Maksym Mostovyi
Developer in CyberSecurity and BigData Domain

MLH
MLH

Judging Criteria

Originality
Has this project been done before at hackathons in the past? How creative is their project in solving the problem at hand?
Adherence to Track
Does the hack adhere to the selected track? Does it implement that theme fully or just partially?
Completion
Does the hack work? Did the team achieve everything they wanted?
Learning
Did the team stretch themselves? Did they try to learn something new? What kind of projects have they worked on before?
Design
Did the team put thought into the user experience? How well designed is the interface?
Technology
How technically impressive was the hack? Was the technical problem the team tackled difficult? Did it use a particularly clever technique or did it use many different components? Did the technology involved make you go "Wow"?

Online	Public
$221,850 in prizes	199 participants

NextStep Hacks 2021

Get ready to "Hack 2 Success" for the second ever NextStep Hacks!

Who can participate