over 3 years ago

Happy Holidays, Check Your Slack + GRAND FINALISTS Now Announced!!

Hello Climate Change-Makers,

We hope everyone's having a good holiday season so far & that you're looking forward to 2023!

And indeed, on our end, we're excited to start the year/ end the hackathon with a bang, with our GRAND FINALS being held on SATURDAY, JAN 7th, 2023 @ 10 AM EST... And here, the format was chosen after consulting with participants, featuring a final with ~12 teams, who will be sharing their revised 4-min videos (OR a 4-min live pitch), while having 3 min of questions for our judges. It should be a blast :)

And ALL of you are invited, link here: climatechangemakers2022.eventbrite.com!

Now, the above will not be news to most, as we've been keeping our Slack channel (link here) very much up-to-date with the latest... For those who've missed it, here's some key notes:

THANK YOU to All Who Applied: It really was so difficult for judges to narrow down our lists & are truly inspired by everyone who applied, whether you made the finals or not. Indeed, our experience with these things is that one's placement in a hackathon rarely coincides with where a project can go IRL, hence encourage eveyone to keep pursuing their projects (or new ones using your learnings), with a genuine feeling that ALL of you are destined to make impact in your own unique ways!
Expect Feedback in Coming Weeks: We will be looking to share consolidated feedback from judges to all teams, with most receiving theirs in mid-January after our other organizers come back. That said, finalist teams will be sent this tomorrow (ON SLACK) & are encouraged to use their feedback as they develop pitches for the grand finals and/ or iterate on their videos.
Public Choice Awards: All eligible teams can also put their hats in for our public choice awards. Most teams already opted in when submitting their projects, with folks having until December 30th to confirm their interest or otherwise... We encourage all to share their work with the world, with the key thing here being that those opting in will have their project vids shared on our SM & have the public select their favourties in a hidden vote (see here for what happened last year).
Check Your Slack: FInally, we've sent notes by now to ALL teams over Slack around various wrap-up stuff (e.g. asking them to confirm whether or not they want to participate in the public choice awards) & would ask folks to please check your Slack & get back, especially if you are a finalist team!

And on this note.... Our FINALIST TEAMS are... DRUMROOLLLL & in no particular order... CO2Footprint, Ecothereum, #FeelCliamteGrief, Firesafe, GreenUp, MyESG, NewField, Pass on the Gas, Purple Hydrogen, Redtide Farming, Regenerate & SwapML. Check out their submissions + our other very cool ones on our now-published project gallery @ climatechangemakers2022.devpost.com/project-gallery.

We are also exploring interest in having a project showcase (30-60 min) for any non-finalist teams that may want to present their work & encourage any interested teams to RSVP on Slack re: your interest, with this being a great opportunity to get feedback from your peers + mentors, even if there's no prizes at stake... There really are SO many great projects that would be amazing to show to the world!

In any case folks, we are SUPER-pumped for our GRAND FINALS on January 7th & encourage all of you to sign up + participate in some way... For us organizers, this hackathon has been a blast & thank you all for taking part in different ways. Have a great end to 2022 & hope to see you in the new year!!

Many thanks & kind regards,

Shitangshu & the Change-Makers Organizing Team

The OATHE Project, YIC & EarthNet