A very important announcement about how teams are formed

This year we have been trying a lot of new things — encouraging more hardware hacks, branching to a brand new city (Sydney), introduce new branding. In light of reviewing and reflecting on what we have done, we have also reviewed our competition rules as well.

Before we open ticket sales for UNIHACK 2017, we wish to inform those who are interested in competing (especially those who competed last year) about some rule changes that we have made. These changes will affect how you create your teams.

These changes apply to both UNIHACK Melbourne and UNIHACK Sydney.

Welcome New Zealanders!

Good news, we are opening the competition to more people! For the very first time, university students studying in New Zealand will be allowed to compete in UNIHACK Melbourne and UNIHACK Sydney.

This isn’t the first time we have changed our eligibility rules. The very first UNIHACK, held back in 2014 at York Butter Factory, was only open to just all Victorian university and TAFE students. The second year (2015) was the first time we opened the competition to all Australian university and TAFE students.

Our definition of what a “student” has not changed. You must be an undergraduate, postgraduate or masters student studying at an accredited university or TAFE in Australia or New Zealand when UNIHACK is on. This includes domestic, international and exchange students.

As well, if you have completed your course but not graduated before UNIHACK starts, you can still compete.

Increased Team Sizes

After three years of incredible growth and careful consideration, we have decided to increase the team size. Instead of teams of four, you can now form teams of up to six students. After seeing the impressive work what teams have produced as a group of three or four, we cannot wait to see what you can create as a group of five or six.

If you are competing in UNIHACK Melbourne, we are also introducing a minimum size of four students per team. This is purely to ensure the smooth running of the event (especially for the purposes of judging). If you are in a team that does not meet the minimum size, you will be asked to merge with another <4 sized team.

However, if there is a team that does not meet the minimum size and there is no other team to merge with, we will relax the restriction and allow them to compete so nobody misses out.

The minimum size rule does not apply to UNIHACK Sydney.

In other news, we rewrote the rules

In addition to the major changes mentioned above, we also decided to some restructuring of our rules to provide more clarity. We felt that the previous competition rules were hard to read.

As part of the rewrite, our rules are now divided into the following categories:

• eligibility: who can compete, and how teams are composed;
• projects: what is and isn’t allowed when building your project;
• safety: ensuring you have a safe and happy time at UNIHACK; and,
• breaches: what happens if you break the rules.

We are also putting our rules on GitHub for the first time. A benefit is that if you have any questions about the rules, or need any clarification, you can simply raise a GitHub issue immediately.

If you have any questions about the changes, feel free to raise a GitHub issue. Alternatively, you can email us at team at unihack.net.

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