
Salesforce $1 Million Hackathon Update - Two Winners - jhchen
http://blogs.developerforce.com/developer-relations/2013/12/update-on-salesforce1-hackathon-feedback-review.html
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dangerboysteve
Anyone developing Salesforce apps will not raise a stink as it will hurt their
relationship with that company. So anyone writing Kudos about Salesforce for
this extra $1M prize should keep quiet as it's disingenuous. It's been
mentioned many times over that many of the teams that competed could tell via
analytics that their apps were not looked at. This statement alone should
invalidate the entire contest and force new judging.

So how does this constitute a full review and audit. The reality is that SF
royally fucked up on many fronts and lost developer cred in the community. As
if they cared in the first place.

If they attempt this next year, they need to appoint an outside 3rd party to
oversee the contest and git rid of their own employees from the process.

~~~
ChrisBland
This statement should concern Salesforce more than any hackathon results:
'Anyone developing Salesforce apps will not raise a stink as it will hurt
their relationship with that company'

I've worked with Salesforce for 4+ years now (as customer and partner), and
sadly I agree with you. This should be the message that someone at salesforce
reads. Want to be invited to their pilots? Want to have access to their PMs?
You had better not say anything bad, I even had my AE pull me aside when I was
out there for an EBC to tell me to not bring up their recent service outage
during the meeting. If you don't have anything nice to say about salesforce,
they don't want to hear your voice.

~~~
monkeyspaw
Have you deployed any apps in their Appxchange? I'd love the chance to talk
with someone who has done that to hear their POV.

Was at Dreamforce last week and it felt like one giant sales-pitch-cum-
Anthony-Robbins event.

Let me know if you have a few minutes to chat, and how best to contact you. My
email is in my profile. Thanks!

~~~
louhong
I'm happy to answer any questions you might have. Went through the process
last year.

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reustle
We're going to solve the problem of giving our ex-employee's team $1m by
giving the runner up, a company we own a portion of, $1m as well.

~~~
sswaner
Yes, but in a way they are likely damaging the company they own a portion of.
They may end up losing the talent that won the award. That company doesn't
benefit much as a result, and Salesforce even less.

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ritchiea
Possibly but that does nothing to assuage the concern that entries were only
seriously considered if you had an inside connect at Salesforce, which is what
it looks like when the winners have close ties to the contest holders and many
entrants complain that their analytics show their app was never used.

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chrisbennet
This doesn't square with several team's assertions that, according to their
analytics, their videos had never been viewed by the judges. I wish they
(saleforce) had addressed this issue in their response.

~~~
zaguios
They do address it, they lie by asserting that every apps was viewed twice
when it's clear that was not the case unless there are dozens of developers
lying about something random which I'm pretty sure isn't the case.

~~~
gwf
@zaguis, can you point me to anyone else besides @colabi that is claiming that
their video has not been viewed? I genuinely want to investigate this, but
after searching for a week I can't find anything concrete.

Since you are confidentially asserting that you believe that salesforce
employees are lying, it would help everyone if you could identify just a
couple of the dozens of developers that you reference.

If you do so, I will investigate their specific situation directly.

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TrainedMonkey
1\. * Collect massive data set.

2\. Build an API.

3\. Make mobile application that 'uses' API to do something cool.

4\. Judges think API/Data set are inherent properties of your app.

4\. Profit.

* Optional. You could just make an API that does something cool way before hackathon.

(That is my understanding of what happened with that event and it is most
likely inaccurate.)

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minimaxir
The problem with Upshot's exemption of "they built the mobile app during the
Hackathon so it's fair" is that it sets a bad precedent for all other
Hackathons. Why shouldn't teams do what Upshot did and develop the cool tech
beforehand and polish it during the Hackathon, especially when winning offers
such prizes/publicity?

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corresation
_Why shouldn 't teams do what Upshot did and develop the cool tech beforehand
and polish it during the Hackathon_

They should: If you know what you're building, and the prize is enough
motivation, of course you should do everything you possibly can in advance,
and any rules that tried to prohibit that would essentially be crippling only
the naively honest.

Even if there were keystroke and screen loggers and you had to "show your
work", a prepared team would have gone through the process multiple times,
completely refining their work to the point of rote re-implementation of
version 10 of a proven out implementation.

This may sound cynical, but it is truthful. Which is exactly why most such
competitions simply announce the goal and an end date in the future, and
people grind as they see fit.

~~~
rhizome
_a prepared team would have gone through the process multiple times,
completely refining their work to the point of rote re-implementation of
version 10 of a proven out implementation._

What is this referring to? Has this ever actually occurred?

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corresation
It's referring to human nature.

If you tell people there is a million dollar prize at stake (and to add to the
financial stakes, charge hundreds per contestant), and details of the problem
they will be solving, _100%_ of your contestants will try to solve as much of
the problem as they can in advance (while, most likely, declaring it a crime
that anyone else did so).

Anyone who claims otherwise is the sort of person you should protect your
wallet around.

It is impossible to guard against this.

~~~
melvinmt
How can you work in advance if the hackathon isn't announced yet?

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SilasX
Because the "prompt" (basically, make a cool app) was revealed a long time
before the hackathon, which IMHO was a big mistake. It's much easier to
prevent such cheating if you make the early work irrelevant.

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ivan_ah

        While the Upshot mobile app used some pre-existing code, 
        this did not violate the rules. Use of pre-existing code 
        was allowable as long as the code didn’t comprise the 
        majority of the app and didn’t violate any third party’s rights.
    
    

IMHO, the whole idea of a hackathon is to see what teams can come up with on
the spot. Any pre-existing code you bring is an unfair advantage. But if the
rules say pre-coding is OK, then it is OK ;) disclaimer: I am not familiar
with the specifics in this situation, just commenting on hackathons in
general.

~~~
mvkel
Technically what you're saying is you can't use Rails, you'd have to use Ruby,
because Rails is pre-existing code built on top of Ruby.

That also throws out jQuery and any of its libraries.

The beauty of hackathons is they force you to think about the deliverable and
attempt to mitigate reinventing the wheel by using as many plugins as possible
to deliver your concept.

~~~
untog
Pretty obvious condition would be that it's pre-existing code _you wrote_. I'm
sure that's what the OP intended.

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mbesto
Where do you draw the line? Let's say I'm a core developer on Rails, am I not
allowed to use Rails then? What happens if I contributed 1 line of code to
Rails, does that negate it then?

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makomk
The obvious place to draw the line is the point where the code you wrote isn't
equally available to you and all the other competitors.

~~~
dllthomas
This, coupled with a requirement about being clear what pieces are new.

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SilasX
And obviated by the judges having no easy way to learn and isolate which
"part" of the app they're testing, and how such compartmentalization goes
strongly against human psychology.

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dllthomas
I don't pretend it'll be "perfect", but it should let decisions fall (noisily)
around what we think of as "fair" (since we're all running that assessment
through the same hardware) which is really what we're looking for.

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ChrisBland
This was the only 'outcome' that was available to salesforce. If they took
away UpShots prize money, they would have upset a lot of people who felt that
prizes shouldn't be taken away after the fact, that upshot won by playing
within the rules, etc. If they kept the ruling how it was, they still would
upset a lot of people who felt cheated by upshot using existing code.
Realistically they couldn't rejudge the entire competition, and even if they
did there would be people complaining about that. They ran the hackathon
poorly, they communicated poorly by posting certain things on the forums, etc,
they judged it poorly, and now they just want out from under their own mess
with the least damage possible

Salesforce had one out, throw money at the problem and hope it fades away.

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Finbarr
I doubt they'll ever run another hackathon like this again. What a farce.

~~~
jbrooksuk
Or they'll hide their motives better.

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mrjasonroy
Just to add to the incestuous nature - the runner up, healthcare.love, was
created by Taptera employees. Taptera's main investor is Salesforce.

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leeoniya
"It also found that we weren’t clear enough with the final round judges about
the use of pre-existing code"

because you were expecting the pre-determined winner to be using it?

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kungfoo
I wonder what Upshot data code submission looked like? If they submitted just
the mobile app, then all that Salesforce got out of it was a Webview + Mic
integration, but if Salesforce actually got the NLP code (doubt it)...paying
$1mil would have been worth all of this nonsense.

The right thing to do would be to ask Upshot to submit ALL their code and add
it to Salesforce.com. I think most of the other participants would consider
that fair justice.

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Sniperfish
I was contemplating some snide response that, regardless of how many apps are
considered 'winners', Salesforce comes off as the loser due to bad publicity
in the development community. Then I remembered they'd just been given source
code and rights to a ton of pretty nifty apps for a bargain price.

Guess there are Three Winners.

~~~
cedsav
FYI, Salesforce claimed no right on submitted code.
[http://events.developerforce.com/dreamforce/hackathon/faq](http://events.developerforce.com/dreamforce/hackathon/faq)

~~~
darkstar999
Yeah but they still get the _idea_ for free. Code is cheap.

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rhizome
Even when execution is everything?

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darkstar999
Execution isn't always everything, especially with B2B. Sometimes it's all
about finding a market niche and knowing the right people.

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phlobot
How rich are the people at saleforce getting that they consider financial
investment "immaterial". I like that.

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usingpond
lmao @ Salesforce's developer marketing dude's brilliant response to all of
this: "Nuh-uh, it was fair and square, those guys are all totally lying."

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onedev
> While the Upshot mobile app used some pre-existing code, this did not
> violate the rules. Use of pre-existing code was allowable as long as the
> code didn’t comprise the majority of the app and didn’t violate any third
> party’s rights. Our internal review determined that Upshot’s mobile app was
> created during the hackathon and met these criteria.

So what does "a majority" really mean? Can I come in with 49% of the code and
still be eligible? 49% isn't technically a majority. What about 49.99%? How do
you even determine the concept of "a majority"?

~~~
dllthomas
A majority really means more than 50%. 49.99% isn't a majority. These are easy
questions.

The real issue is poor metrics on which to apply that threshold...

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lnanek2
Wow, much more impressive response than their first one. Especially good move
addressing the private gallery complaint, that's a small detail that shows
they paid attention to some of the complaints at least.

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us0r
Looking forward to more salesfarce hackathons.

