Here are some answers to common questions:

Q) Who should participate in TADHack?
A) TADHack is for everyone, from hackers (coders), through hustlers (business people) to hipsters (designers). Communications is a fundamental need of all humans and many ’things’, telecoms is now programmable and democratized so anyone can use the capabilities. Its become very easy, and its incredibly powerful.

Q) I’m not a telecoms developer, why should I join, what will I learn?
A) The focus of TADHack is developing with telecom capabilities: adding calling, messaging, video, conferencing, identity, location, payments and more to your applications, services and business processes. You’ll learn how people and things can use your applications from any device anywhere in the world, even that old rotary phone at your grandma’s house!

Q) What tools can I use? Who do I talk to about them?
A) Check out the sponsor’s developer resources here. You can use your preferred programming language / environments. You can also use webhooks and a graphical user interface (GUI) with some of the resources to avoid coding all together.

Q) Can my hack be something we are working on ahead of the weekend?
A) Yes, just let the sponsors know in your pitch.

Q) I am an individual, but want to find others to collaborate with. How do I do that?
A) Come to TADHack, chat with people at the event, most people find others in the same situation. Even if you do not find some collaborators the sponsors will happily help you realize your ideas. TADHack is all about learning, sharing, coding (you can even avoid this with some of the GUIs), creating, and most importantly having fun. Communications is a fundamental need of all humans (and even things); telecoms is now programmable and democratized so anyone can use the capabilities.

Q) When and where is TADHack Global?
A) TADHack Global runs over the weekend 14-16 October. Check out all the 31 locations here. We really are a global hackathon. And if you can not find a location close by you can enter remotely.

Q) What are Local and Global Prizes? How are they awarded?
A) Each location has $1k in prize money from TADHack, plus some locations have additional prizes from local sponsors and partners (e.g. Zambia and Sri Lanka), we’ll have updates on the local prizes soon. Hacks produced at a location are judged for the local prizes, those prizes are awarded at the end of that local event. BUT that is not all! Each of the global sponsors has $2k in global prize money they can allocate to any hack. So across the 6 main sponsors that’s $12k in prize money. BUT that is not all, the nice people at Cisco/Tropo have contributed an additional $6k to the pot. So we have in total $30k (local prizes contributed by TADHack) and $18k (global prize money). Making a total of $48k in money available for prizes for hacking on the sponsors’ technologies!

Q) How are the prizes awarded?
The people running each location decide who wins the local prizes, the global sponsors decide who wins their prizes. Their decisions are final. We recommend you review this weblog from Tim Panton on how to approach hackathons. Its a recipe for success.  We allow prizes to be split, for example a local prize could be split between 2 or 3 winners.  Global prizes will generally be awarded to hacks other than local winners. At a minimum there will be 48 prizes awarded (generally $1k is the max amount), but because prizes are also split that number can rise to 70 or 80 winners. The odds are looking in your favor 🙂

Q) When are all the winners announced?
A) After all the locations have finished and the global prizes have been decided by the sponsors we will have a live stream announcing all the local and all the global winners for everyone around the world to know, your moment of fame 🙂 The event will likely be between 8 to 9PM CET (Central European Time), TADHack is a complex undertaking so we can not be exact with a time as some judging decisions take time. We’ll list out all the winners on the TADHack weblog, and the video will be immediately available for viewing after the live stream, so you’ll be able to see all the results.

Q) I plan to submit a remote entry, where am I judged?
A) All remote entries are judged for the global prizes. You’ll find out if you’ve won when we do the live stream announcement on Sunday 16th evening.

Q) How do I collect my prize if I win?
A) Do not worry, we’ll be in touch 🙂

Please add your questions in the comments and we’ll add them to this FAQ.