📌 About the Event

The LUMA Hackathon is a beginner-friendly, online technical sprint designed specifically for young builders. It challenges students to engineer a functional app, website, or software tool from scratch using code to solve a tangible real-world problem.

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ℹ️ PORTAL OVERVIEW

• Host Platform: Devpost (Public Online Hackathon)
• Total Value Pool: Cash awards + over $200,000 in subscription bundles ($200+ per participant)
• Team Bounds: Solo or teams of 1 to 5 members max
• Target Audience: Strictly Students only (specifically targeted at Middle School and High School students; professionals are barred).

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🏁 COMPETITION ROADMAP & ROUNDS

The hackathon splits its evaluation into an asynchronous build phase followed by an engineering defense:

Round 1: The Digital Submission Packet

Teams must record and upload a 5-minute video demonstration that thoroughly maps out:

• The Problem: The social or technical friction point you are eliminating.
• The Build: A deep-dive walkthrough of your codebase, system architecture, and tech stack.
• The Demo: An unedited, real-time screen share of your project executing live.
• Scalability: The structural engineering design enabling your code to handle high user loads or large datasets.

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Round 2: The Live Finals & Technical Q&A

The top-tier engineering projects will advance to the live main stage. Finalists must run their deployment environment live in front of the jury panel and defend their architectural logic, dependencies, and code choices under real-time questioning.

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📊 SELECTION & JUDGING METRICS

Submissions are graded evenly across a four-axis rubric (25% each):

• Technical Execution (25%): Code cleanliness, structural efficiency, documentation depth, and overall functional stability of the tech stack.
• Innovation & UX (25%): Originality of the concept paired with intuitive, fluid user flows.
• Business & Finance (25%): Realism of the proposed business model, monetizable hooks, and pathways to financial viability.
• Communication (25%): Performance during the video pitch and the team’s agility during the live Q&A.

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🏆 PRIZES & BENEFITS

• 🥇 1st Place Champion: $250 Cash + Global Recognition.
• 🎁 All Eligible Participants (Up to 1,000 winners): A premium sponsorship bundle and software subscriptions valued at over $200 per person to keep you building.