Photo by Alex Kotliarskyi on Unsplash

It's time again to make an impact. The Meteor Hackathon is from September 23rd to September 30th and you are all invited to participate!

For this year’s Hackathon, you may team up with 5 members (max) to develop an impactful application using Meteor Framework. There are no restrictions on which field of interest you can pick, but remember that we will judge your idea by a few guidelines and how impactful your project is.

You and your team can build a product with a clear revenue stream, a non-profit, open-source, or anything in between, BUT it should be usable and deployed on Galaxy at the end.

It's all free, from Signup to deployment and there are good reasons to participate. Let me give you a few.

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Get to know the Meteor framework ☄️

Meteor has been around since 2012, yet there are still many devs that either never heard of it or have never used it. Despite everything you have (not) heard or read, this is the best chance to dive in for a week and build your own opinion about it.

This is also a great opportunity to evaluate the framework's capabilities in regards to what you can achieve within that week. This gives you a good estimate, whether you should choose Meteor for your next project or not. A good addition to that is my last year's article:

Installation of Meteor and set up a new project is fast and super easy and your favorite frontend technology is also supported. You can follow these two articles if you are new and want to start right now:

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Get to know the community 👋

One thing that I really love about Meteor is it's welcoming and constructive community. There are multiple channels but the most frequently used ones are the Meteor forums and the community slack. Get engaged in discussions about the framework or ask for help - there is always someone who will be ready to help.

The community also picked up many famous packages and ensures maintenance and improvements for them under the Meteor namespace. This is a good place to start, if you want to get your hands on some open source work the first time.

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Win awesome prizes 🏆

Of course there are great prices to win and if you ask me, then this is really really hot stuff 🔥 Just look for yourself:

1st Prize

• $2,000 cash
• $1,000 in Galaxy credits
• 4 hours in calls with the Meteor Core team
• An announcement in our email to 150,000 subscribers listing your team and project
• Highlight on the Meteor website for a month (spotlight page on the carousel)
• Blog post in the Meteor blog
• Social media shoutout
• Certificate of excellence

2nd Prize

• $1,000 cash
• $500 in Galaxy Credits
• Blog post in the Meteor blog
• Social media shoutout
• Certificate of appreciation

3rd Prize

• $500 cash
• $250 in Galaxy Credits
• Blog post in the Meteor blog
• Social media shoutout
• Certificate of appreciation

Best Presentation

• Limited edition Meteor t-shirt (per team member)
• Certificate of best presentation
• Galaxy credits ($200 for the whole team)

All Participants

• Discount coupons (TBD)
• Galaxy credits ($100 value per team)
• Certificate of participation

JUDGMENT CRITERIA

• The idea should be Impactful (a cause, an impactful business model, a non-profit, etc.)
• The idea should be helpful in some way
• It should be realistic
• By the end of the Hackathon, the idea should be usable
• The idea should be deployed once the Hackathon is over (on September 30th)
• Everything needs to be developed during the Hackathon

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Fast and free deployment 🚀

The Galaxy hosting offers a free tier (no time restrictions), including access to a limited Mongo database! Since it's part of the Hackathon to deploy the app to Galaxy, you will also get a good chance to evaluate this super easy one-step deployment and the administration tools for your deployed app.

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Sharpen your dev skills 🤓

Attending a Hackathon is always a good opportunity to improve your skills and broaden your mind. Maybe you'll find some interesting patterns or technique's, worth to adapt or maybe you'll just keep practicing. If you need some tools for your backend I come to service with this article:

Since you can (and should) team up (5 people max.), you can also train your communication and soft skills. These are often underrated but high in demand in the industry. You can also find out, whether a certain team role would be a good fit for you or if it's rather not.

Finally this is also a great chance to get into open source development. Meteor has a large codebase and there are always things to do, ranging from beginner level to very advanced tasks.

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Have fun and enjoy 🥳

Finally, this whole time should be fun and add to your life in a positive way. A Hackathon is a good way to take software development a little less seriously, step back and just let the creativity flow. By doing so this will be an unforgettable time and maybe your work will make an unforgettable impact.

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Sign up now 👇

You can find more about the Hackathon at the official Hackathon website where you can also sign up!

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I regularly publish articles here on dev.to about Meteor and JavaScript. If you like what you are reading and want to support me, you can send me a tip via PayPal.

You can also find (and contact) me on GitHub, Twitter and LinkedIn.

Keep up with the latest development on Meteor by visiting their blog and if you are the same into Meteor like I am and want to show it to the world, you should check out the Meteor merch store.