FAQ
WHAT IS THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THE COLLABATHON AND A HACKATHON? WHAT IS A PARTICIPANT? WHAT IS A PARTNER? WHAT IS A NODE? WHAT IS AN AMBASSADOR? WHAT IS A TEAM? WHAT IS A PROMPT? WHAT IS A DIGITAL ECOSYSTEM? WHO CAN I REACH OUT TO FOR ADDITIONAL INFORMATION?
There isn’t really a difference - a Collabathon is a hackathon. The difference is only in principle of radical collaboration and crowd-development. Instead of hosting a hackathon, where teams compete for a price and the winner takes all, we want to leverage collective intelligence to complete multiple challenges of a shared goal together. This is as shared project where everyone contributes in open source and creates a platform tool that each participant is a shareholder. There will be team rewards for recognition across multiple topics.
Instead of competing for a fixed period of time, we embrace collective ownership and want participants to stay engaged. Collaboration rather than competition must be the source of collective strength and inspiration.
Any individual and organization that has the capacity of bringing positive contributions to the Open Climate Project. The project is open and participatory. See more on Participation.
Are participants allowed to build on the ground-work that has already been done? Yes, participants are highly encouraged to build on top of what is currently present, and we encourage everyone to create teams, to build cohesion and plan out work.
Are new participants able to sign up now? YES! Participants can join and contribute anytime. If you get excited about this Collabathon, please share with your friends and network! We need all the help we can get to fulfill our mission!
Partners are organizations that support the Open Climate Project in a tangible way. Partners can take different roles, such as technology partners, technology mentors, sponsors, etc.
Sponsors provide monetary contributions for covering expenses, incentives for teams such as cash prizes reward based sponsorship with in-kind rewards such as tickets to cool events, gift vouchers will also be welcome. they can also provide in-kind contributions, such as food & beverage, merchandise, etc.
Technology partners will provide guidance, online infrastructure or subject matter expertise to enable participants to hack effectively. Technology partners will provide collaboration tools, training material, propose software task challenges, and direct software development on specific infrastructure components of the Open Climate Platform.
Technology mentors with software development and blockchain expertise are invited to join the Collabathon to support teams with expert knowledge.
What is a sponsor? A special type of partner. Sponsors provide monetary contributions for covering expenses, incentives for teams such as cash prizes reward based sponsorship with in-kind rewards such as tickets to cool events, gift vouchers will also be welcome. they can also provide in-kind contributions, such as food & beverage, merchandise, etc.
An individual or an organisation that spreads the word about the Collabathon and helps develop new partnerships. Become an Ambassador.
Nodes are local organizations, anywhere in the world, that host a Collabathon instance at their own venue. We can also see them as clusters of participants bound together by physical proximity, forming strong interpersonal relations. For more information open the Node Onboarding deck. See also Requirements for nodes. Follow the Create a node page if you want to become one.
A node is a location anywhere in the world where hackers will congregate in the provided space to participate in the Collabathon. Nodes can choose to participant in specific prompts.
What are the requirements for hosting a node? Node hosts will convene a Collabathon instance at their own venue. The core team will provide you with technical guidance on setting-up and accessing the online collaboration environment. Nodes have the flexibility of identifying and collaborating with other partners. Node hosts can also provide sponsorship by sourcing funds to cover expenses for their event (eg. catering for participants). The core team will work closely with node hosts and provide guidelines on setting up the venue, provide IT requirements and marketing support for remote collaboration. Collabathon Nodes are often also prompt hosts, or partner with prompt hosts so that their Collabathon instance can have a domain specific focus.
Participants can form teams to work on prompts that interest them. Teams are not specific to a node. They are made of participants from different nodes or anyone out there who wants to contribute to the Collabathon. We use CoMakery and Discord (part of our digital environment) as a marketplace for team building, where you can brows and join teams or propose new teams. Follow the Create or join a team page to engage.
How are teams recognized and incentivized? We will recognize teams globally based on 3 community choice awards:
Most Collaborative Team: The Yale Open Lab team will judge the collaboration and mutual support across teams based on your activities in the digital collabathon space.
Most Innovative Approach: Judges will choose the most innovative contribution based on the value and creativity of your contribution (code, prompt documentation, ideas etc.)
Most Effective Code: The entire Collabathon community will judge on the most effective hack by upvoting team contributions.
Nodes can also define their own awards, based on their own criteria, and judged by their own judges for additional types of rewards.
A prompt is a challenge submitted by participants, based on a general plan of the Open Climate Project, leading to the creation of the Open Climate Platform. There are predefined prompt categories.
Anyone is free to choose any prompt and work within any task within those prompts. You can contribute to a prompt as part of a team. Each prompt will have a host, which communicates information about skill and resource requirements.
What is a prompt host? A prompt host will create and post a climate challenge to the community. The challenge must be related to elements within the 5 climate domains: Earth State Systems, World System Registries, Climate Action Certification, Climate Markets, Climate Finance. Prompt hosts are expected to provide participants with robust knowledge needed and technical guidance both before and during the Collabathon. This could be in the form of training, providing background information, subject matter expertise, data sharing, code etc. Ideal Prompt Hosts are two complementary entities, a climate knowledge, and a technical software partner. Partners (i.e. nodes, startups, companies and research organizations, etc.) that specialize in a relevant technology or climate domain can host a prompt to provide technical expertise, knowledge, data and mentors to Collabathon teams.
What type of challenges can we provide for developer beginners and non-developers?
See Your Digital Environment section.
TEAMS
Register online on the Collabathon main website.
If you have any issues or questions for registration, write us via email
PARTNER NODES/UNIVERSITIES
Write to us via email to get your node registered and learn more
ORGANIZATIONAL PARTNERSHIPS
Write to us via email to brainstorm partnership opportunities
