And now it’s time to recognize a big part what makes the Hackaday Prize possible: our Judges and our Sponsors. First up are the Judges. We are fortunate again this year to be joined by top experts from around the world. We are going to briefly touch on each in this post, but you really should hit the Judge’s page for bios and links on everyone.
New Judges in 2015
We have seven judges new to the panel this year:
We love seeing a project pic used as an avatar and [Akiba] of freaklabs didn’t disappoint; we covered that project in 2013. [Pete Dokter], known well for According to Pete, joins us from Sparkfun. [Lenore Edman] and [Windell Oskay] are the force behind Evil Mad Scientist Labs. [Heather Knight] of Marilyn Monrobot is finishing her PhD in Robots at Carnegie Mellon. [Ben Krasnow] should need no introduction; formerly of Valve, currently of Google[x], and always of Applied Science. [Micah Scott] is artist/engineer/hacker and her Blu-Ray drive RE work is among our most favorite of 2014 hacks.
Returning Judges
Five of our friends from the 2014 Hackaday Prize are returning this year:
We have a hard time calling the founder of Adafruit anything other than [Ladyada] but you may know her as [Limor Fried]. The hardware design site The Ganssle Group is spearheaded by [Jack Ganssle]. You know [Dave Jones] from his electronics design and reverse engineering videos on EEVblog and also from the Amp Hour podcast. [Ian Lesnet] is a Hackaday alum, creator of Dangerous Prototypes, and expert regarding manufacturing in China. And finally, [Elecia White] is an extraordinary embedded engineer, founder of Logical Elegance, and the Embedded podcast.
Welcome back, and so happy to have the new Judges this year!
2015 Hackaday Prize Sponsors
The 2015 Hackaday Prize is presented by Supplyframe (parent company of Hackaday). This year we have added five giants of the hardware world as sponsors. We don’t recall having seen so many major players come together for a single initiative. We’re excited that they share our vision of supporting design initiatives. Please thank them by following their Hackaday.io pages: Atmel, Freescale Semiconductor, Microchip, Mouser Electronics, and Texas Instruments. Thank you sponsors!
Thank the sponsors and please read between the lines of the HaD prize rules:
1) Prefer the use of Atmel, Freescale, TI, and PIC parts. Use Mouser part numbers in your BOM…Digikey will be penalized.
2) Using Intel, ST Micro wil gain you no points and especially avoid FTDI. HaD hosts the anti-FTDI headquarters.
3) It’s unclear if you still have to be “connected” but make sure you are just to stay safe…any ESP board will do!
Lol wut…That said Atmel & Freescale are personal faves anyway. But they’re all good, my favorite 4 companies, would love to work at any of them.
FYI, the Freescale, MC, and TI logos disappear on the dark page background. You might want to change to a non-transparent image format so your sponsors are actually visible.
Is Dave Jones even contributing something to the hacking-culture other then open his mail on camera?
It’s a real shame, his Youtube videos used to be educational, now it’s just mailbags and teardowns (a.k.a. “let’s have a quick look inside something and read what’s on the chips”)
Short answer: nope.
Long answer: noooope.
His old stuff is gold, but I agree that his new videos are less interesting/educational. He said on the Amp Hour that he’s hiring a guy to help with the boring stuff so he can focus on making new, better content. Looking forward for that.
gold if you don’t mind him nattering on for 50% of the time.
The frustrating part is he’s really informative and knowledgeable. Most videos could be cut in half if not by 2/3
How about more open judging this year, by publishing the scores each judge gave to each project?
It’s great to have some feedback and know if you suck at making a cool project or at documentation. Of course, we should all be aware that the scores would be subjective as most of the criteria is subjective.
One judge that you absolutely, positively HAVE to have if possible, is Paul Wheaton, the ‘Bad Boy of Permaculture’ (i.e. a way of life that is permanently self-sustainable). Yes, he is probably a lot more ‘earthy’ than your other judges, and his ego seems to have a hard time getting through doorways, but you can’t fault his passion or knowledge. His 2013 keynote speech gives a ‘brief’ overview of the state of what’s possible.