2019 SXSW Hackathon Announces Judges and Sponsors

2018 Hackathon - Photo by Randy & Jackie Smith

The SXSW Hackathon returns for it’s sixth annual 24-hour coding marathon. The round-the-clock hacking will take place at the Omni Austin Hotel Downtown on March 12-13. This year, developers, coders, and tech creatives are asked to work in teams to create technology focused on key topics of interest to the SXSW community — including Music, VR, AR, AI, and Blockchain. Each year, the SXSW Hackathon asks participants to solve problems through collaboration, build and utilize new tools, and expand the boundaries of existing technology.

The unique atmosphere of SXSW inspires creativity and innovative thought and pushes coders to work together to elevate their projects. At this year’s Hackathon, participants from the U.S. will be joined by a host of international developers from Japan, Mexico, Germany, and Canada. Interested hackers from around the world can apply here through March 5.

Participating hackers will have access to one-of-a-kind toolkit to complete their task, including guidance from our official mentors, public APIs and tools, and SXSW’s partner APIs and SDKs. The three winning teams will be awarded cash and sponsor prizes by our panel of industry judges. The Hackathon Final Presentations and Awards event will take place on Wednesday, March 13 at 1:30pm. and is open to all SXSW badgeholders. Winners will also be invited to join the SXSW Hackathon Incubator from March 14-15, where they will fine-tune their projects with guidance from industry mentors. Two of the top three winning teams from the 2018 SXSW Hackathon went on to launch companies based on their projects.

This year’s judges include Scot Barbour, VP Production & Innovation of Sony Pictures Entertainment; Josh Constine, Editor-At-Large at TechCrunch, Louise-Marie Marguet, CEO of EmoJam, Lauren Vitek, Founding Employee at TravelBank, Jon Gottfried, Co-Founder of Major League Hacking, Andrew Dubber, Director of Music Tech Fest, and Tuhin Roy, Senior Vice President New Digital Business and Innovation at UMG.

The 2019 SXSW Hackathon is presented by R9B, a provider of advanced cybersecurity services.

Additional SXSW Hackathon sponsors include Buzz Angle Music, Capitol360, Cox Automotive, Devpost, Eluvio, Kony, Native Instruments, RealtimeBoard, R3, Show Sparker, and Universal Music Group.

Produced in conjunction with Travis Laurendine of CODEMKRS.

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2018 SXSW Hackathon - Photo by Randy & Jackie Smith

By Hayden Bagot

02/20/2019