There's a scene in Jerry Maguire (1996) that has stuck with me.
In a private moment, he has an epiphany about the shortcomings of how his firm handles their business. He presents his revelations to senior leadership where he's summarily stripped of his position and prestige.
He's in the middle of being removed from the bustling office space and he stops to plead, "Who's coming with me?"
Everyone loved him. He was big-time. He had the life that everyone at the office envied, and yet, in a deep moment of need, no one would stand with him.
Walking the path of moral conviction can be a lonely path.
If you live long and are brave enough to choose the road less traveled, you will likely experience the Maguire effect.
I shared my vision of divergent-talented teams working together to build real viable products in the crucible of the hackathon with Tippi Fifestarr shortly after we met as fellow core organizers at ETH Chicago.
It's like putting together a DnD team. You don't want a team full of bards or one made of nothing but warriors. The best groups have a strong mix of personas that complement one another's strengths and weaknesses. Hearing all this, he said, "That's awesome and we need to make that happen."
The CyberJam
Following the experience of ETH Chicago, Tippi and I felt like we could birth a new form of hackathon by being extremely intentional about building teams of divergent talents. Thus was born the CyberJam.
The CyberJam, like real jam, is awesome because it combines many flavors, each wonderful on their own, but together creates an amazing composition that adds value to everything it touches.
We're fortunate that a small army of volunteers and a long list of sponsors also found this vision inspirational and desirable.
The Sponsors
Our core sponsors include:
imnotArt and Humancore, who are each creating menus for our IRL hackers to select from.
The menu is a short list of project ideas that our core sponsors think are important to their ecosystem.
Each sponsor will choose a dedicated IRL team who will build a product or service inspired by the menu. The hackers own their work and can carry it forward into the marketplace after the event. The sponsors win a new project that's built on top of their ecosystem.
A prize pool of $3,000 will be split between the two IRL teams, based on the culmination of each project.
We also have a number of side quests provided by our tier-two sponsors that our online hackers will be able to choose from. These sponsors include four sponsors at our $500 level:
Vennity, Ceptor Club, Buidl Guidl, and dAppling Network
We have two additional awards for $100, each:
The imnotArt favorite online project
The Cyberjam favorite online project
The Hackers
We have 10 IRL hackers who will be matched into two teams of 5 and a growing list of online hackers who will compete for more than $2,000 in prizes.
We're excited to meet our hackers and see the projects they build over the next week.
If you want to hack, click on this link ➡️ and apply by midnight Saturday, November 11.
To learn more, I'll be posting updates here as the event moves forward.