Program dates and venue
The Ideathon will occur over a 48 hour period on Zoom. There will be a different Zoom link for each of the three days.
The organizing team will be available on Zoom, Slack and other platforms during the following hours:
- February 19, 2021: 5pm – 8pm
- February 20, 2021: 8am – 8pm
- February 21, 2021: 8am – 5pm
Eligibility requirements
This event is open to all (including community members not affiliated with Tufts).
Participants are encouraged to come in as individuals. Pre-formed teams are not required but welcome as this is an opportunity to receive intensive feedback and mentorship by our domain experts.
Tracks
Domain experts from the community will present problem prompts in 3 tracks:
1. Environmental Sustainability and Climate Justice: Towards a cleaner, more verdant future for the planet
In this track, domain experts who work in sustainability and climate justice will present problem prompts from their work on the ground. Speakers will present real life case studies that will help you understand how big problems manifest in real life. These prompts are meant to spark your imagination and help you pick a problem worth solving and come up with ideas to solve it through innovation and entrepreneurship.
2. Equitable access to Basic needs: Food, Healthcare & more
In this track, domain experts who work in Food and nutrition, healthcare, health and wellness and more will present problem prompts from their work on the ground. Speakers will present real life case studies that will help you understand how big problems manifest in real life. These prompts are meant to spark your imagination and help you pick a problem worth solving and come up with ideas to solve it through innovation and entrepreneurship.
3. Fostering civil discourse: Enabling dialog through education, media and more
In this track, domain experts who work in mission-driven enterprises in education, media, government and more will present problem prompts from their work on the ground. Speakers will present real life case studies that will help you understand how big problems manifest in real life. These prompts are meant to spark your imagination and help you pick a problem worth solving and come up with ideas to solve it through innovation and entrepreneurship.
These prompts are meant to spark ideation by participants to choose problems they want to solve – participants are free to choose problems that do not fit any of these tracks as well.
(Virtual) Team formation
Participants can come in as individuals or pre-formed teams. For individuals, there will be two facilitated networking and team formation session after our domain experts present problem prompts. People with ideas can pitch to find teammates. People with skills can pitch to join teams.
Afterwards, we will encourage people with ideas to create channels on Slack and/or email for other participants to find them quickly and connect.
Team formation will need to happen on Day 1. Team rosters will be due on Day 2. Solo teams are ok although we strongly encourage participants to form teams of 2-5 to make quick progress.
Technology platforms and links
The virtual event will be run on the primary platforms listed on the event landing page.
https://sites.tufts.edu/entrepreneurship/ideathon2020/landing2021/
Key platforms include:
- Zoom – primary virtual event platform
- Slack – primary real time communication and team formation platform
- Google drive and associated documents – team rosters, collaboration documents, final presentations in Google Slides
Participants are also welcome to use the self service entrepreneurship education resources to learn entrepreneurship skills and move their idea forward.
https://sites.tufts.edu/entrepreneurship/resources/
Primary communication and collaboration channels
Email and Slack will be used as the primary communication channels for this event.
A Google Drive will be set up with files to help people collaborate with google spreadsheets and google docs.
We will also send broadcast announcements to participants via the email they used to sign up on Eventbrite.
Mentorship
During Days 2 and 3, domain experts and entrepreneurship coaches will be available to take walk in meetings during office hours. Participants can either ask their questions in the mentor booth on hopin, or connect with a mentor and then move to a video conferencing solution of their choice for a 1×1 conversation. Mentors will also be available to answer quick questions on Slack throughout the day.
Pitching workshop and pitch practice
On Day 2, we will host a quick pitching workshop to help participants put together a great 90 second pitch, which is the format for the final pitch competition. We will host a pitch practice clinic right after the workshop for any team who would like to practice their pitches.
There will be more pitch practice opportunities on Day 3.
Final presentations and rubric
On Day 3, all teams who wish to present will be called on to deliver a 90 second pitch to a panel of judges, followed by a 90 second Q&A period. There will additionally be an audience vote (teams may not vote for their own team).
All teams who wish to pitch will present in a single track. Team presentation order will be randomized. Presentation order will be posted by 12pm on Day 3.
Judges will choose winners based on the following rubric.
- Problem: Does the team understand the problem and target customer?
- Solution: Does the proposed solution solve the problem in a unique manner compared to the alternative?
- Money: Is the proposed business model or deployment plan financially sustainable?
- Impact: How big is the problem? How is the world a better place if the team solves this problem?
- Team: Did the team convince the judges they are the right people to solve this problem?
- Presentation: Was the team effective in presenting their venture?
- Wildcard: Did anything about the team particularly impress you?
Judging process
Judges’ choices will be based on individual scores that each judge awards to teach team according to the provided rubric, as well as a deliberation discussion amongst the judges.
Audience vote will be administered via PollAnywhere.com.
Prizes
There will be 4 prizes, to be distributed as Amazon gift certificates:
- 3 Judges’ choices: First place will earn $500, second place will earn $300, third place will earn $200. Each winning team must submit a full list of team members and their emails. We will divide the prize evenly across all team members.
- The audience favorite will earn $500, which will also be distribute as Amazon gift certificates divided evenly across all team members. If the audience favorite is also a judges favorite, we will move down to the team with the next highest number of votes to ensure four different teams will receive a prize.
Additionally, we will run a raffle to choose a random participant to receive a gift certificate valued at $95, donated by our event partner Warby Parker (a Tufts alumni company). The participant must be part of a team presenting in the final pitch competition to be eligible to enter into the raffle.
Winners for all four prizes as well as the Warby Parker raffle will be announced by the end of the last day.
We will contact the main contact for each team to issue the prize after the event is over.