NowForum: The CreateNow rules of engagement

[SimonMorris]

There is less than a month to go until the ServiceNow European roadshow visits Paris, Mainz, and London for the NowForum events from 8-10 October 2013.

More details are being released about the forums — most of the content will be presented by our customers passing on their experiences of transforming IT within their organisations using the ServiceNow platform. And in local language for ease of consumption.

And of course, alongside the NowForum events we also have the CreateNow Custom Application Hackathon where customers and partners will show-case their skills by building custom applications on the ServiceNow platform in a limited amount of time.



It's a great opportunity to show how capable the platform is and what a talented and creative community we are a part of.

The CreateNow Application Hackathon rules

We need to share the rules for the competition. Our aim, as the organisers of the competition, is to provide a fun experience for all. And having clear rules and a transparent judging process are really important in any competition.



The rules of the competition are:

1. Teams are a maximum of 5 people.
   
   Register for the event here for Frankfurt, Paris and London. You can enter a smaller team but 5 is the maximum
2. Bring only your ideas on the day
   
   
   
   We want to see what can be built in the time allowed. So plan ahead and prototype your application if you wish. But you can't bring any code, update sets or custom UIs on the day.
   
   
   
   At the start of the competition you'll have your own instance running the Calgary version of ServiceNow and you'll start to build your application from scratch.
3. The duration of the Hackathon is 6 hours.
   
   
   
   We'll start at 1000hrs and you can code up to 1600hrs at which point the judging panel will score your application. We'll demo the applications to the NowForum attendees and announce a winner at 1700hrs
4. You'll need to prepare a quick overview in Powerpoint to assist the judges in understanding your application
   
   
   
   Because the judges are remote you'll need to give them an overview of your application in a Powerpoint document. Feel free to bring this along with you to the hackathon.
5. You'll get open and transparent feedback from the judges
   
   
   
   We've built a judging application on a ServiceNow instance so the scoring process is fair and repeatable in each location. Teams will get feedback from the judges but we've weighted the scoring to make sure there is a single winner in each location, and a single winner overall across all 3 locations.
   
   
   
   The scoring criteria will be fair and transparent — but we'll keep the algorithm that generates the final score to ourselves

The judges

Because the NowForum roadshow moves from Paris to Mainz to London on consecutive days we wanted to make sure we had the same people available to judge each teams entry.



So the judges are all ServiceNow employees from across the company and will be based in their local offices on a conference call during the scoring process.

How the entries will be scored

Our scoring process has a weighted system to make sure we can quickly determine a winner in each competition.



We'll be judging the entries on the following 6 criteria:

1. Usability
   
   
   
   What is the experience like for users of the application? We'll score you on the usability of your application.
2. Originality
   
   
   
   How creative and original is the application? Surprise us! We'll score you on how original we think the application is.
3. Relevance
   
   
   
   Would other people want to use this? The application you build absolutely does not have to be business or ITSM-centric, but is the application useful to other people or is it demoware?
   
   
   
   We'll score you on how we think other customers or the Internet-at-large would receive this application
4. Can we tell it's a ServiceNow custom app?
   
   
   
   Our platform can be used to serve completely custom User Interfaces and you'd never know it is ServiceNow behind the scenes.
   
   
   
   That's cool — but we like to know it's our platform we're looking at. Give us a form or a list somewhere.
   
   
   
   We'll score you down if we can't tell that ServiceNow is powering the application.
   
5. Does it use the platform?
   
   
   
   Our platform has a wide range of capabilities — notifications, security, forms, lists, social and so on.
   
   
   
   We'll score you on how well you utilize the platform functionality.
   

That's it! Hopefully, a simple set of rules and judging criteria.

CreateNow: Sign Up NOW

If you have any questions please leave a comment here or in the CreateNow Google+ community.



And don't forget that we'll be tweeting and posting pictures and video from the competition on the day.



Enter your team for the CreateNow Custom Application Hackathon today! Get ready for fame and glory