Launch Hackathon had the best process of the dozen-or-so large hackathons I've been a part of. They split the judging into two rounds: a 4 minute face-to-face i

Launch Hackathon had the best process of the dozen-or-so large hackathons I've been a part of. They split the judging into two rounds: a 4 minute face-to-face interview with 2 mentors (2-minute presentation, 2-minutes for questions), and if you were the top team in your group (10 teams per interview group) then you made it on stage for the grand final pitch to the audience and a judging panel of 6. Things they did well: * Each team received a score and brief feedback afterwards. (Ours was "7/10, it looks like you've solved a real problem for that industry" - so not extensive but our effort was validate, which is psychologically important for the end of a weekend hackathon - especially when you don't make the final round : ) * 20 mentors for preliminary round meant that everyone had their pitch and the process went smoothly and ran on time (seemingly a rare occurrence for these events). * 3 wild-cards. (13 teams eventually pitched) * Face-to-face interviews. A nice change to the theater of pitching an audience. * Grand final was short instead of a 2-hour fiasco where everybody loses interest.