Announcing our first hackathon on The Relicans community, in partnership with DEV — Hack the Planet 🎉
What
Organizers at New Relic have partnered up with DEV to bring you a month-long software development challenge, right here on The Relicans community.
Your mission? To build an application that will help combat climate change using New Relic’s observability tools. We’ll be picking two tiers of winners across three categories to earn awesome prize packs.
Why
As a provider of software observability tools, New Relic helps developers build applications that are more efficient, organized, and easier to analyze. We are committed to doing everything in our power to use these tools to help address the mounting threat of climate change.
But we can’t do it alone: Just as the planet can’t be protected without universal commitment, New Relic is nothing without users like you.
What else? Prizes 🤑 While the motivation of this contest is to encourage you to build amazing apps that have the power to fight the negative effects of climate change, we have to mention the amazing suite of prizes you stand to win. We’re awarding three grand prize winners and 10 runners-up $10,000 in total cash prizes and lots of other stuff, too including credits to the DEV Shop eco-friendly swag from New Relic, and a tree planted in your name.
When
January 28, 2021 — Hack the Planet begins!
February 28, 2021 @ 11:59 PM (7:59 AM UTC) — Deadline to submit your project to The Relicans community
March 8, 2021 — Winners, announced on DEV!
How
Read the official rules and important details for participating in Hack the Planet in this post on DEV.
Use this template to submit your project.
Spoiler: You’ll be building an observability-powered application using New Relic in one of three climate-centered categories and publishing your submission here on The Relicans community.
Additional Rules
NO PURCHASE NECESSARY. Open only to ages 18+. Contest entry period ends February 28, 2021, 11:59 PM PST/ 8 AM UTC on March 1, 2021. Contest is void where prohibited or restricted by law or regulation. All entries must be new projects and created during the hackathon period. For Official Rules, see Contest Announcement Page and General Contest Official Rules.
We can’t wait to see your submissions and learn how you plan to use observability to hack the threat of climate change 💚
Discussion (42)
I have made the post on my project but have received no response regarding it till now.
Hi there! We won't be responding directly to your projects — instead, we'll be announcing winners in a few weeks. Thanks for participating!
So when is the final date and when will I get the participation prize of stickers?
The deadline for submissions is February 28th. It's hard to say when you'd receive the stickers since shipping times vary but we will begin awarding prizes a week or so following the final submission deadline.
Hey Gracie, in the additional rules, it says that the entry period ends on 8th March. So, did the end date for submission get extended to 8th March?
Hey there! Hmmm I'm not seeing this on the additional rules page — the contest entry period ends February 28, 2021, 11:59 PM PST/ 8 AM UTC on March 1, 2021. 😊
dev.to/page/hack-the-planet-rules
This is a little confusing:

Sorry for the confusion! I responded above. This has been corrected.
Hey, the deadline is gone and I haven't received any response, why so?
We are not responding people individually. We will be announcing the winners, and contacting anyone who has won a prize after March 8th
Just a reminder that you will only get the participation prize if you have submitted a VALID project. So make sure you used New Relic and your post explains how you used it.
hey, I haven't received any response till now regarding my participation, what you mean by a valid project?
The results will be announced on March 8th I believe, and a valid project is a project that followed all the rules, like using New Relic for example
I am interested in participating in this, just wanted to clarify a few things:
Am I correct in my understanding?
Or should the observability provided by New Relic somehow contribute towards understanding climate change directly?
What you have broken down is one way of doing it! We've also seen people create errors/issues for themselves within their app and show screenshots of the New Relic dashboards observing those errors or alerts.
Okay. Got it.
What I was thinking is, that the New Relic dashboard should directly parse the results of the APIs being called and provide observability over climate change data (like temperature, pma etc) on the New Relic dashboards itself.
But from what you explained, I guess its perfectly okay to build a full-fledged app that renders (in the form of any kind of visualization on the frontend) some weather data which is fetched from some open APIs, and then New Relic provides observability and reporting over the meta attributes of those APIs (like health, appdex, failure rate, etc) and not necessarily the result of those APIs directly.
Am I correct in what I have understood?
Sorry just saw this!! Yes you are correct in your understanding. I hope I'm not too late. Good luck!
Hey Danny, thanks for the reply.
In the post, it says the duration of the contest is till 28th February but in additional rules, it says that the entry period ends on 8th March.
So is the submission date extended till 8th March or is it a typo?
March 8 is when the winners will be announced, so the 28th is still the deadline!
Okay. You might want to change this in the "additional rules" section of the article then:

So sorry for the confusion there! This was a typo. We've updated it!
Regarding the third category, it's not clear to me what NOTE: This category will include a required short essay prompt surrounding observability and climate change. means.
Does it mean that I can build something not related to climate change, but then write an essay that relates observability to climate change?
Hey Peter! Thank you for reaching out. We still want the project to be related to climate change but this option allows for more creative freedom on your end. The essay prompt focuses on what you learned about software as it relates to saving our planet and how observability tools can assist people in that process. We will change the language so people are aware of the prompt initially. Thank you!
So just to clarify, if it's 100% unrelated to climate change (but uses New Relic), it wouldn't be eligible?
Yes, we would like all projects to relate to climate change 🙂
Hey Emma, I apologize but I misread. The third option can be unrelated to climate change but you will be asked to write a short essay in response to a climate change prompt.
Do you expect participants to use a certain number of New Relic's services i.e. APM, browser, mobile etc?
Or is it enough to just build a Hello World app like this?
Not saying that I will submit a simple app like this, but the app in the tutorial doesn't seem to utilize any monitoring or observability tools from New Relic, and I wonder if that is eligible.
Hello, I will double check this, but while you do not have to use more than one New Relic service I believe that you have the use Observability.
🎉 🎉 🎉
This is awesome! Can't wait to submit my application!
Just got done with my Hack The Planet submission😄😄😄😄.
Congrats!
Thanks!
I am interested and would love to take part. However am having issues creating a new relic developer account to learn more about new relic
Hello Abednego!
You can sign up for a New Relic account here: newrelic.com/signup
If you having trouble reporting data you might find some answers on our support forum: discuss.newrelic.com/
Good luck with your project!
Hey! I just submitted the VicTrees app for:
My interpretation of the multiple entries rule is that each category is treated in insolation and multiple entries are allowed. Would you be able to confirm if the same app can be submitted as 2 different categories?
You can check out our submission here:
Hackathon Submission: Climate Clock Discussions
Bobby Iliev 🌳🌲 ・ Feb 21 ・ 2 min read
woot!
Woot! Really excited for this. 🙌
Is the last date for submission extended to March 8th?
Nope, the last date of the submission is 28th February. March 8th is when the winners are announced