A hackathon works when teams know what to build, what counts as finished and how they will be judged. This ten-slide deck opens the event with a welcome, four themes, the rules, the schedule, the judging criteria and the logistics, so every participant hears the same answers at the same time. Each slide is built to be read in a few seconds from the back of a room.

The sample follows a fictional 36-hour event run by Candlemas Cloud, with 18 teams, four themes and judging weighted to impact, feasibility, technical quality and presentation. Replace the purpose, challenges, times and weights with your own, publish the scoring before kickoff, and name who decides which projects continue after the demos.