Today, we're kicking off the latest DEV hackathon in partnership with New Relic: Hack the Planet 🎉

In today's world, climate change is much more than a vague threat — it's an ever-present reality. As humans continue to impact the environment and a related financial and technological gap persists, vulnerable populations are being hit the hardest and fastest. The planet needs our help!

That's why we're partnering with New Relic for a new hackathon that's all about climate change and the game-changing innovations we're capable of as developers.

From now through February 28th, we're challenging you to build an application using New Relic's recently-released New Relic One platform across three climate change-related categories:

• Science and Observation: Utilize New Relic to observe science phenomena (polar ice cap reduction, COVID-19 cases, CO2 emissions, etc.) around the world with the power of open source data.
• New Year, New Resources: Implement New Relic into an existing application you've built and add a climate-centric feature.
• Out of this World: - Build an awesome application using New Relic that doesn't fit into the other two categories above. With this category, we are looking for fun, innovative and truly "out there" submissions. NOTE: This category will include a required short essay prompt surrounding observability and climate change. This prompt will be located at the bottom of the submission template shared below.

What is New Relic?

In short, New Relic delivers a simple yet powerful platform to give the world’s developers an instant view of the performance of their software.

New Relic One includes everything you need to support observability, with a unified user experience and dramatically simplified packaging - made for ALL developers.

Observability tools are a great way to supercharge your development workflow to identify issues and tackle them in a timely, organized manner. This is exactly the attitude we need when fighting the threat of climate change!

Learn more about New Relic’s unique observability offerings through their documentation here.

Why Participate?

New Relic’s Hack the Planet contest on DEV is a great way to experiment with New Relic's efficient observability software — and step away with a shiny new app under your belt. More importantly, it is an opportunity to use your talent/skills to help our planet.

Oh, and there's a pretty sweet lineup of rewards if you need more convincing 😉

Prizes

3 Grand Prize Winners (one in each category):

• $5,000 USD gift card or equivalent
• $350 USD credit to the DEV Shop
• New Relic Swag Pack
• DEV Sticker Pack
• “Hack the Planet” grand prize profile badge on The Relicans community
• Your choice of eco-friendly New Relic swag, OR a donation to the Environmental Defense Fund
• A tree planted in your name

Runner-Up Prizes (10 Total):

• $500 USD gift card or equivalent
• $150 USD credit to the DEV Shop
• New Relic Swag Pack
• DEV Sticker Pack
• “Hack the Planet” runner-up profile badge on The Relicans community
• - Your choice of eco-friendly New Relic swag, OR a donation to the Environmental Defense Fund
• A tree planted in your name

Participants (with a valid project):

• DEV Sticker Pack
• “Hack the Planet” participant profile badge on The Relicans community
• Your choice of eco-friendly New Relic prize pack, OR a donation to the Environmental Defense Fund
• A tree planted in your name

Introducing The Relicans Community from New Relic

This week, New Relic launched a new and dedicated community space (built on Forem ) called The Relicans, which will serve as a homebase for users and enthusiasts, as well as anyone interested in learning more about observability as it relates to software. The Relicans community is worth checking out and joining if you are a developer that’s interested in gaining more insight into how your applications function, connecting with the New Relic team directly, and building efficient, production-grade apps.

Participants in this hackathon will be submitting their final projects and asking any hackathon-related questions through The Relicans community.

How to submit your app and enter Hack the Planet

Sign up for an account on The Relicans community (and say hi in the welcome thread!)

• Create a New Relic account if you don't already have one
• Create an app using New Relic that falls under one of the categories listed above
• Use one of the following permissive licenses for your code: MIT, Apache, BSD-2, BSD-3, or Commons Clause.
• Use this post template to officially submit your application for the hackathon on The Relicans community. Make sure you read specific instructions for your category!
• Be sure to publish your submission on The Relicans community between January 28 and February 28 (11:59 PM PT)), and provide your app’s URL, screenshot, description, and source code.

Bonus points for…

Showing your findings after implementing New Relic One in a screencast (we recommend Loom). If you want guidance on how this could look we have plenty of videos on learn.newrelic.com.

** ”Bonus points” means we will give submissions with these criteria priority when selecting winners.

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.

Community Support

To ask any questions about New Relic throughout the hackathon, leave a comment in the New Relic Forem help thread

New Relic is also offering a community discussion thread where you can share your ideas and get suggestions on improvements from the DEV community as you build your app. We encourage you to share your progress along the way to generate more excitement and benefit from additional community feedback suggestions.

Important Dates 🗓

• January 28, 2021: Hackathon Begins
• February 28, 2021: Hackathon Submission Due at 11:59 PM PST
• March 8, 2021: Hackathon Winners Announced

We’ll be keeping our eyes eagerly on The Relicans community to see the amazing climate-protecting apps you build. Happy coding!