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Hacktoberfest Hack Day Kota Batam x Batam Innovation Center

Hacktoberfest 2026

Saturday October 31, 2026
11:00AM to 4:00PM UTC+07
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State Polytechnic Batam
Jl. Ahmad Yani
Level 2, Technopreneur Centre
Kota Batam, kepulauan Riau 29461
Indonesia
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Event Description

Join us for Hacktoberfest Hack Day Kota Batam x Batam Innovation Center, a one-day, in-person Hacktoberfest event organised with the support of Batam State Polytechnic, where participants will build with open-source or open-weight AI, submit through OrganizerHQ Challenges, and compete in the Best Open-Source AI Project challenge. Bring your laptop and your curiosity!

This hackathon is focussed on Google Gemma.
Google supports Major League Hacking and the Hack Days program with AI tools for experimentation and rapid prototyping. This category gives hackers a chance to build with Gemma, Google's family of lightweight, open models.

Best Use of Gemma 4
It’s time to see how much you can build with a lightweight, open model. Gemma 4 packs multimodal intelligence into an open-weights model that you can access through the Gemini API. Gemma 4 can help you:

Work with text and images to create an assistant that understands more of what users share

Build a focused AI tool for learning, creativity, productivity, or your community

Experiment with an open model while using the Gemini API to move quickly from an idea to a working prototype.

Team size minimum 1 and maximum 2. Note that the MLH system does not handle team formation. Each team member will register individually and one of the two team members will submit the project

Bring your idea to life… what will you build with Gemma 4 today?

Happy hacking!

Who can attend?

Locations have different requirements for who can attend. This location is open to the following:

Schedule

10am Registration
11am Build starts
3pm Build ends, Demo starts
4pm event ends

Additional Information

Hackathon Rules
These are standard competition rules used at MLH Member Event Hackathons.

Spirit of the Competition

Remember that hackathons are like marathons. Some people go to compete, but most people take part to better themselves and have fun. Regardless of why you're at a hackathon, ensure you're upholding the hacker spirit and Community Values by collaborating with other teams, helping beginners, and having fun.

Hackathon Rules
All participants agree to uphold the MLH Code of Conduct to keep hackathons safe, welcoming spaces for everyone.
MLH Hackathons are primarily for students, but may also include professionals. MLH chooses to define students broadly. Anyone who attends a traditional school, college, or university, and those in bootcamps and similar programs are students. Those who graduated within the last 12 months are also considered students.
Organizers, volunteers, judges, sponsors, or anyone in any other privileged position at the event should not participate as a hacker.
All team members should actively participate in the event.
Teams should leverage advice and support from organizers, volunteers, sponsors, and each other.
All work on a project should be done during the period of the hackathon.
Teams can use an idea they had before the event.
Teams can work on ideas that have already been done. Hacks do not have to be “innovative”. If somebody wants to work on a common idea, they should be allowed to do so and should be judged on the quality of their hack. These days it’s hard to find something that’s fully original and teams might not know an idea has been done before anyway.
Teams can work on an idea that they have worked on before (as long as they do not re-use code or other project materials).
Teams can use libraries, frameworks, or open-source code in their projects. Working on a project before the event and open-sourcing it for the sole purpose of using the code during the event is against the spirit of the rules and is not allowed.
Teams must stop hacking once the time is up. However, teams are allowed to debug and make small fixes to their programs after time is up. e.g. If during demoing your hack you find a bug that breaks your application and the fix is only a few lines of code, it's okay to fix that. Making large changes or adding new features is not allowed.
Your code must be available publicly (ideally in a git repository).
Your code must remain public post event to be eligible for prizes. If your repo and video are not public, new winners may be selected.
Teams can be disqualified from the competition at the organizers' discretion. Reasons might include but are not limited to breaking the Competition Rules, breaking the Code of Conduct, or other unsporting behaviour.
AI Tools and Code Gen
Artificial intelligence and large language models have dramatically impacted how people create applications and write code. MLH encourages our community to learn these technologies and leverage them. However, it’s essential to continue to follow the spirit of the hackathon. We strongly believe that the best projects will leverage AI, but ultimately be created by humans.

Teams may use AI to assist them while coding, utilizing tools such as code completion, code generation, image generation, or other similar tools.
Teams should be honest and transparent about the AI code tools they used. This includes listing them in their project submissions and answering questions when talking to organizers, judges, and other hackers.
MLH Digital Event Submission Rules
For fully digital hackathons that MLH hosts, hackathon submissions are subject to additional rules.

We require all teams to submit a 2 minute or less demo video. Your video must be created the weekend of the hackathon.
Your video must remain public post event to be eligible for prizes. If your video is not public, new winners may be selected.
Your demo video must state the name of the hackathon at the beginning of the video. Ex. "Hey I'm Sam and this is my demo for CorgiHacks."
You must have completed all registration steps for the hackathon.
You are not allowed to submit your project to other hackathons.
You can not submit a project that includes prior work.
Demos
After hacking finishes, teams will show their projects to each other and to the judges. Either via a prerecorded video (typically at digital events or live demos at physical hackathons).

You are strongly encouraged to present a demo of what you have built. Pitches and presentations are discouraged. You are not judged on the quality of your pitch or the quality of your idea. As you are judged on what you built, you'll only hurt yourself by not showing a demo.

You are encouraged to present what you have done even if your hack is broken or you weren’t able to finish. It's okay if you didn't finish your hack—that happens all the time! Completion is only one part of the judging criteria, so you might still do well.

Demoing is not just about the competition. It's a chance to share with others what you learned and what you tried to build—that's what hacking's all about! For being courageous enough to demo, you'll receive an event specific "I Demoed" sticker from MLH. In the case that you don't have anything to demo, you can give a presentation about what you tried and what you learned. Hearing what other people learned is interesting and inspiring for other attendees.

Judging Criteria
Teams will be judged on these four criteria for MLH digital events or MLH categories at an in person event. Judges will weigh the criteria equally. During judging, participants should try to describe what they did for each criterion in their project.

Technology: How technically impressive was the hack? Was the technical problem the team tackled difficult? Did it use a particularly clever technique or did it use many different components? Did the technology involved make you go "Wow"?

Design: Did the team put thought into the user experience? How well designed is the interface? For a website, this might be about how beautiful the CSS or graphics are. For a hardware project, it might be more about how good the human-computer interaction is (e.g. is it easy to use or does it use a cool interface?).

Completion: Does the hack work? Did the team achieve everything they wanted?

Learning: Did the team stretch themselves? Did they try to learn something new? What kind of projects have they worked on before? If a team which always does virtual reality projects decides to switch up and try doing a mobile app instead, that exploration should be rewarded.

These criteria will guide judges but ultimately judges are free to make decisions based on their gut feeling of which projects are the most impressive and most deserving.

It's important to note that these judging criteria do not include:

How good your code is. It doesn't matter if your code is messy, or not well commented, or uses inefficient algorithms. Hacking is about playing around, making mistakes, and learning new things. If your code isn't production ready, we're not going to mark you down.

How well you pitch. Hacking is about building and learning, not about selling.

How good the idea is. Again, hackathons aren't about coming up with innovative ideas. It's about building and learning.

How well the project solves a problem. You can build something totally useless and as long as you're learning and having fun, that's a good hack! Sometimes a pointless project is one of the best hacks!

So don't worry about coming up with the next big idea or building the next big thing. You'll have plenty of time for that outside the hackathon. Just focus on learning, having fun, and making new friends. At the end of the day, the skills you learn and the friends you make might lead to the next big thing, but you don't have to do that to win a hackathon.

Remember!
The competition is just a part of the hackathon. To make the most of the event, try something new, teach others, and make new friends!

Links & Resources

Gemma 4 Resources

General hub and documentation overview.

Open link →
Gemma Quickstart

Getting started guide and rapid API setup.

Open link →
Gemma API Docs

Endpoint specifications and API references.

Open link →
Gemma Beginner Guide

Step-by-step introduction for new developers.

Open link →
WoKwi - World's most advanced ESP32 simulator - Online Arduino Simulator

A faster way to prototype Uno, Mega and Nano projects

Open link →
Arduino® UNO Q Board

The Arduino UNO Q unlocks a new level of performance for the Arduino ecosystem, blending robust computing power from Qualcomm's advanced Dragonwing™ QRB2210 MPU running a full Debian Linux OS with upstream support, and the real-time responsiveness of a dedicated STM32U585 MCU running Arduino sketches over Zephyr OS - all on a single-board computer. The Arduino® UNO Q integrates the Qualcomm® QRB2210 Microprocessor (MPU), running a full Debian-based Linux environment, with the STMicroelectronics® STM32U585 Microcontroller (MCU) built on Arm® Cortex®-M33 architecture, all within the compact UNO form factor. This dual-architecture platform combines high-performance computing with deterministic real-time control, delivering the power and versatility needed for modern AI at the edge applications. Unlock hybrid development with Arduino App Lab, seamlessly uniting Python applications, Arduino sketches, and AI models in a single workflow. From AI-powered vision and sound solutions that react intelligently to their environment to sophisticated smart home systems, UNO Q with Arduino App Lab delivers next-generation embedded innovation to makers, educators, and professionals alike. At the same time, developers enjoy true freedom of choice: program the MCU subsystem with the Arduino IDE, or integrate Arduino CLI into existing workflows with popular editors like VS Code.

Open link →

Hosted by

Rajesh Acharya
Sachidananda Karkala
Krishna Prasad

CSR inititiative by PT IPAS Ventures Indonesia to promote innovation and startup culture in Batam Island and the region

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