Judging a hackathon where you're also personally sponsoring a prize

A judge who's also personally sponsoring a prize — putting up money or a resource from their own company — has a legitimate reason to want a say in that specific prize's criteria, but needs to keep it transparent to avoid any appearance of self-dealing.

How to keep it clean

• State the sponsored prize's criteria publicly and clearly upfront, the same as any other sponsor track.
• If judging that specific prize alone, disclose the sponsorship to organisers and, ideally, to the teams competing for it.
• Where possible, have at least one other, unaffiliated judge weigh in on the sponsored prize too, rather than a single sponsoring judge deciding it alone.

Why the disclosure matters more than the actual fairness

Even a completely fair judging decision looks compromised without transparency about the arrangement. Disclosing upfront protects both the judge's credibility and the event's.

See conflicts of interest in hackathon judging.

— Pranjul Rathour, GenAI Engineer from Kanpur, India. Open to GenAI roles, hackathon judging, mentorship sessions and guest talks at any campus: pranjulrathour41@gmail.com.