This year it was a really strong competition and deciding the winners was quite a hard challenge on our end. Thank you to everyone who participated this year, to the over 100 judges who helped us with scoring apps, and to the MIT App Inventor staff and students who reviewed and ranked all the finalists in order to identify the winners. Congratulations to everyone who won! We hope that all of the participants enjoyed working on their projects and that you'll continue to do great things.
Cheers,
Evan W. Patton, Ph.D.
Lead Software Engineer, MIT App Inventor
On behalf of the MIT App Inventor team and the 2021 MIT App Inventor Appathon for Good Organizing Committee
Congrats to all the winners, but I feel like it was unfair for many teams, like my team for the time limit set for the demo video. The time limit was 2 minutes max, and it was also part of the judging rubric, but I saw that a couple submissions went over the mark and were still picked as finalists/winners/honorable mentions. Me and my team had a lot to put for our demo video, but cut back a lot due to the time limit of 2 minutes. I saw one app in particular, "Health is Wealth" went on to win third place even though the demo video was around 7 minutes. Can one of the administrators please explain this? @Peter@ewpatton.
I guess there is some misunderstanding.
Last year when I participated, we were told to make demo video as small as possible, something around 2 min was considered to be beneficial for everyone i.e. creator and judges.
There was no limitation of video although.
@Kumaraswamy@vknow360
This was clearly stated on the appathon rules/guidlines for submissions. So when submitting, participants who submitted a video over 2 minutes should've cropped it.
" Teams must submit an AIA project export of their App Inventor app as well a short writeup about the app, which will be publicly shared for winners, and a video of no more than 2 minutes explaining how the app works (which will not be posted publicly). Judges will test all apps using the code.appinventor.mit.edu server, but participants can use any of the MIT run App Inventor services to develop their apps."
This is unfair for those who abided by these rules, and were not selected as finalists/winners/honorable mentions. Some that broke this rule were still able to get selected which doesn't make much sense to me. @Peter@ewpatton@moderators can you please explain this?
Is it necessary to explain whole application in demo video? Can't you just explain how your app works and/or its core features?
However judging was done by aia and definitely not from video.
The presentation was certainly one part of the rubric.
(Pulled from the appathon guidlines/rubric)
Judging
Below is a sample of the judging criteria.
Creativity - How novel is the app idea? Does the app make use of a unique mix of technologies?
Design - How does the user interaction with the app flow? Does the app’s aesthetics make it approachable?
Potential Usefulness - What is the potential impact of the app? Does the app have the potential to effectively help its target audience?
Technical Skill - Does the app make use of well designed data structures? Is the code well organized and commented? Were any advanced features, such as the “any component” blocks used?
Presentation (video and supporting materials) - How do the app creators present their work? Will viewers get a sense of the importance/effectiveness of the app?
There will be two rounds of judging. In the first round, all of the submitted apps will be reviewed by at least two judges. From the initial round, the apps will be narrowed down to the top 5 in each team category. From those 5 apps, the first, second, third, and honorable mentions will be decided.
@Anish_Gupta In the first office hours of the hackathon, @ewpatton sir told that the judges saw your video first and then proceeded further. So if your video was good but long, then i guess the judges could count it too
Regarding the video length issue, it is important to keep in mind that the video only accounts for 20% of the judging total. Since judges have limited time, the tradeoff of a longer video was that judges would have less time to assess the other 80% of the score. For example, I judged 16 apps and so I aimed to spend about 15 minutes per app (roughly 4 hours total). A video of 2 minutes in length means I can spend the other 13 minutes on the 80% part of the score. A longer video would reduce that time, potentially penalizing the larger portion of the overall score.
Ok, thanks for the explanation. Also me and my team were wondering if we could get our score/grading back from the rubric to see how we did. Our team name is "Digital Civics" and our app name is called "SafeStreet". @ewpatton@Peter
winners ! 
you deserved it 
fih and as the old saying goes ,