over 3 years ago
One month left - Making a great submission video
There are four weeks remaining in AWS Marketplace Developer Challenge: ML Powered Solutions! Submissions are due April 15 before 2pm PDT.
Start your submission now
Starting a submission is a good way to make sure that your project meets the requirements. There’s nothing worse than getting to the deadline, only to realize that you’re missing a key component. Remember: once you submit a project, you can keep editing it as needed at any time prior to the submission deadline. Need a primer on how the submission form works? Head over to our submission form tutorial.
We know as devs your expertise lies behind the scenes - so keep building! Just don’t forget the submission video needs time too! It's often the first thing that judges review.
Your video tells the story behind your submission, providing a clear display of your solution and talent in a video:
- Establish your elevator pitch. In the first few seconds of your video, explain how your machine learning solution solves a pain point. Within 60 seconds, viewers tend to lose interest, so use this time wisely to keep them engaged!
- Use cases are key. Providing real life context and showing users firsthand how your application solves the problem at hand, will help judges understand and appreciate your product design.
- Keep it clear + concise.
- Per the official rules, your video shouldn't be much longer than five minutes.
- Hone in on what is important for the judges to know in order to best highlight your solution - adding unnecessary details will take focus away from the key points you are trying to make.
- Get organized. Write out a script of what you’ll say and demonstrate in your video and rehearse it before recording. Essentially a good script should talk about:
- The problem being addressed
- Existing solutions to the problem
- The solution that your machine learning algorithm or application provides and how it works
Pro Tip: Don't wait until the last minute to upload your video. Due to file size, format, and your Internet connection, uploading a video to YouTube, Vimeo, or Youku could take anywhere from a few minutes to several hours. We cannot stress this enough! There have been many times a submission becomes ineligible due to errors with video rendering and uploading.
You may want to create a very short video, even before your project is 100% complete to upload as a placeholder. You can always replace and edit this prior to the submission.
If you need more advice, check out our video-making best practices.
Questions?
If you have any questions about the hackathon, please post on the discussion forum.