Access Requirements + Prerequisites
✅ Prerequisite Checklist
- Review the entire Hack Pack! Here you'll find pre-hackathon prep, key details and FAQs.
- Ensure you have access to all necessary tools (more details below).
- Join & say hello in the BigCommerceDevs Slack. If you're new, apply here (opens in a new tab)
- Add our Hackathon events to your calendar.
- Start thinking about your strategy now!
- Get to know the BigCommerce & Google SME's in Slack and/or Twitter.
🔓 Access Requirements
As you’ll see below, there are a few different tools that you, the hacker, will want to obtain and work with. These are not all required to use, but we encourage you to utilize these for success with building apps & tools in this event.
💥 GCP Access for API Usage
Google Cloud Product (GCP) is a paid product that you'll use to access Google's AI APIs, such as; VertexAI, PaLM & GenAI. Being that new users get a $300 credit, we recommend that one person per team register for a trial to utilize this Google benefit for the 10 day event. The trial length is 15 days, so it’s plenty of time for you to set that up before we kickoff! If you have an existing Google account that has already used these credits, please create a new Google account, as this will prevent anyone from needing to pay to participate in this hackathon.
💥 BigCommerce Trial or Sandbox Store
If you’re a partner of BigCommerce, you can create a new sandbox from your partner portal by following these instructions. However, if you’re not a partner or if you’re new to the BigCommerce ecosystem, please follow these steps to getting a Trial store for this event.
- Head over to the BigCommerce Essentials webpage
- Click “Start Your Free Trial”
- Fill out the information
- Click “Create Your Store”
- Voila! You have a trial store that operates like a sandbox store that only BigCommerce partners can spin up. This trial is free for 15 days, long enough for you to participate during the hackathon. You will not be charged for this and you will not be asked for a credit card number.
💥 Hack Pack Documentation
The Hack Pack is this documentation that you’re reading right now, we have this resource unlisted among our other developer docs, so it’s not indexable but we will email it to all registered hackers before kickoff and bookmark this in the #bigai-hackathon (opens in a new tab) channel for easy access.
If at any point you and/or your team are having issues with the above items, please shoot us a message in the #bigai-hackathon (opens in a new tab) channel or email us!