You compete by getting the most badges. Every team can get all badges, and they must be claimed by writing blog posts where you explicitly write what badge you are going for. Most badges are about implementing a solution using a particular kind of technology or framework.
There are additional badges that can be won by showing good team spirit, lightning talks and doing stupid things for fun. There's room for interpretation and it's important to talk to the judges and know that you'll get points for and not.
The judges will give points for what they see during the event and judge all the teams by each category. If they feel you got a great idea, they will give you points in the "Great business value" category. If you think about the usability, look and feel you will be given points in the "Excellent User Experience" category, etc.
Every day each judge can give each team point in each category. Every day they award a team "Category King" for each category, so it's important to communicate, write blog posts and demonstrate your solution to the judges throughout the competition.
Each team can get upto 30 badges. Each badge gives 10 points, but there is 1 badge that removes 10 points and 1 special badge that adds 25 point for the team that gets it.
The judges rank each team within the 4 categories each day. The ranking is converted into points ( but these points are not necessary won or lost).
Per category, each Category king wins 150 points on the final day, descending points for the other teams. The points are released on day 1: 30%, day 2: 60% andday 3: 100%.
At Final Jury Delivery each judge has 50 wildcard points each to hand out to the 3 teams they feel deserves it the most (25 + 15 + 10). There are 300 additional points.
The last day of the hackathon each team has to deliver a short-written presentation of the solution they have created as a blog post.
The judges now have to make the final decisions of which teams that deserves to get the wildcard points.The judges will present top 3 teams, and finally announce the winner of ACDC.
The winning team gets to take home the antlers and also gets to inscribe their company name at the very honorable winning teams plate placed on the antlers.The winning team then gets to keep the antlers for 1 year until the next ACDC event.
