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Advanced RAG Hackathon

Join us to build Advanced RAG applications and chatbots with Vectara, LlamaIndex, Together AI, and Unstructured.io. Develop innovative apps that ensure accuracy, transparency, and impact!

  • 👩‍💻 Explore Vectara, the trusted RAG-as-a-service GenAI platform for building innovative AI applications - question answering, Chatbots, and more.
  • 🚀 One week of intensive online development with workshops and mentorship sessions!
  • 🏆 15,000 USD prize pool (including 7,000 USD in cash) with special prizes from LlamaIndex, Unstructured.io, Vectara, Tonic AI and Together AI
  • 🤝 Opportunities for networking with developers and startup enthusiasts.
  • 💡 Build applications that help create a positive change in the world and drive impact!
  • 🕵️ Create a Vectara account to be eligible for hackathon participation and fill out the application form to be accepted.
Advanced RAG Hackathon event thumbnail

What is RAG?

RAG (retrieval augmented generation) is an AI methodology that enables large language models (LLMs) to utilize up-to-date, reliable information from external sources, avoiding hallucinations. It enhances LLMs' responses, ensuring accuracy, transparency, and trust. With RAG, developers can create smarter, more reliable GenAI applications in various fields, while reducing the risk of errors and data leaks.

About Vectara

Vectara, the trusted GenAI platform, is an API based end-to-end solution for RAG (RAG in a box), that empowers builders to create powerful generative AI applications.

Built for developers, Vectara simplifies the process of building text-based GenAI applications by managing all the necessary components within its platform: document pre-processing, the Boomerang embedding model, its own high performance vector store, and integration with LLMs to create an end-to-end RAG flow that just works.

Vectara offloads the complexity of having to implement your own document pre-processing and chunking strategy, choose an embedding model, deploy a vector database and craft custom prompts for summarization LLM, and allows developers to focus on building their core GenAI application and deliver their business impact faster, and at scale.

Vectara's Capabilities include:

  • Retrieval-engine: state of the art semantic text search and retrieval using Vectara’s latest Boomerang model
  • Cross language support: Vectara supports questions and answers in 100+ languages and dialects
  • Speed: Lightning fast end-to-end RAG implementation
  • API based: developer-friendly APIs that are easy to use for building your application
  • Advanced search: state of the art implementation of Hybrid search that allows you to optimize search relevance by combining semantic search and keyword search
  • New chat functionality from Vectara: Use the chatbot API and all the complexity of maintaining chat history and using it with the LLM is removed - create a fully functional RAG-powered chatbot in minutes.

About Partners

Together with our esteemed partners, we're revolutionizing AI innovation. These technologies seamlessly integrate with Vectara, enhancing its capabilities in data integration.

Advanced RAG Hackathon Partners. LlamaIndex, Together AI, Tonic AI Unstructured.io.
  • LlamaIndex: LlamaIndex links custom data to LLMs like GPT-4. It streamlines data integration, indexing, and querying for AI apps.
  • Together AI: Together AI is a research-driven artificial intelligence company. We empower developers to train, fine-tune, and deploy gen AI models.
  • Unstructured.io: Unstructured.io simplifies data formats. It converts PDFs and HTML files for seamless interaction with internal data.
  • Tonic AI: Tonic AI merges data analytics and privacy expertise to tackle challenges in responsible data use.
Register on Vectara

Join Vectara!

Create an account on Vectara platform to access a free trial during the Hackathon and harness the full potential of our powerful generative AI capabilities.

Vectara Hackathon Guide.
Equip yourself with resources and supercharge your project.

Hackathon Challenge

Explore the latest trends for RAG in 2024: create a RAG chatbot or question-answering application for any industry - legal, manufacturing, healthcare, retail, insurance and more. Experience the power of RAG-as-a-service - create a fully working GenAI application quickly and easily. Use the new chat functionality from Vectara, the open source Hallucination Evaluation Model (HHEM), mix it up with Together AI' APIs and LlamaIndex, and apply Tonic AI's advanced data analytics to explore RAG techniques and optimize the quality of your application. Create something meaningful that will have a positive impact on the world.

Prizes

Main track

  • 🥇 1st Place: 💰: $1500 cash + $1500 in Vectara credits
  • 🥈 2nd Place: 💰: $1000 cash + $1000 in Vectara credits
  • 🥉 3rd Place: 💰: $500 cash + $500 in Vectara credits

🌟 Special Prizes

  • Special Vectara prize: $1000 Vectara credits for “Best use of Vectara Chat”
  • Special prize for "Best project using LlamaIndex": $1000 cash for “Best project with LlamaIndex”
  • Special prize "Best project using Together AI's API": $2500 Together.AI credits + $500 Apple gift card per user (up to 5)
  • Special prize for "Best project using Unstructured": $1000 cash for “Best project with Unstructured.io”
  • Special prize for "Best project using Tonic AI": $500 cash and $500 in Tonic credits to the "Best project using Tonic AI”

Get Together AI Credits!

🧑🏻‍💻 Get $100 Together AI Credits to Build Your App! For all approved builders that created or joined a team for the hackathon before April 11th 23:59 CET, we're providing $100 in Together credits to supercharge your AI project at the Hackathon. Credits will be distributed on 12th of April. To claim the credits, please ensure you have an active Together AI account and that your lablab.ai registration email matches your Together AI account. With Together AI's credits, you can apply advanced RAG techniques like query pre-processing, response post-processing, advanced content generation, and more. Credits are being provided by Together AI and are subject to Together AI approval. Lablab will not be held responsible nor liable in the event that Together AI does not provide them. Here's the guide how to get the Together AI credits.

Please note: that while the lablab team will endeavor to make their best effort, there is no guarantee of entry, offer, or reward of any of these programs, giveaways, or prizes, and such entry, offer, or reward will be subject to their respective availability, conditions, and certain criteria that will need to be met. lablab reserves the right to amend, modify or cancel any of the items or terms of this event or even the event in its entirety. While lablab is not obligated to, it will endeavor to inform participants within a reasonable timeframe of such changes.

Remember that each hackathon project can only win one category. All submitted entries are required to be open source and adhere to the MIT License.

Please note, each hackathon project can only win one of the challenges. Cash prizes awarded in USD. Vectara credits will be awarded to winners, provided participants have a Vectara account with a registered credit card on this account. Please be aware that while we endeavor to expedite the distribution process with our partners, the delivery of prizes may take up to 90 days. lablab will not be held responsible for delays or inability to deliver prizes for this event as it relies solely on the partner (Vectara) to receive the total prize amount and distribute it. Additionally, while the lablab team will endeavor to make their best effort, there is no guarantee of entry, offer, or reward of any of giveaways or prizes, and such entry, offer, or reward will be subject to their respective availability, conditions, and certain criteria that will need to be met. lablab reserves the right to amend, modify or cancel any of the items or terms of this event or even the event in its entirety. While lablab is not obligated to, it will endeavor to inform participants within a reasonable timeframe of such changes.

Judging Criteria

Our judging criteria seeks submissions that not only demonstrate technical excellence but also practical utility.

Application of RAG with Vectara

Technical Mastery: Entries will be evaluated based on their skillful use of RAG and Vectara's API to solve real-world challenges, and utilizing LlamaIndex, Together AI, Unstructured.io, and Tonic AI's capabilities.

Presentation and Communication

Clear Demonstration: Submissions should be presented in a manner that effectively conveys their key features and the final product or prototype.

Real-World Impact

Business Value: Judges will assess the extent to which projects offer real-world solutions and benefits that are well-defined. Submissions should identify target users and address specific needs or problems with clarity.

Innovation

Originality: Stand out by showcasing inventive, outside-the-box applications of RAG fueled by Vectara, LlamaIndex, Together AI, Unstructured.io, and Tonic AI. We're seeking creative, forward-thinking uses of these technologies that provide a fresh perspective on how text-based GenAI with RAG can create new value.

Hackathon Details

Join lablab.ai for a 7-day challenge to innovate and build with Vectara. Find all the relevant details below.

🗓️ Where and when

The hackathon will start on April 12th. The hackathon will take place on the lablab.ai platform and lablab.ai Discord server.

🦸🏼‍♂️ Who can join?

Everyone is welcome to participate, regardless of previous AI or coding experience! We encourage anyone with a passion for AI or an interest in exploring how it can be used in their field to join.

😅 What about teams?

If you don't have a team, don't worry! You can connect with other participants from all over the world on our dashboard or Discord server. We also recommend checking out our Discord server to find teammates and bounce around ideas. You can join the server here

🛠️ How to participate

The hackathon will take place online on lablab.ai platform and lablab.ai Discord Server. Please register for both in order to participate. To participate click the "Enroll" button at the bottom of the page, fill in the form, and read our Hackathon Guidelines and Getting Started Guide.

🧠 Get prepared!

To get ready for the hackathon, visit our AI Tech pages and read up on all the available technologies. For the deeper dive into Vectara, use the Vectara's Hacker Guide. You can also check out our tutorials page for more information on how to use them. Get a head start on your project by using the resources on lablab.ai!

Build with the listed technologies

Build your application using Vectara and use other complimentary technologies from Together AI APIs, LlamaIndex and Unstructured to make your RAG application shine.

LLM Technologies

Vectara

RAG-as-a-service, providing a best in class RAG platform, powered by easy-to-use APIs for building question answering and chatbot Generative AI applications.

LlamaIndex

Allows you to connect custom data sources to large language models (LLMs) like GPT-4, Claude, Cohere LLMs or AI21 Studio.

Together AI

Together AI is a research-driven artificial intelligence company contributing to leading open-source research, models, and datasets to advance the frontier of AI. Our decentralized cloud services empower developers and researchers at organizations of all sizes to train, fine-tune, and deploy generative AI models.

Unstructured.io

Unstructured transforms organizations’ complex, unstructured data like PDFs, PPTX, HTML files and more into formats compatible with LLMs so employees can chat with their internal data.

Tonic AI

Tonic Validate provides you with a base set of 20+ metrics that measure, evaluate, and benchmark each component of your RAG system to help you understand the quality of your RAG system's output. It's all easily configurable via our open-source SDK and our streamlined web app helps you easily visualize and track changes in your RAG system across iterations and in production. Sign up for a free account at https://www.tonic.ai/validate.

Speakers, Mentors and Organizers

  • Ofer Mendelevitch
    Online Judge

    Ofer Mendelevitch

    Head of DevRel

  • Suleman Kazi
    Online Judge

    Suleman Kazi

    Machine Learning Engineer

  • Shane Connelly
    Online Judge

    Shane Connelly

    Head of Product

  • Jay Rodge
    Online Judge

    Jay Rodge

    LLM Developer Advocate

  • Katya Tkach
    Host

    Katya Tkach

    Event Manager

  • Dina Shall
    Organizer

    Dina Shall

    Global Community Manager

    • Maksym Wolff
      Organizer

      Maksym Wolff

      Master Streamer

      • Daniel Duccik
        Organizer

        Daniel Duccik

        Marketing&Visual

      • Pawel Czech
        Organizer

        Pawel Czech

        Co-founder/Partner

        • Simon Olson
          Organizer

          Simon Olson

          Founder

        Event Schedule

        • To be announced

        Submitted concepts, prototypes and pitches

        Submissions from the teams participating in the Advanced RAG Hackathon event and making it to the end 👊

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