We’re excited to announce Shiny Contest 2021! This marks the third year of the Shiny contest, and over the past two years we have been in awe of all of your submissions and we are very much looking forward to seeing what the Shiny community comes up with this year.

Shiny Contest 2021 officially kicks off today and the deadline for submissions is May 14 2021 at 5pm ET. You can submit your entry for the contest by filling out the form at rstd.io/shiny-contest-2021. We strongly recommend getting your submission in well before the deadline so that you have ample time to resolve any last-minute technical hurdles.

You are welcome to submit an existing Shiny app of yours or create a new one in two months. There is no limit on the number of entries one participant can submit. Please submit as many as you wish!

Requirements for the contest are same as before:

• Data and code used in the app should be publicly available and/or openly licensed.
• Your app should be deployed on shinyapps.io.
• Your app should be in a public RStudio Cloud project. (Be sure to set access to everyone.)
  • If you’re new to RStudio Cloud and shinyapps.io, you can create an account for free. Additionally, you can find instructions specific to this contest here and find the general RStudio Cloud guide here.

Criteria for evaluation:

Just like the last two years, apps will be judged based on technical merit and/or on artistic achievement (e.g., UI design). We recognize that some apps may excel in one of these categories and some in the other, and some in both. Evaluation will be done keeping this in mind and it will also take into account the narrative on the contest submission post. We recommend crafting your submission post with this in mind.

Awards:

Last year we announced prizes specifically for novice Shiny developers and we were thrilled that over 30% of the submissions were developed by those with less than 1 year experience with Shiny. We would love to see just as many, if not more, submissions from new Shiny developers, and to encourage that, we will again be giving out awards at both novice and experienced developer levels.

The award categories and the associated prizes are as follows:

• Honorable Mention:
  • One year of shinyapps.io Basic plan or RStudio Cloud Premium.
  • A bunch of hex stickers of RStudio packages
  • A spot on the Shiny User Showcase
• Runner Up:
  • All prizes listed above, plus
  • Any number of RStudio t-shirts, books, and mugs (worth up to $200)
• Grand Prizes:
  • All prizes listed above, plus
  • Special & persistent recognition by RStudio in the form of a winners page, and a badge that’ll be publicly visible on your RStudio Community profile
  • Half-an-hour one-on-one with a representative from the RStudio Shiny team for Q&A and feedback

* Please note that we may not be able to send t-shirts, books, or other items larger than stickers to non-US addresses.

The names and work of all winners will be highlighted in the Shiny User Showcase and we will announce them on RStudio’s social platforms, including RStudio Community (unless the winner prefers not to be mentioned).

We will announce the winners and their submissions on the RStudio blog, RStudio Community, and also on Twitter.

Need inspiration?

• Review the winning apps and honorable mentions of last years’ contests: Shiny Contest 2020, Shiny Contest 2019.
• Browse the Shiny User Showcase.
• Peruse all Shiny Contest submissions on RStudio Community.

We really appreciate the time and effort each contestant puts into building their submissions and can’t wait to see what you produce!