Proposal B: 2-Stage Challenge

The shape

• Stage 1, online, via Discord. Goes online on Friday the 16th of October: kick-off, team building and introductions. Ends the next day, Saturday the 17th, at 6pm. An open technical challenge on real-time detection and tracking, scored on a hidden test set with a live leaderboard. Open to anyone, no limit on entries.
• Stage 2, in person at XRlabs London, one day. The top 8 to 12 teams from the leaderboard build on your live stack with real data and present to your engineering leadership. This day runs exactly as in Proposal A.
• Individual entry through Stage 1; participants keep the IP in their solutions.
• This is the shape of Ali's original PDF, run on our platform and our distribution.

The online qualifier

• Online on Friday 16th October, ends Saturday 17th at 6pm, via Discord. The server is the home of the challenge: kick-off, team building, introductions, questions, submissions and community all in one place.
• Open to anyone. No limit. The wider the funnel, the stronger the leaderboard.
• An open dataset task in the shape of the real problem: real-time detection, segmentation and tracking of hands and hand-held tools in egocentric video.
• Scored on accuracy under a hard per-frame latency budget, against a hidden test set, with a live leaderboard.
• People submit as they go and teams give feedback along the way, so entrants improve through the window rather than finding out at the end.
• Scoring runs on the Oxbridge AIx platform, with your team having access from day one.
• None of your data leaves the building for Stage 1. Your dataset only appears at the finale, in the room.

What changes from Proposal A

• The funnel widens. Open to anyone with no limit, rather than 50+ screened applications, and you keep a ranked talent pool well beyond the people in the room.
• Screening becomes scoring. The leaderboard does the shortlisting; profiles and calls become a second check rather than the gate.
• The finale seats the top 8 to 12 instead of twenty. Fewer people, stronger pre-day signal on every one of them.
• Marketing runs on Proposal A's timeline. Applications and promotion from 21st September; the online sprint lands the weekend before the finale.
• Operations run heavier. Leaderboard support and submission checking through the qualifier window. Day-of costs and prizes are unchanged; we'd put the operations line at £3,000 rather than £2,000 for this version.
• The trade-off: much stronger signal before the day, but the qualifier is homework. It filters toward students with free time and away from working engineers who would happily give a Sunday but won't do take-home tasks.

The clock

The 25th holds, and the online sprint lands the weekend before it, with the masterclass in between. The task needs sign-off in time for the Discord open on the 21st.

Everything that stays the same

• Date, venue and hours of the finale: Sunday 25th October at the XRlabs office.
• Prizes: hardware + £1,000 / £600 / £400, compute credits, and the signing bonus announced on the day.
• The masterclass on Monday 19th October, the dedicated website at surgicalxr.oxbridgeaix.uk, and the whole distribution plan.
• Five XRlabs engineers in the room, the benchmark pair, the judging rubric, and the run of the day.
• Weekly 15 minute check-ins and updates on the WhatsApp channel.