Southern Utah Code Camp

Summary

Southern Utah Code Camp is a 24-hour build competition in St. George — programming, design, and entrepreneurship compressed into a single overnight sprint, with teams of one to four building a web or mobile app from scratch. The 2026 edition runs November 13–14 at Vasion, on Tech Ridge, with a Pre-Flight meeting on November 12 where rules are finalized and teams are formed (official website).

It is organized and run by Tech Threads, INC, per the site's own footer.

It matters because of where it is. Utah's technology events cluster hard along the Wasatch Front; this is a long-running one that does not, serving a corner of the state 300 miles from Salt Lake City that is otherwise thin on this kind of thing.

Two design choices distinguish it from the usual hackathon. It sorts teams into five divisions by the most experienced member, so a professional cannot quietly carry a novice team to a win. And it is funded entirely by sponsors against a published, itemized budget — an unusual amount of transparency about what a community event actually costs.

Who It's For

Deliberately stratified, which is the point. The divisions run from Novice — some coding experience, typically high-school or first-year college students — through Intermediate, for people with real skill who have never been paid for it, to Industry, for teams containing at least one working professional. "Professional" is defined broadly enough to catch an unpaid intern of more than two years.

Placement is by ceiling, not average: a team of one professional and three novices competes in the Industry division. That rule is what keeps the lower divisions worth entering, and it is the thing to understand before assembling a team.

A fourth track, Day Camp, is Novice-level but does not run overnight — it finishes at 3:00 PM on Friday. That is the quiet accessibility feature in the design: it makes the event reachable for high-school-aged participants and anyone who cannot stay out all night, without carving out a separate event for them.

The organizers frame the divisions by motive as well as skill — Industry teams testing company ideas or side projects "or simply to just claim bragging rights", Intermediate teams building something to show potential employers.

Project categories run at right angles to all of this. Teams self-select a category — App, Game, and others — the top team in each wins, and categories are explicitly not limited by division. A novice team's app competes against an industry team's app. So the event is a protected ladder and an open contest simultaneously, depending on which prize you are chasing.

What It Provides

Twenty-four hours, a venue, meals, and a judged competition with prizes — plus the Pre-Flight session the night before, which the organizers strongly encourage attending because rules are finalized and teams are formed there rather than at the starting gun.

The sponsor-funded budget for 2026 is published in full: an estimated $13,000–$14,300, across four lines — meals and snacks, participant shirts, prizes and awards, and tables and chairs. Every line is participant-facing; nothing covers organizer pay or overhead. For a sponsor, four cumulative tiers run $250, $500, $1000, and $2500, with benefits from logo placement up through access to participants and the post-event contact list, plus three exclusive sponsorships attached to signature parts of the event.

That last benefit is worth naming plainly: at some tiers, sponsors receive the participant contact list after the event. Anyone registering should expect that.

How To Use It

Register through southernutahcodecamp.com, which carries the current year's dates, rules, venue, and under-18 waiver. Then:

• Attend the Pre-Flight the evening before. Rules change year to year and teams finalize there.
• Pick your division honestly — placement follows your most experienced member, and the site defines "professional" broadly enough to include anyone paid for development work or interning more than two years.
• Arrive without a team if you need to. Teams of one are permitted, and the Pre-Flight exists partly to pair people up.
• Sponsors and volunteers have their own paths on the site; the event runs on both.

Because it recurs, check the site for the current edition rather than relying on the dates here.

Cost / Eligibility

No ticket price is stated on the captured pages, and the budget shows the event covering meals, shirts, and venue from sponsorship. Participants under 18 must submit a waiver. Verify the current year's terms on the site — nothing located confirms whether registration is free.

Best Fits

A student or self-taught developer in Washington County who wants a deadline, a team, and a judged result without traveling to Salt Lake or Provo — and, at the other end, a working professional in Southern Utah who wants to test an idea overnight among peers. The divisional structure means both can attend the same event without one making the other pointless.

For a company in the St. George area, the sponsorship tiers are a cheap way to be visible to the region's technical talent pool at a moment when it is all in one room.

Evidence

• Source: Southern Utah Code Camp homepage · https://southernutahcodecamp.com/ — 2026 dates, Vasion venue, 24-hour format, teams of one to four, and the organizing entity
• Source: Southern Utah Code Camp division rules · https://southernutahcodecamp.com/about/ — the five divisions, the most-experienced-member rule, the Day Camp track, and the cross-cutting project categories
• Source: Southern Utah Code Camp sponsorship page · https://southernutahcodecamp.com/become-a-sponsor/ — the itemized 2026 budget, the four tiers, and the participant contact list as a sponsor benefit

Open Questions

• Is registration free for participants? The budget implies sponsor-funded attendance but no page captured states a participant price either way.
• What is Tech Threads, INC? The homepage footer states the event is "organized and run by Tech Threads, INC", but no corporate registration has been located for it. It is absent from the IRS Utah exempt-organization data, consistent with a for-profit entity or one registered under another name — unresolved, and worth resolving, since it is the body receiving the sponsorship money.
• How long has it run, and how many attend? The site says the format has run "for years" without naming a first edition, and no attendance figure appears anywhere for any year.
• Did the November 2026 edition take place? This page was written in August 2026, three months ahead. Nothing here establishes the outcome, the sponsors, or the winners.
• What is the fifth division? The About page announces five and gives headings for four — Industry, Intermediate, Novice, and Day Camp. Its own worked example additionally names a "Collegiate" level that is never defined, which is almost certainly the fifth but is not stated as such.
• Are participants told at registration that sponsors receive the contact list afterward? The sponsorship page says so plainly; the registration flow was not checked.
• What happens to the participant contact list that sponsors receive, and what are entrants told about it at registration?

See Also

• 3Helix — also based at Vasion's Tech Ridge campus in St. George
• AI Builder Day — the Utah County equivalent, split by day rather than by division
• Weber State AI Hackathon — the northern one, university-hosted and tiered the same way