Hackathon 2026: A Post-Mortem

What We Set Out to Do

For the Charlotte 2026 Hackathon, we wanted to make space for technical and non-technical folks to actually build something together. No forced teams, no strict theme, just a day to ship an idea. The day ran smoothly overall, and while we’re proud of how it went, we’ve got a few notes on what we’d change next time.

What Got Built

We had 8 participants who worked on 6 total projects:

• AI personal assistant companion that reads your documents and texts back as your assistant
• Hackathon partner finder matching people by language, topics, and interests
• Tech meetup tool with listings for upcoming meetups, venues open to host, and mentorship opportunities
• Personal library tracker for books at home, hooked into OpenLibrary and Google Books
• Lead finder tool for high market cap companies at a fraction of typical lead-gen costs
• SignAI, a live video recognition tool for sign language that talks to and from ChatGPT

Five more people dropped in near the end to network and watch final presentations. We also ran two learning sessions during the day.

How the Day Felt

Most people camped out for the full day. A few rolled in late or left early, but the core group was in the office for about eight hours. The mix was good. We had devs who code for a living, and non-technical people with sharp ideas who paired up with technical strangers hunting for a project. A couple of self-described vibe coders had solid concepts that just needed a nudge from someone technical to get them over the line.

Judges picked SignAI as the winner. The builder took home a Raspberry Pi K400, the all-in-one PC that lives inside a keyboard. He is a young international student from Kyrgyzstan finishing his post-grad studies here.

Big thanks to our consultants who showed up to present, help teams, talk to people, and handle logistics.

The feedback was kind. Two people specifically mentioned the office felt casual and calm, and that non-technical folks felt welcome. A few people said they will be back for the next Hackathon or future office events.

What We Would Change Next Time

Part of the Hackathon Manifesto is to run a quick post-mortem. Here is what we will adjust:

• Nametags: The group was small this time. Any bigger and it gets hard to keep names straight.
• Time of day: We ran this on a Friday. A Saturday might open it up to more people.
• Theme: No theme gave freedom, but it also caused some blank page anxiety. If you do not walk in with a passion project, it is tough to land on one in the moment.