Level 01/04

The Tracks

Pillar 01 — the main hack

The tracks

Every team picks one track and one challenge statement inside it. Tracks are set with our partners, and the themes below are the working plan.

Three tracks be charted so far. The final tally and the full challenge statements be still under the cap'n's quill, and go up on this page on 9 October. In plain speak: expect three, but the list is not final yet.

Track 01

Southampton Coastal City

Problems that matter to the city itself: the port, the coast, transport, climate and infrastructure. Build tools a resident, a council officer or a port operator could actually use, on real public data about Southampton.

Suits · Messy data, maps, sensors and public services — and building for a person rather than a leaderboard.

Track 02

FinTech

Real problems in money: scams, fraud networks, small-business cash flow, and the people the financial system underserves. Everything runs on synthetic data — nobody touches a real customer record.

Suits · Data science and graph skills, and products a bank or a wallet app could actually ship.

Track 03

Responsible AI

Ship it safe. Build something useful and prove it is safe, fair and explainable, with the test results to show for it. The bar is evidence, not intention.

Suits · Evaluation, testing, security and governance.

Teams heads-down building in the lecture hall — Heads-down build time

How the weekend plays out be not yet settled. The rules and judgin' below be the working plan, and the prize list with 'em. Nothin' here be final 'til the ship's articles say so, and the full word goes up before the day.

How it plays

Teams of two to five. No solo entries — come alone and we'll help you find a crew on Friday night.
Hacking opens Friday at 20:00. Ideas before then are fine; code is not.
Submissions close at 12:00 on Sunday. No extensions.
AI code-generation tools are allowed and encouraged — say what was generated in your README.
Your team owns everything you build. Partners get a demo, nothing more.
Your pitch is a live demo of the working thing, not a slide deck.

Five criteria per track

Each scored out of ten and tailored to the track. Every track includes Working demo — if it doesn't run, it doesn't count.

Round one · demo fair

Sunday 13:00. Every submitted team is seen at its table by the track's judges. Demo the working thing, then answer questions.

Round two · stage pitches

The top two teams per track pitch on the main stage. Three minutes to demo, two for questions.

The prizes

One winner per track, one overall winner, partner prizes, and People's Choice, decided by VC for a Day. The full list and the amounts be still bein' counted out, and go up before the day.