Round 5 · Oct 28-30, 2026 · Futureproof Festival

Tell the truest data story hiding in the mess.

Round 5 keeps the heart of the series — data storytelling — while the approved dataset, partner, and prize details stay under wraps until the paperwork catches up with the ambition.

Prizes

Prize details publish when confirmed.

Round 5 will have real stakes. The exact award structure, partner support, and recognition plan stay off the public page until every commitment is approved in writing.

People's Choice

Decided by the live community vote at the Meetup. Non-cash — feature, stage time, and swag.

Hall of Fame Bonus

A $1,000 legacy bonus carried over from past rounds, community-funded and awarded at the jury's discretion.

The challenge

Tell the truest story hiding in the mess.

This is still a data storytelling hackathon at heart: evidence, interpretation, and the weird human choices hiding under the chart. The committed prompt and approved dataset details publish after partner sign-off; here's the kind of story we're built to surface:

What Canadians won't say out loud

Find the gap between the headline poll number and the messy free-text underneath it. Make the quiet majority audible.

Synthetic citizens

Generate synthetic respondents from the real sample, then interrogate the ethics: where does synthetic data illuminate, and where does it lie?

Mapping the mood of a nation

Turn sentiment and open-text responses into an emotional cartography — the affect behind the statistics.

Small data, big story

Surface the one overlooked subgroup whose story the aggregate numbers bury. Give them the headline.

Dataset partner

Pending confirmation

The approved dataset source will publish once the partner and data-use terms are confirmed in writing.

Prize partner

Pending confirmation

Prize and recognition details publish only after the sponsor commitment is approved.

Schedule

Three days, one dataset.

Wed · Oct 28

Kickoff & dataset drop

Teams form at the Vancouver AI Meetup, the prompt is revealed, and the dataset is released.

Thu · Oct 29

Build day

Heads-down building, mentor drop-ins, and office hours with confirmed support.

Fri · Oct 30

Submissions lock & demo day

Submissions close midday. Live 5-minute demos and judging Friday evening at the festival's closing demo session.

Who can enter

Two ways in.

Festival attendees

Entry to the hackathon is included with any Futureproof Festival pass. Register your team and you're in.

Hackathon-only entry

Can't make the full festival? A standalone hackathon pass gets you the kickoff, the dataset, and demo day.

Teens welcome

Builders under 18 can register with guardian consent — flag it on the form and we'll send a consent note. Some of our strongest entries have come from high schoolers.

Save your team a spot.

Tell us who's building. We'll confirm your entry, send the kickoff details, and (if your team is under 18) follow up with a guardian consent note.

Already have a festival pass? Entry is included. Need just the hackathon? Pick the hackathon-only option below.

The jury

Who's judging.

Scoring is a blend of the live community vote and a confirmed jury. The panel is being finalized.

Confirmed jury seat

Data storytelling judge

To be announced

To be confirmed

Confirmed data seat

Dataset / research judge

To be announced

To be confirmed

BC + AI board member

Community jury seat

BC + AI

To be confirmed

Returning champion

Past-winner guest judge (to be confirmed)

Hall of Fame

To be confirmed

Rules

The rules are short.

Rule 01

Build across the three festival days

Kickoff and dataset drop land Wednesday Oct 28 at the Vancouver AI Meetup. Build through Thursday. Submissions lock Friday Oct 30 midday; live demos and judging Friday evening.

Rule 02

Approved data, synthetic welcome

Every team works from the same approved prompt and dataset. Generating synthetic data on top of it is encouraged — just label clearly what is real, what is synthetic, and what you inferred.

Rule 03

AI-first tools are encouraged

Use Claude, ChatGPT, Cursor, whatever. Vibe coding is expected. Just tell the story in your deliverable.

Rule 04

Teams of 1-4

Solo entries welcome (Prajwal wins solo regularly). Max team size is 4.

Rule 05

Judged live at the Meetup

Each team gets 5 minutes. Live community vote plus confirmed jury scoring decides the winners.

Rule 06

Be weird, be honest

The best entries have always been the ones that cared about something real. Hotdogs, grandma's advice, music that responds to your nervous system.

Hall of Fame

The ones we had to name specifically.

The Vibe Coding Pioneer

Prajwal

Inducted: Round 4 — October 2025

Consecutive 2nd places

$1,000

Hall of Fame bonus

Vibe Coding

Discovery

"I don't have to worry so much about the code, just focus on user experience. Yeah, we got our own little Andrej Karpathy here."

From rule-following high schooler to independently inventing vibe coding — spending weeks on user experience, only days on implementation. Currently at Langara. Unhirable due to immigration status despite multiple offers. Mentors Black youth at Ethos Lab. One of the smartest in the community.

A concept

What is vibe coding?

Prajwal coined it independently during Round 3. It's the paradigm shift from code-first to concept-first development:

— Spend weeks thinking about the user experience

— Spend days implementing

— Focus on WHAT, not HOW

— Let the AI handle implementation while you focus on vision

"Even though it feels like I'm sacrificing my time, I really, really enjoy building them."

— Prajwal, 2024

Past Rounds

Four rounds of building.

May 2024

Theme

"Is a hot dog a sandwich?"

· $2,000 prize pool
· Absurd prompt set the tone for the series
· Weekend format established

Winner

Darby Yu

Dr. Veek

An anthropomorphic vegetable nutritionist with uncannily good bedside manner. The breakout entry of Round 1.

Runner-up

Sev Geraskin

HotDogma

Summer 2024

Theme

Canadian Identity in Data

· Introduced semantic AI approaches to the hackathon
· Sev's second top placement

Winner

Sev Geraskin (with April AI)

Wisdom Lantern

Ambient data visualization that made survey results feel like folklore.

Runner-up

Prajwal

Semantic Visualization Pipeline

August 26, 2024

Theme

AI's Impact on BC

· $2,500 prize pool
· Sev Geraskin inducted into Hall of Fame for "The Orchestrator"
· Prajwal independently discovers "vibe coding"

Winner

Dean Shev

BC+AI.death — a concept album

A full album about AI anxieties in the BC tech scene. Dark, funny, uncomfortably good. Grand prize winner.

Runner-up

Prajwal

Artificial Round Table

October 29, 2025

Theme

Music & Emotion

· $3,500 prize pool
· Held alongside 1st Annual BC + AI Film Festival at H.R. MacMillan
· Prajwal places 2nd for the 4th consecutive round — inducted to Hall of Fame

Winner

Andre & Taras

Canadian Music DNA

Real-time generative composition mapped to Canadian music heritage.

Runner-up

Prajwal

Plato AI

Build weird. Build honest. Details announced when confirmed.

Round 5 kicks off Wednesday, Oct 28. Register your team now, or grab a festival pass to lock your spot.