Wellington | Claude Impact Lab

Registration open again - Demos start at 4:30pm and you can arrive from 4pm. Wellington Impact Lab — a one-day civic AI hackathon Keeping Wellington informed in an emergency. New Zealand's first Impact Lab starts with a real city problem. On Saturday 8 August, Wellington's…

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Registration open again - Demos start at 4:30pm and you can arrive from 4pm. Wellington Impact Lab — a one-day civic AI hackathon Keeping Wellington informed in an emergency. New Zealand's first Impact Lab starts with a real city problem. On Saturday 8 August, Wellington's builder community works alongside Wellington City Council emergency-management experts to turn public information into tools people could genuinely use — before and during an emergency. WCC's emergency management team has had ten activations in the past two years. The problems you'll work on aren't hypothetical — they come straight from those operations, and the people who own them will be in the room. The challenge Emergency decisions are only as good as the information flow behind them. Five real WCC problems, narrowed to the strongest tracks on the day: Bring official warnings and local conditions into one community view Create a two-way information channel between communities and Council Identify and verify emerging local impacts from public information Help emergency staff sort and prioritise incoming information Detect unusual changes in movement around the city How it works Small teams, real support. Every team gets a problem brief, pre-built public datasets and Claude skills ready to go, a WCC domain expert, and mentors to unblock data, Claude, and delivery questions. Public data only. You'll build against what's actually available — official warnings, hazard layers, river and rainfall gauges, road and transport feeds — real-world messiness included. Build with Claude. Claude Code access provided on the day. No prior AI experience required — bring your craft, whatever it is. Added bonus if you have a Claude Max plan. Ship by 4 PM. Submissions are a GitHub repo and a 2-minute demo video. Live demos and judging follow, with awards at 5:30. Who should apply Developers, designers, data folk, product thinkers, and anyone from Wellington's civic and emergency-management community who wants to build something useful on a bad day. Places are limited and teams are kept small — apply early. Run of day 8:00 Doors, breakfast, team formation 9:00 Problem briefing + datasets 9:30 Build begins 12:30 Lunch + lightning talks 4:00 Submissions close 4:30 Live demos + judging 5:30 Awards 6:00 Close Judging Usefulness beats polish. Prototypes are scored on usefulness to WCC, working with the supplied data, a working demo, honesty about limits, and a credible path to real use. The best outcome isn't a perfect prototype — it's a credible next step for Wellington. Venue: Wellington City Council Hosted by Chris Watson & Adam Holt, Claude Community Ambassadors Organisers: Creative HQ & ZunoSmart Labs Food & Drink: Catering provided. This is an alcohol-free event.