This month, Seattle’s Innovation & Performance Team convened an incredible group of technologists, students, nonprofits, and startups at the AI House on Seattle’s waterfront. At this event—the first in the new Community Innovation Hackathon Series—we challenged local innovators to leverage AI to help us connect teens with the programs and resources they need to thrive.
Launching Seattle’s Next-Generation AI Plan
The day-long event kicked off with a press conference where Mayor Bruce Harrell and Chief Technology Officer Rob Lloyd announced the City’s next-generation AI plan, which was shaped by our learnings from the past couple of years of pilot projects to responsibly integrate AI into government.
The event took place at the AI House on Seattle’s Pier 70, which opened early this year as a place-based hub for AI innovation and collaboration. The AI House is a partnership between Ada Developers Academy, a technology workforce development non-profit, and the AI2 Incubator, with support from Seattle’s Office of Economic Development and the Washington State Department of Commerce.
The Puget Sound region is home to the highest concentration of AI talent in North America, according to CBRE. This hackathon gathering marked an exciting new step for the City: bringing Seattle’s extensive AI community physically together to explore how the new technology can solve real problems.
Innovation in Action: Youth Connector Hackathon
This challenge focused on solving a real problem. Last year, research on youth mental health and feedback from hundreds of teens revealed that loneliness, stress, and anxiety are major issues for local youth, and that having access to social, academic, and wellness programs can make a real difference. But finding and signing up for those programs is hard. Information is scattered across dozens of agencies and nonprofits, leaving teens overwhelmed.
The Youth Connector Hackathon participants were challenged to use AI to break down silos and turn scattered data into a reliable, up-to-date catalog of youth opportunities. Together, participants experimented with building AI-powered tools that can help young people quickly find programs that match their needs, interests, and schedules. 15 teams worked quickly to build functioning websites and tools in just three hours.
Winning Project Spotlight: Team PNWe
All teams submitted impressive projects, but the pitch that took home the first-place prize came from Team PNWe: Zobir Tarin, Ryan Chinn, and Mustaf Egal, all incoming sophomores at the University of Washington.
This team used a combination of Bolt and Claude AI to build a searchable app for local youth programming. The app gives users a couple of options for exploring programs: a dating app-style interface where users can swipe to like or dislike different programs, and a Pinterest-style interface. Check out their prototype!
We asked the winning team about their experience at the Youth Connector Hackathon.
Why did you sign up to participate in the Youth Connector Hackathon? Why is this topic important to you?
Ryan Chinn: I signed up because I wanted to test and apply the problem-solving skills I’ve been building during my first year in college and over this recent summer. This was a challenge for me to test and see where I am in my computer science journey, and the prompt was really interesting.
I’ve been in the Seattle area my whole life, pretty much, and I have firsthand experience…I was a lifeguard at the King County Aquatic Center, and there were actually a lot of events that I would work at where there were not that many people because it wasn’t advertised properly. I felt that if it was advertised properly and more kids could see it, more parents could sign their kids up, it’d be a lot more fun for those kids.
Zobir Tarin: I signed up for the hackathon because I’m passionate about finding ways technology can be used to support youth and make opportunities more accessible. Growing up, I saw how difficult it could be for young people, especially those from immigrant and refugee backgrounds, to find programs and resources that matched their needs. As a computer science student who is interested in AI, I also thought it would be cool to explore how AI could be leveraged to make that process easier and more effective. The idea of contributing to a solution that combines both technology and community impact really motivated me to join.
Mustaf Egal: I signed up for this hackathon because I wanted to participate in an event where the mission statement really resonated with me. This topic was important to me because all of the barriers mentioned in the introduction of the hackathon were ones I went through growing up. I knew I wanted to put my head down and help create a solution for this from scratch.
How did you and your team come up with the concept for the solution you presented?
Ryan: First and foremost, we wanted an app that was very accessible and user-friendly. We took into consideration very successful platforms like Tiktok and Instagram, where they have such easy scroll features that provide quick, instant gratification. Our main concepts were Tinder and Pinterest which have the easy swipe features and explore pages where it’s very user-friendly, for especially my generation and younger generations.
Zobir: When we started brainstorming, one of our biggest priorities was accessibility. We wanted to make sure that our solution would be easy to use and welcoming for all youth, regardless of their background or experience with technology. Accessibility mattered to us because opportunities don’t mean much if people can’t actually navigate or use the platform. From there, we thought about the specific needs of young people looking for events and programs. We wanted users to be able to find opportunities that matched their budget, location, schedule, and interests. Since a lot of our users are between the ages of 14 and 24, we also knew that they’re used to scrolling through apps on their phones. That’s why we decided to design it like a Tinder-style website where you can swipe right or click on a heart if you like an event, or swipe left if you don’t. It makes the experience simple, fun, and engaging.
Mustaf: My team came up with the idea of a matching system for our solution since we knew from our personal experiences that interests between people vary a lot. We talked and decided to merge features that would fit perfectly from the apps we admired. We took inspiration from the swiping feature from Tinder and the explore page from Pinterest to create our final output.
What are your takeaways from this experience? What did you learn, if anything, from participating in the hackathon?
Ryan: We thought we had a really good idea, and we wanted to show our idea the best way possible. So that leads into having a very good demo that you can showcase to judges and other people to show our idea. That was a takeaway. And not only that, but it was fun. It was just fun in general, having such a quick time frame with two other guys that you know well and having fun building something, it was enjoyable.
The last thing I learned was the importance of team chemistry, like team chemistry for hackathons and in general, just anywhere. We were all motivated, we kept each other on top of things, we had a plan…It was good team chemistry. Shout out to my guys.
Zobir: This was my first time working on a project under such a tight deadline, and it pushed me to think creatively and focus on building something that worked rather than aiming for perfection. I also learned a lot more about different AI tools, including both their possibilities and their limitations. It gave me a better understanding of what AI can really do and where it falls short. Another big takeaway was the importance of hackathons themselves. They give young people like us the chance to experiment, test out different ideas, and collaborate with others in a fast-paced environment. I came away from this experience with a stronger appreciation for teamwork, innovation, and the role these kinds of events play in helping us grow as problem-solvers.
Mustaf: My takeaways from this experience was to really focus on setting up a plan before going off and working on a project. We knew that with such a short deadline, it would be easy to get confused so we made a cohesive plan before dividing and conquering. This helped us at the end since we weren’t rushing to complete any area of the project. I learned from this hackathon experience was that pressure is a great motivator especially when it comes to outputting results. We were tasked with using a tool called Bolt and after a quick demo, we were expected to use it for our final project. We had the pressure of completing a project from end to end in such a short amount of time that we didn’t have time to overthink solutions or be too nervous to try out ideas.
Special Thanks to Our Judges
We were honored to have a panel of incredible judges:
- Shukri Olow – Director, Youth & Family Empowerment Division, Seattle Human Services
- Aphrodyi Antoine – Division Director, Seattle Parks & Recreation
- Ismael Fajardo – Deputy Director, Seattle’s Department of Education & Early Learning
- Mandira Virmani – Director of Program Development, Computing for All
- Claire Elliott – Computer Science Facilitator, Ada Developers Academy
- Ada Cheng, Kenny Ouedraogo, Mohammad Haidari – Seattle youth who have participated in previous Youth Connector workshops
- Vrinda Bhatia – Senior Software Engineer, Square
- Shilpa Shastri – Principal Product Manager, Apptio (IBM)
- Abhishek Sharma – Applied Scientist, Ethosphere
Special Thanks to Our Partners
This hackathon was possible thanks to support from our partners:
- Seattle Pizza & Bar for fueling our participants
- bolt.new
- Technology Alliance
- GeekWire
- AI House
- Special thanks to Adam Burgh for all of your work and partnership on this hackathon series!
📖 Read more about Youth Connector
📰 Learn about Seattle’s Responsible AI Plan in Geekwire
Want to bring your ideas to the next civic challenge? Registration is currently open for another Community Innovation Hackathon on October 9. Secure your spot today: luma.com/pactathon
Some language in this post was generated using Jasper AI. All content was edited and fact-checked by staff on the Innovation & Performance Team. Learn more about the City of Seattle’s AI Policy.