Inside Hulme Hack 2025: The pros, cons and everything else.
The team at Hulme Grammar School did a tremendous job at organising and following through with the Hackathon. Huge thanks and hats off to these guys for pulling this off.
Disclaimer
You’ve probably heard countless times how great hackathons are and why you should definitely take part in them. So instead, I want to share my own take on what this hackathon was really about.
As a heads up, we in no way shape or form came anywhere near first place haha, however looking back the day wasn’t about the overall prizes. It’s about what you took away from it. Admittedly, our product wasn’t the best on the night, but I feel as though our team took many more learnings from the bootcamp than many there. So, here’s my take on the Hulme Hackathon 2025.
Setting the Scene
From the outside, it may just look like your run-of-the-mill hackathon. However, with the thanks of partners and fundraisers, hefty prizes upwards of £600 were available for grabs. Although this may seem like a gimmick, the Hulme Department as well as the Team at Purple were delighted to have been there - gave very clear instructions - and the logistics were carried out to perfection.
The day started with a few Keynote speeches from Mr Norbury and Gavin, the overseers of the Hackathon. In summary, they gave us the plan of action as to how the day was going to run as well as an insight into how Developers are using AI in their daily workflow. Following this, we were then given a problem statement to answer.
This was a very open ended question, and after extensive brainstorming, collecting ideas, and communicating between the 7 different people we had on our team on the day. We chose to go into accessibility, ensuring all students felt like they were learning.
Development Stage
We had 12 hours. Yes, many would feel as though a project using AI could be done and dusted within a few prompts. And although there was some logic into that, the final product was only one aspect of the project. Hours spent collaborating, thinking of ways we can get ahead of our competition, and fixing random bugs within our IDEs. This competition was not for the weak, with many lessons learnt along the way.
Into the nitty gritty, the project itself was quite the artpiece. Having quite the original name Notely (not like every other AI company these days), this project was a combination of everyones ideas across the board jumbled into one platform.
This project is and will remain open source for anyone looking to see exactly what we accomplished in those 8 hours. Huge props to my team for managing to jam-pack all these features in, to be honest I was mainly there for the vibes haha. Click here to view the GitHub Repository
Presentation & Learnings
Although there was some intiial confusion with what the presentation would hold, it essentially played out like your typical pitch. The competitors stood out within this field, and although they didnt have as much content as we did, they nailed the issue they were trying to solve. Although many projects lacked consistensy and looked like it just came fresh out of lovable, credit has to go for all teams as each had their own strengths and weaknesses.
In our case, the demand for our product is there, and the features we added would benefit not only students but also teachers. However, we failed to produce a polished product when it came to the deadline and some aspects felt rushed / not talked about. This was a huge shame however regardless our heads remain high and we shall continue battling in upcoming hackathons.
So, in summary, here’s the three aspects I took away from this Hackathon for next time:
- Keep the project short n sweet. Often jam packing features leads to drifting away from the point and a waste of time.
- Stick to the problem you’re answering. Regardless what stage you’re in, constantly ask, how does this solve the problem we’re solving?
- Marketing is everything. End of the day, you can have a blissful project, but if you’re unable to showcase it you’re as good as the next vibecoder.