Summer camp for AI builders: our latest hackathon

I loved being a Brownie Guide when I was little. More than anything, I loved earning badges - learning something new and sewing another one onto my sleeve. That, and the excitement of going away to camp: tents, team games and campfires. 

That's the feeling we wanted to recreate at MSQ DX last week. 

AI Camp 2026 was our annual hackathon and the latest chapter in AI Together, our year-round programme to build our AI capability and confidence. Teams gathered in London, Leeds, Uppingham and Barcelona for one challenge: design and prototype a digital product, building a working feature in just three hours, using AI throughout the process. 

The goal was to give people practical experience of building with AI while helping to embed agentic engineering and spec-driven development across the business, making these ways of working tangible for everyone. 

Why we did it 

This wasn't an event only for engineers. It was for everyone in the business, whatever their role, from finance to front-end development. The way we build products is changing quickly, and we wanted everyone to understand what that looks like in practice: taking an idea, turning it into a specification, working with AI agents to design, prototype and code, and seeing how quickly a cross-functional team can move. 

The aim wasn't to create polished products. It was to give people hands-on experience with tools like Claude and GitHub Copilot, while putting agentic engineering and spec-driven development into practice. 

The challenge 

Nine teams had roughly three hours to design a digital product, build a working prototype and coded feature, then pitch it back in a seven-minute campfire demo. It seems like an impossibly short amount of time, but that’s partly the point. It leaves little room for overthinking and forces teams to make decisions, trust the process and keep moving.  

Teams could take their inspiration from two campsites: Summer of AI (think festivals, the World Cup, travel and, of course, the good old British weather) or AI for Good (climate, biodiversity, community and education). The brief was deliberately broad, but we were specific about the output: a pitch, a prototype and a coded feature. 

Every role was open regardless of day job. Camp Captains kept teams moving, Camp Counsellors were on hand to bounce ideas, and as Camp Director I had the top job: wandering between teams, watching ideas take shape, and handing out emergency marshmallows. 

Around the campfire 

No two teams interpreted the brief in quite the same way, and it was wonderful to see the creativity in the ideas that emerged. 

Some leaned fully into fun: a pub companion app that turned classic British moaning into actionable feedback, and an AI festival companion tracking live crowd density, queue times and facilities. 

Others tackled more serious challenges, from supporting carers during extreme weather conditions to helping parents encourage children away from screens during the summer holidays. One team built a tool that translated the environmental cost of AI into everyday terms (using cups of tea as the unit of measurement was a particular favourite of mine), while another designed a camping holiday planner for older users who are often overlooked by mainstream technology. 

That diversity was one of the day's biggest successes. Faced with the same challenge and the same tools, every team found a different corner of the brief to inhabit, bringing creativity, care and humour to their builds. 

Badge winners 

Judging was handled by our Camp Council - Rebecca Crook (CEO), Guy Hunsworth (COO) and Mark Rodseth (CTO) - alongside a live audience vote through a custom voting app built for the event. 

Team FlintStones picked up the Pathfinder Badge for innovation, with a travel planning experience that explored not just where people wanted to go, but why. 

Pitch & Pint earned the Builder's Badge for the day's most ambitious technical build: a festival companion capable of simulating crowd movement, queue times and facilities at scale. 

Weather Wardens were named overall Camp Legends, with judges recognising both the relevance of their weather alert platform and the disciplined way they moved from product specification to wireframe to working prototype. 

The audience chose More Vibes, Less Code for the S'mores Badge for best campfire demo, while the Partnership Badge went to Alpaca Tent for their joyful, collaborative team spirit. 

Everyone left with a participation badge, plus a camp mug and sticker. 

What we learnt 

One lesson came up time and again: the prompt is the product. Teams that invested time creating a clear specification consistently built stronger prototypes than those who rushed straight into prompting . Quite a few teams admitted that writing a proper specification initially felt slower than simply diving into the tools, but people were also surprised by the pace of work - things that might once have taken hours of design iteration appeared in minutes.  

For me, the campfire demos were the highlight of the day. The insights into what had worked, what hadn't and what teams would do differently with another afternoon were every bit as valuable as the ideas themselves. 

I also loved seeing people who don't spend their days building digital products getting stuck in, trying things out and standing up to demo what they'd created. Some of the ideas were funny, some thoughtful, some surprisingly ambitious - but every team had something different to show. 

That's exactly what I hoped AI Camp would be: a chance to build with AI, learn something new and have a bit of fun along the way. I think we managed all three.