🏛️ New England Inter-Collegiate AI Hackathon
225 Dyer Street · Providence, RI · March 28th & 29th, 2026
Two-day hackathon. Workshops for coders & non-coders. Overnight optional (guys room / gals room). Real-time AI-powered leaderboard. Dynamic prize escalation. Built-in study breaks & study rooms.
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LLaMieNot Your Average Hackathon.
An AI Factory.
In 2024, yconic AI produced what is recognized as the world's first AI Hackathon, hosted by Microsoft at their Cambridge, Massachusetts campus. That event demonstrated that the hackathon format, when augmented with AI-native tooling and evaluation infrastructure, could generate outcomes that rival structured accelerator programs in both speed and substance.
The New England Inter-Collegiate AI Hackathon represents the next evolution where the density of technical talent and entrepreneurial ambition creates ideal conditions for breakthrough work at the collegiate level.
Don't automate the existing system. Replace it with something that makes the old system look absurd.
Two Days. Ship Something Real.
Three Tracks. Every Skill Level.
$16,000 in Cash + NVIDIA DGX Spark
All workshops led by Arnell Milhouse, whose sessions at prior events received 95% top ratings (10/10) from computer science students.
AI Innovation Hack
Think multi-agent orchestration. OpenClaw was the starting point. We're looking for developers who will go beyond that. Build an MVP, demonstrate real traction over the weekend. The team with the most innovative hack — measured by user signups, social media traction, product-market fit evidence, and creative use of AI — wins.
NVIDIA Supercomputer Hack
Use our NVIDIA DGX Sparks to build an innovative multi-agent orchestration system and take one home! Covers advanced AI software engineering techniques, multi-agent orchestration, reasoning architectures, agent memory systems, communication protocols (MCP, A2A), production frameworks (LangGraph, CrewAI, Anthropic Agent SDK), safety engineering, and rigorous evaluation.
AI Coding Surfing 101
No coding experience? No problem. This workshop takes you from zero to shipping a full-stack, enterprise-level application — without writing a single line of code yourself. We skip AI-slop vibe coding entirely and teach you our AI Coding Surfing technique. The workshop moves at an easy pace, is completely hands-on, and by the end you will have built something real. This is not a tutorial. This is a launchpad.
$16,000 in Cash + NVIDIA DGX Spark
Base pool subject to dynamic escalation. $20,000 could rise to $25,000, $30,000, or more. The NVIDIA DGX Spark is physical hardware, not cloud credits.
| Track | Prize | Description |
|---|---|---|
| AI Innovation Hack | $10,000 | Most innovative hack — traction, PMF evidence, creative AI use |
| NVIDIA Supercomputer Hack | DGX + $3,000 | CS/dev track — winner takes all (DGX + cash) |
| AI Coding Surfing 101 | $3,000 | Non-CS track — best app from zero-experience builders |
Plus 4-6 prize categories across Request for Hacks. Multiple teams can win across multiple categories. This is not winner-take-all.
Workshops + Mechanisms Never Deployed at Any Prior Hackathon
AI Coding Surfing 101 Workshop
Learn how to avoid the AI slop produced by vibe coding and build complete applications. Zero to full-stack in one session.
Advanced AI Software Engineering Workshop
Learn advanced methods that reduce a year's worth of coding down to a few weeks and months into days. 95% rate it 10/10.
Real-Time AI-Powered Leaderboard
A live scoring system monitors team progress continuously. It evaluates code quality, architectural decisions, and product strategy, then updates a public leaderboard every thirty minutes. Teams can observe relative standings and adjust strategy accordingly. No more information vacuum until the awards ceremony.
Dynamic Prize Escalation
The base prize pool is not a ceiling. As the yconic evaluation system assesses aggregate quality across all teams, prize values may increase during the event itself. Higher-quality work from any team increases the potential reward for all teams, incentivizing collective excellence.
Real-Time AI Feedback
Every 30 minutes, yconic AI scans each team's repository. When changes are detected, the team receives feedback across twelve evaluation dimensions. Teams also receive limited Mentorship Request tokens for targeted guidance — forcing strategic decisions about when to seek help, simulating real resource constraints.
Request for Hacks
yconic publishes structured challenge theses, each representing a real market gap. These aren't abstract prompts. Each Request for Hack articulates a real problem with real demand, framed as an investable thesis. Teams build toward outcomes with commercial viability, not just technical novelty.
The sectors that will define —
the next 10 to 50 years.
yconic's "Request for Hacks" is a strategic initiative to identify and support hackers and founders in specific, high-potential sectors that yconic believes are critical right now and will drive society for 10 to 50 years. A curated list guiding hackers and founders to build in areas where AI can revolutionize, innovate, and disrupt.
Four ideas that define founder-era AI.
Each one can create a billion-dollar company.
Ten ideas that don't improve the system —
they make it look absurd in retrospect.
The automobile didn't make horses faster. The iPhone didn't make flip phones better. These ideas don't make today's workflows more efficient — they make us wonder why we ever did things the old way at all.
NVIDIA DGX Spark
All teams have the option to build on NVIDIA DGX Spark clusters featuring Grace Blackwell architecture with 128GB unified memory. This is enterprise-grade, on-premise AI compute — the same class of hardware deployed in the world's most advanced AI research laboratories. Access is provided free of charge.
Teams that choose to build on the DGX Spark must demonstrate that their solution requires capabilities that cannot be replicated on a standard desktop or laptop. The hack must incorporate capabilities unique to what an NVIDIA supercomputer enables. Achieve this at the highest level and the team takes home a physical DGX unit. This is not a cloud credit. This is hardware.
Zero data leakage with full local deployment. Suitable for applications involving sensitive data processing, large-scale model inference, or compute-intensive agent orchestration impossible on consumer hardware.
No Pizza. Real Food.
We explicitly reject the hackathon convention of pizza-based catering. Vegan, halal, gluten-free, and kosher options are standard.
☀️ Breakfast
Fresh fruit, yogurt parfaits, eggs, pastries, fresh juice, premium coffee
🍽️ Lunch
Grain bowls, carved proteins, build-your-own stations, international options
🌙 Dinner
International and plant-based selections, warm comfort food, desserts
☕ All Day
Premium coffee & espresso bar, snacks, energy drinks, sparkling water
🌃 Late Night
Warm soups, sliders, baked goods, Insomnia Cookies, ice cream at midnight
🥗 Dietary
Vegan, halal, gluten-free, kosher — all accommodated as standard, not exceptions
Everything Else You Need to Know
👥 Team Formation
Register as a pre-formed team (1-5 members) or as an individual. Solo registrants are matched through a structured process pairing complementary skills: developers with designers, strategists with builders.
🌙 Overnight
Entirely optional. Sleeping bags and air mattresses provided (guys room / gals room). Giant Tetris competition, games, Insomnia Cookies and ice cream at midnight. On-site security all night.
📱 Ambassador Program
Share the event on LinkedIn or social media, submit a link to your post at arnell@yconic.ai, and receive a swag bag + event t-shirt upon arrival.
📚 Study Breaks
Built-in school work and exam study breaks with dedicated study rooms available. We know you have classes — the schedule accommodates both hacking and academics.
🎓 Eligibility
Active college students with a valid .edu email address. All majors welcome — CS, business, design, humanities. The workshops are designed for every skill level.
What You Leave With
Ready to Build the Future?
March 28th & 29th, 2026 · Providence, Rhode Island
Active college students only (.edu required)