Day 1:

March 7th 2026 | Evening Kick Off Event

Location: Columbia University | Columbia Business School | 665 130th street - Cooperman Commons Date & Time: Saturday, March 7 | 7:00 PM – 9:00 PM

🎤 Keynote & Labs Evening Session

Get ready to build! This evening session is designed to provide the technical foundation and inspiration needed for a successful hackathon. Attendees will receive direct guidance on Google Cloud tools and Gemini APIs.

Agenda:

7:00 PM – 7:15 PM: 👋 Check-in & Refreshments
Networking music, high energy.

7:15 PM – 7:45 PM: 🎤 Keynote: The Multimodal Frontier
Intro to Gemini Live API & Agent Development Kit.
The "Anti-Project" Brief: Explicitly show the slide of what NOT to build (No basic RAG, No Medical/Mental Health bots).
Introduction of Judges and Mentors.

7:45 PM – 8:00 PM: 🛠️ Environment Setup & API Access
Distribution of Google Cloud Credits.

Verification of API access (ensure every laptop is ready for Sunday morning).
8:00 PM – 8:45 PM: 💻 Introduction to Gemini Live Agents and Anti-gravity
Technical deep-dive: "From 0 to Hello World" with Live API.
Technical deep-dive: How to master Antigravity for your coding projects

8:45 PM – 9:15 PM: 🤝 Speed Networking & Team Formation
The Rule: Teams of 3–4 preferred.
Activity: "Pitch your skill" (e.g., "I'm a backend dev looking for a creative storyteller").
Solo hackers are grouped or encouraged to join existing ideas to maximize credit usage and project quality.

Workshop Guidelines:

https://codelabs.developers.google.com/way-back-home-level-0/instructions#0

https://codelabs.developers.google.com/way-back-home-level-1/instructions#0

https://codelabs.developers.google.com/way-back-home-level-3/instructions#0

https://codelabs.developers.google.com/way-back-home-level-4/instructions#0

Step out of the traditional "text box" paradigm and build AI that truly connects. This hackathon challenges you to create immersive, multimodal AI agents using Google Cloud and Gemini.

Participants will leverage the speed of the Gemini Live API and the power of Google’s GenAI SDK/ Agent Development Kit  to build solutions in one of two categories:

1. The Live Agent: Build real-time, voice-and-vision enabled agents that can converse naturally and handle interruptions (e.g., real-time translators, vision-enabled tutors).

2. The Creative Storyteller: Build agents that generate rich, interleaved outputs—seamlessly mixing text, audio, and visuals into a cohesive narrative flow.

The Mission: Don’t just build a chatbot. Build an experience that sees, hears, speaks, and creates.

Prizes:

The winning team will receive an exclusive, private pitch session with the founders of Google’s AI Futures Fund!

$30,000 in Google Cloud Credits

Up to 4 tickets to Google I/O - 2026 - the ultimate annual showcase of AI breakthroughs and invite-only event on May 19-20 at the Shoreline Amphitheater in Mountain View, CA.

$500 Personal shopping experience at the Google's St. John's Terminal store - not open to the public

More to come!

RSVP for Day 2: March 8th 2026 | All Day AI Hackathon | 9:30 AM - 5PM ET Geffen Hall 620

Join the Slack