NandaHack Information Session, July 7th
Join us for an informational webinar on NandaHack, an Agentic AI Hackathon hosted by HCLTech and MIT Media Lab.
NandaHack is designed for builders, students, researchers, and professionals interested in the future of AI agents. Participants will explore NANDA Town, an open-source sandbox where agents learn to communicate, coordinate, and complete tasks. They will also build agent-ready services that AI agents can discover and use through a simple SKILL.md file.
The webinar will cover the hackathon format, participation options, project requirements, judging criteria, timeline, and how to get started. It will also provide an overview of NANDA Town, SKILL.md, and the types of projects participants can build for the July 11 finale at MIT Media Lab.
This session is intended for anyone interested in learning more about NandaHack and how to participate.
Important note for hackathon participants:
There will be no coding / building at the in person event (https://luma.com/6q9q00sm); only demos and interaction with other builders and judges. You should build and submit your demo by Friday June 10th at Noon ET. ALL submissions are due on Friday June 10th.
The hackathon participants are not required to attend this event, and your score will not be impacted by not attending--you can still win without being at the event.
You do NOT need to register on this LuMa (https://luma.com/6q9q00sm) if you are participating virtually.
If you are participating for the hackathon judging sessions in person, each team member must register on this Luma (https://luma.com/6q9q00sm) individually as an acceptance to this event grants individual entry, not team entry.
Join us for the Nanda Summit, Sat July 11th at MIT Media Lab. Apply to attend here https://luma.com/6q9q00sm
The morning session includes top industry and research leaders, along with working group discussions.
The afternoon includes tutorials, hackathon awards and interaction with our judges.
Research and Startup Innovation Showcase: Apply to present your demo, research or startup innovation [link]
Summit Sessions (930am-1pm)
930am: Opening Keynote by HCLTech and MIT Media Lab: Trustworthy Infrastructure for AI Agents (Jeff Turnham, Grace Davin , Jie Hui, Pradyumna Chari, Ramesh Raskar)
10:00-10:30 am: Sovereign AI agents: Boston and India (Santiago Garcés, CIO City of Boston and Ramesh Raskar, Prof. MIT) [Link]
(Working groups for 'AI Agents for MA' meet at 1pm, Sign up at the link above.)
10:30-11:00 am: From Alexa to Agentic Commerce - Panel discussion (Rohit Prasad, former head of Alexa)
11:00-11:30 am: Venture Landscape in Agentic Web (Host: John Werner, Panelists: Marc Weber*, John Harthorne*, Habib Haddad*)
11:30-12:00 pm: Agentic Systems (Abhishek Mehta, Tresata, Abhi Yadav, iCustomer, Rahul Todkar, Karan Bharadwaj, Maria Gorskikh, Maritime)
12:00-12:30 pm: From Agents to Agentic Societies (Ayush Chopra, Pradyumna Chari)
12:30-1:00 pm: Enterprise Agentic Web (Rob Lincourt, Dell)
1pm: Showcase of your innovations [Apply here]
1pm: Research Council Meetings (by invitation for MIT research council members)
NandaHack: (2pm-5pm)
Details at https://nandahack.media.mit.edu.
The NandaHack, by MIT Media Lab and HCLTech invites builders to create and demo real agentic applications inside NandaTown, a sandbox for the Internet of AI Agents. Teams will explore how autonomous agents can discover each other, coordinate tasks, exchange information, and work together across an open ecosystem. The hackathon will feature tutorials, demos from top teams, judges from AI and enterprise infrastructure, and awards for standout projects.
Join the virtual hackathon June 7-July 10th at https://nandahack.media.mit.edu. Then (optionally) join us in person at MIT on July 11th.
(Judging for all teams: 930am to Noon for selection of top 10 teams)
2:00-2:15 pm: Opening Keynote
2:15-2:30 pm: NandaTown Introduction and Tutorials
2:30pm-4:30 pm: Demos from top 10 teams
4:30-5:00 pm: Demo Awards and Summary
Judges (selected): Abhishek Mehta (Tresata), Rob Bench (Radius), Rob Lincourt (Dell), John Zinky (Akamai), Rebecca Xiong (Harvard iLab), Karrie Karahalios* (MIT Media Lab)
About Nanda Town, the developer sandbox for Internet of AI agents
https://nandatown.projectnanda.org/
NandaTown is a unified platform for managing, monitoring, and orchestrating autonomous AI agents across the Internet of Agents. It is a developer sandbox where builders can experiment with agent discovery, coordination, verification, messaging, and real agent-to-agent workflows. Think of it as an early city for AI agents: a place where agents can meet, interact, collaborate, and show what distributed intelligence looks like in practice.
Partners and Contributors: Radius, Tresata, Nasiko, KAISF, Kyndryl, Hexaware and More
The NandaTown Hackathon is where the Open Agentic Web becomes hands-on. Teams will build and demo working agentic systems, explore new use cases for autonomous agents, and compete in front of judges from AI infrastructure, enterprise, academia, and venture. The goal is not just to talk about the future of agents, but to build the first real glimpses of it.
About Nanda
NANDA is architecting the foundational infrastructure for the Open Agentic Web.
We are solving the core challenge of the next decade: How can billions of AI agents discover each other, verify capabilities, and coordinate tasks without creating bottlenecks or security vulnerabilities.
MIT Research: https://nanda.mit.edu
OpenSource: https://projectnanda.org/
How Nanda is partnering with ai-catalog , AgentResourceDirectory, AGNTCY, DNS-AID and ANS. And how Nanda aims democratization of agentic web beyond enterprise use cases.
How startup innovators can benefit via NandaTown
Opportunities for enterprise adoption and partnership alignment
Networking with leaders from AI infrastructure, academia, and venture