Better Days: A Hackathon — San Francisco
Application form!
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VENUE IS 18+
We're heading to Japantown for a full day of building, brought to you by ClickHouse! :)
One day. Real problems. Real prizes. Pick a track, form a team of up to 5 (or go solo), and build something using ClickHouse + Postgres — OLAP and OLTP, like PB&J. This is an AI hackathon grounded in problems that affect everyday people: kids who can't read, adults who are lonely, a planet people want to help but don't know how. Build something someone would actually open on a hard day.
Partner engineers will be at the expert bar all day to help you move fast. Breakfast, lunch, and drinks are on us. We close the night with demos, judging, and dinner together.
Four tracks to build in
The reading crisis
Two-thirds of 4th graders read below grade level, and the kids furthest behind are falling fastest. Build the tool that helps a teacher spot who's quietly struggling, helps a student find the book they'll actually finish, or helps a library know what's working.
The loneliness epidemic
Half of American adults are lonely, and it's worse for the young. Build for the communities trying to hold people together: senior centers, campus groups, neighborhoods.
Climate action that's actually usable
People are worried and don't know what to do. Build the tool that replaces guilt with a clear next step, the rebate they didn't know existed, the local vote that actually cuts emissions, the neighborhood prep for the next heat wave. Not another carbon calculator.
Open track — your everyday crisis
Got a problem that keeps you up at night that isn't on this list? Bring it. Food access, caregiving, housing, mental health, if real people are struggling with it and a well-built tool could help, you're in the right place.
Prizes:
🥇 Grand prize — 1k in Cash, ClickHouse Cloud credits $500
🥈 Runner-up — $500 in Cash, ClickHouse cloud credits $300
⭐ Bonus category (Build with LibreChat) - $250 cash
🎉 Social raffle - Physical Gift, TBD
Schedule
9:30 am — Doors open + coffee
Check in, grab a drink, find your team
10:00 am — Kickoff
Rules, tracks, and tools walkthrough
10:15 am — Hacking begins
Expert bar open — ClickHouse engineers on-site all day
5:00 pm — Submissions close
Lock in your build
5:05 pm — Demos + presentations
Each team presents to judges, selected present to whole crowd
6:00 pm — Dinner + awards
Cash prizes, credits, and glory
Judges
Sunny Bakhda — Founding Engineer, HoneyHive
Thibault Jaigu — CEO & Co-Founder, Requesty
Sarah Sonje — Senior Member of Technical Staff, Oracle Inc
Rishabh Pandey — Software Engineer, DoorDash
Mukesh Pareek — Co-founder & CTO, LunarTree Inc.
Kevin Sutardji — National Alliance on Mental Illness
Rishabh Mehan — Intuit
Ayush Dwivedi — Walmart Global Tech
Varshika Gambhir — Google Labs
Daniel Sam Pete Thiyagu — Meta
Harry Bairstow - inference.net
About ClickHouse
ClickHouse is the open-source columnar database built for speed — the engine behind real-time analytics at massive scale. If you've ever needed answers from billions of rows in milliseconds, this is your tool.
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