​Wellington Impact Lab — a one-day civic AI hackathon

​Keeping Wellington informed in an emergency.

​New Zealand's first Impact Lab starts with a real city problem. On Saturday 8 August, Wellington's builder community works alongside Wellington City Council emergency-management experts to turn public information into tools people could genuinely use — before and during an emergency.

​WCC's emergency management team has had ten activations in the past two years. The problems you'll work on aren't hypothetical — they come straight from those operations, and the people who own them will be in the room.

​The challenge

​Emergency decisions are only as good as the information flow behind them. Five real WCC problems, narrowed to the strongest tracks on the day:

• ​Bring official warnings and local conditions into one community view

• ​Create a two-way information channel between communities and Council

• ​Identify and verify emerging local impacts from public information

• ​Help emergency staff sort and prioritise incoming information

• ​Detect unusual changes in movement around the city

​How it works

• ​Small teams, real support. Every team gets a problem brief, pre-built public datasets and Claude skills ready to go, a WCC domain expert, and mentors to unblock data, Claude, and delivery questions.

• ​Public data only. You'll build against what's actually available — official warnings, hazard layers, river and rainfall gauges, road and transport feeds — real-world messiness included.

• ​Build with Claude. Claude Code access provided on the day. No prior AI experience required — bring your craft, whatever it is. Added bonus if you have a Claude Max plan.

• ​Ship by 4 PM. Submissions are a GitHub repo and a 2-minute demo video. Live demos and judging follow, with awards at 5:30.

​Who should apply

​Developers, designers, data folk, product thinkers, and anyone from Wellington's civic and emergency-management community who wants to build something useful on a bad day. Places are limited and teams are kept small — apply early.

​Run of day

​8:00 Doors, breakfast, team formation
9:00 Problem briefing + datasets
9:30 Build begins
12:30 Lunch + lightning talks
4:00 Submissions close
5:00 Live demos + judging
5:30 Awards
6:00 Close

​Judging

​Usefulness beats polish. Prototypes are scored on usefulness to WCC, working with the supplied data, a working demo, honesty about limits, and a credible path to real use. The best outcome isn't a perfect prototype — it's a credible next step for Wellington.

​Venue: Wellington City Council
Hosted by Chris Watson & Adam Holt, Claude Community Ambassadors
Organisers: Creative HQ & ZunoSmart Labs
Food & Drink: Catering provided. This is an alcohol-free event.