The Nelson AI Sandbox is proud to announce the successful completion of New Zealand’s first-ever Vibe-athon!
Held at the NMIT campus, this all-day event was a fresh take on the traditional hackathon. Instead of manually writing code, participants utilized “vibe-coding”—using AI tools like ChatGPT, Gemini, and Claude solely through voice and text prompts to build their ideas.
The event brought together 30 participants ranging from 13 to 80 years old, including students, entrepreneurs, creatives, and tech professionals. It was a day defined by creativity, flow, and effective collaboration between humans and AI.
Thank you to all eight teams who participated: Magic Karts, Neural Vibe, Trio of Tomorrow, Think Alpha, Fresh AIr, Good Vibers, Liken AI, and Rockstack AI.
Congratulations to our prize winners:
🏆 Supreme Winner: Rockstack AI
Best AI Tutor: Trio of Tomorrow
Best Gameplay: Good Vibers
Best Audio/Visual: Liken AI
Most Innovative: Think Alpha
Most Mysterious Game: Magic Karts
This event was entirely volunteer-led and would not have been possible without the generous support of our partners:
NMIT: A massive thank you for hosting the event, providing facilities, and allowing IT programme staff to serve as judges. Your partnership is vital to the local AI learning ecosystem.
Digital Diligence Limited (DDL): Thank you to Savannah Smart-Pullyn and DDL for sponsoring our Pre-Mixer event and providing the food and refreshments.
Chia Sisters: Thank you for keeping our participants focused and hydrated with Bioactive Boysenberry Mind drinks.
We were honored to have an exceptional panel of experts guide the scoring process:
Ali Kahwaji: Senior Academic at NMIT (AI, XR, Cyber Security).
Eugene Whakahoehoe MNZM: CEO of Ngāti Kuia Trust and retired Lieutenant-Colonel.
Dr. Julian Maclaren: Consulting Machine Learning Engineer at Google Research. (Special thanks to Jasper and Finn for assisting!)
Richard Butler: Founder of BlueBerryIT and business coach.
Sam Ng: Co-founder of Optimal Workshop and Head of Digital Solutions at UNDP.
Dr. Todd Cochrane: Senior Academic at NMIT (AI and 3D Technologies).
We appreciate the time, effort, and professionalism each judge contributed to making the Vibe-athon a success. Their leadership helped create a high-quality experience for all participants.
Our Mentors:
Our gratitude goes to the mentors who volunteered their time to guide and support the teams:
Willa Wang, Coilin Wilson, Tina Rajino, Dylan Brodie, Buddhika Daluwatte, Gaby Navarro, Sloane Bayley, Murray Irvine, Ceci Lincon, and Gardner Bickford.
Project Management:
A special recognition to David Brydon, who planted the original idea, designed the flow of the day, and oversaw the entire event from planning to delivery.
The Vibe-athon reflects the strength of Nelson’s growing AI ecosystem. Innovative projects from the event will be showcased on this website soon.
