On June 6, something that started as a student initiative turned into one of the most energetic tech events Haarlem has seen this year. Around 80 developers, designers, and tech enthusiasts gathered at De Koepel, for a full-day AI Hackathon.
What is a AI Hackathon?
On June 6, something that started as a student initiative turned into one of the most energetic tech events Haarlem has seen this year. Around 80 developers, designers, and tech enthusiasts gathered at De Koepel, the SRH Haarlem Campus, for a full-day AI Hackathon. The event was organised by Digilize Agency (an AI-native agency founded by SRH students, whose scope is building community and local AI) together with The Social Club, the SRH student association. The brief was simple: pick one of 2 real world challenges and ship a working product before sunset.
They delivered.
Getting an Overview
Participants came from across the Netherlands (Groningen, The Hague, Rotterdam, Leiden) and from as far as Brussels and Italy. Teams worked the entire day under a time constraint to design, build, and pitch their AI-powered solution. Working demos were presented live to a judging panel that included SRH Haarlem lecturers Lorenzo Rando and Amirvala Kouhpayeh.
SRH Haarlem University of Applied Sciences hosted the event. Watching De Koepel fill with people building real things in real time was a reminder of why practical, applied education matters.
In the words of Tim Ort, Co-Founder of Digilize Agency and SRH Haarlem student: "We didn't want another event where people just talk about AI. Out of 120 applicants, we capped the room at 80 coders and tech enthusiasts to see what happens when you put them in a room with real operational bottlenecks. They didn't just brainstorm; they built and shipped working demos in 8 hours. That's the community we want to build and the standard we want to set."
Partners who helped to make it happen
Sponsors including Neno, Lovable, Maverx, Altis Groep, Gemeente Haarlem, and Miro, among others, backed the day and helped make participation accessible.
For SRH Haarlem, this is exactly the kind of student engagement we believe in. Our programmes are built around applied learning. Events like this show what that looks like in practice: students who take initiative and build something real by applying their digital expertise. One thing is certain: this won't be the last time. Follow the event recap at hackathon.digilize.agency and stay tuned for the next edition. Keep Building!
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