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Hacktoberfest Hack Day Silver Spring x AI Collective logo
Event Ended

Hacktoberfest Hack Day Silver Spring x AI Collective

OCT 17Silver spring , MdIn Person
Organized byTThe AI Collective — Silver Spring MD Chapter

About

Hack for Humanity × Hacktoberfest 2026 — Silver Spring

Join AI Collective Maryland for a one-day hackathon where you’ll build open-source AI tools for social good. Bring an idea or join a team on the spot, build with open-weight models and open-source AI tooling, and demo what you made by the end of the day.

📍 Silver Spring, MD

Who it’s for: Developers, designers, students, and anyone curious about building with AI. All skill levels welcome — you’ll find teammates and help in the room.

Not sure what to build? Write your first open-source skills.md, build an open-source agent, fine-tune an open-weight model, or pick a problem in your community and point AI at it.

The rules:

  • Build with an open-weight model or open-source AI tooling
  • Ship your project to a public GitHub repo
  • Solve a real problem for real people

What to bring: A charged laptop with your dev environment set up and API keys ready, so you can start building right away.

Lunch, Hacktoberfest t-shirts, stickers, and prizes provided.

Hosted by the AI Collective Maryland chapter, co-hosted by Studio Rehoboth, as part of Hacktoberfest 2026 powered by MLH, DEV, and DigitalOcean.

Prize Categories

2 categories
  • View Best Open-Source AI ProjectDigitalOcean

    Best Open-Source AI Project

    Exclusive Hacktoberfest 2026 Winner DEV Badge & MLH Swag Bag

    Build an original project that uses open-source or open-weight AI as an important part of how it works. Teams could create an agent skill, build with an open-weight large or small language model, or build or adapt an open-source model harness.

    Build with DigitalOceanView category
  • View Best Use of Gemma 4Deepmind Google

    Best Use of Gemma 4

    It’s time to see how much you can build with a lightweight, open model. Gemma 4 packs multimodal intelligence into an open-weights model that you can access through the Gemini API. So, what can Gemma 4 bring to your project?

    • Multimodal Experience: Work with text and images to create an assistant that understands more of what users share.
    • Focused AI Tools: Build a focused AI tool for learning, creativity, productivity, or your community.
    • Rapid Prototyping: Experiment with an open model while using the Gemini API to move quickly from an idea to a working prototype.

    Bring your idea to life… what will you build with Gemma 4 today?

    Build with Gemma 4View category