Vibe Coding Hackathon

My first hackathon!

Today I attended my first hackathon. And to be fair, I was not really looking forward to it because I had no one to accompany me on this adventure. But little did I know how fun it was going to be!

Team formation

While I was waiting for the hackathon to begin, two familiar faces approached me and asked if I wanted to team up. Of course, I said yes! Then, a couple of minutes later, we were joined by two business students. Now the team was complete! Consisting of me (Keith Clive Roose), two other IT students: Oskar De Clerck and Jurre Cottyn, two business students: Lotte Maes and Elise Van Wonterghem.

Choosing our project

We chose “The paperwork killer (B2B)” track. During our brainstorming session, Elise came up with an idea we ultimately chose as our final project. An expense management tool that eliminates manual data entry and simplifies how companies track spending. where employees enter their spending (transport, meals, etc.) by entering the info in the fields or uploading a receipt image, and then an admin can manage them.

Vibe coding

We started with setting everything up, using lovable (since the whole hackathon was sponsored by them!). When we started, I was shocked by how easy it was to build apps on the platform. After 1 prompt, we already had a good base app 🤯! And from there on out, we started making changes and improvements.

After the break, we continued our work and went to the “Polish & Integration” phase. While the IT students were making the final touches to get the demo ready, the business students worked on the pitch (which we absolutely crushed!)

The results

After a whole day of working on our projects and finishing them. It was time to announce the winners.

We were all packed up, ready to leave, because we absolutely did not expect to win, but to our greatest surprise, we did 🥇!

Thank you, Oskar De Clerck, Jurre Cottyn, Lotte Maes, and Elise Van Wonterghem for this amazing day!