HackTheHub® the skills/experience I learned from your event have been massive for me. Would highly recommend anyone in the UK to get to Belfast... whether tech wiz or just interested in AI.

🚀 Reflecting on an Incredible Hackathon Experience at #HackTheHub, Belfast! 🏆 Last weekend I flew into Belfast to take part in the #HackTheHub generative AI hackathon. It was an absolute blast and our team placed 2nd.🥈 🔍 Diving into Our Project: Streamlining Auto Insurance Claims Post-Crash We developed an app prototype designed to revolutionize the car crash insurance claim process, making it seamless and efficient. Here's how: 1️⃣ Narration Capture: The crash participant recounts their version of events via a voice call, instantly converted into a transcript. 2️⃣ Intelligent Summarisation: An AI agent digests the information, creating a comprehensive summary complemented by a visual diagram. 3️⃣ Quality Assurance: A QA loop is initiated, refining the summary until the caller confirms its accuracy. 4️⃣ Relevant Regulations Retrieval: The event summary triggers a query into a vector database of the highway code, pinpointing applicable sections. 5️⃣ Fault Assessment: Both the summary and relevant highway code excerpts are analysed by another AI, which then recommends who is to blame (if anyone). 6️⃣ Legal Prep Document: A detailed report is generated to inform the solicitor's subsequent decision-making process. 🌟 Team Dynamics: Cohesion and Individual Brilliance Kara McIlroy built our Django web app, that the functions interfacing with AI plugged into and crafted the bulk of the presentation slide deck. Michael Jennings excelled in the ideation phase and oversaw the critical tasks within Steps 2 and 3. As for me, I delved into the intricacies of Steps 4 and 5. In order to upskill for the hackathon, I previously created a chatbot by leveraging YouTube transcripts, a vector database and calls to chatgpt (special thanks mentioned below). Despite the pressure, we delivered to an audience packed with participants, sponsors, and a panel of judges. Kara adapted on the fly, trimming her segment to ensure time for a comprehensive app demo. MJ was a star, highlighting our solution's market relevance and tactically handling the intense Q&A session. Personally, watching myself confidently navigate the app walkthrough, despite the butterflies, was a rewarding moment. I am eagerly awaiting the event's footage to relive and learn from our presentation ‘game-tape’! Shoutout to Martin Hunt from Kind.dev who lent his expertise on a call that laid the foundation for the chatbot project and also shoutout to the YouTube tutorials of Greg Kamradt. Also, a shoutout to Connor and the other organisers and sponsors of the event.

I placed second in an AI hackathon without formal AI training. Too many people overcomplicate AI skill development: • "You need a computer science degree" • "You must understand AI model training" • "Learn the theory before applying anything" Truth is they only need: • A clear problem to solve • Just-in-time learning (not just-in-case) • Persistence through failure I recently had someone in my DMs challenge me: "How can you be using AI if you don't know what backpropagation is?" (later found out that was a way to train AI models) He assumed technical knowledge trumps practical application. When I mentioned placing second in an AI hackathon and my software development background, his tone completely changed. Your audience doesn't care about your technical credentials, they care about the results you deliver. Don't let your overcomplication turn into procrastination. The best way to learn AI isn't studying for months before building—it's building something useful while learning what you need along the way. Invest in yourself. Upskill just in time for something, rather than study for years only to realize it's not for you. How have you upskilled in AI? Tell me in the comments.