# Weber State AI Hackathon

**Type:** resource
**Status:** Draft
**Confidence:** Medium
**Tier:** D
**Focus:** university AI hackathon, two-week remote build, skill-tiered prizes, employer job fair, Ogden
**Primary Location:** Ogden, UT
**Utah Location:** Ogden, UT
**Region:** Ogden
**Website:** https://hackathon.weber.edu/
**Domain:** computing, culture-place
**Updated:** 2026-08-12

## Summary

The Weber State AI Hackathon is a **Weber State University** event, run on a university subdomain and
organized by **Tristan Rhodes**, an AI integration and automation engineer at the school. Its format
is unusual for a hackathon and is the reason it is worth a page: instead of a single overnight sprint,
the 2026 edition ran a **two-week remote build with mentorship and tools provided (March 21 – April 3,
2026)**, followed by a **one-day in-person finale at Shepherd Union in Ogden on April 4**
([2026 announcements](weber-state-ai-hackathon-2026-announcements.md)).

That structure lets complete beginners produce something. The organizer's pitch was explicit that no
experience was required and that free AI tools and two weeks of mentorship were the point — with a
**$1,800 prize pool** split across Novice, Intermediate, and Advanced categories, a **$10 ticket**
covering meals and a shirt, and a **job fair running alongside the finale, free to employers**.

A **2027 edition is announced for March 20, 2027**
([official website](weber-state-ai-hackathon-official-website.md)).

## Who It's For

Open to **anyone over 18** — the organizer named students, working professionals, and hobbyists — and
built so those groups do not cannibalize each other. The three prize categories separate novices from
experienced builders, and partway through the 2026 cycle the organizer **added prizes to the
Intermediate and Advanced tiers specifically to attract experienced people**, on the reasoning that the
interesting question was what strong builders would do with current AI tools.

For a first-time builder, the two-week runway and the supplied mentors are what make it accessible;
the organizer pitched it directly at "someone who has always dreamed of building an app or website".

For employers, the parallel job fair is the draw, and it costs nothing.

## What It Provides

- **Two weeks of remote build time**, with mentorship and AI tools supplied.
- **An in-person finale** at Shepherd Union on the Weber State campus in Ogden.
- **A $1,800 prize pool** across Novice, Intermediate, and Advanced categories.
- **Meals and swag** — breakfast, lunch, snacks, and a t-shirt — included in the ticket.
- **Expert workshops**, at least some of them assembled by open call in the regional developer
  community rather than booked in advance.
- **A free tech job fair** alongside the finale, aimed at connecting participants with employers.

## How To Use It

Register at `hackathon.weber.edu`, which carries the current edition. Watch the deadline: in 2026,
**registration closed on March 18**, roughly two weeks before the finale and before the remote build
began, so late interest could not be accommodated.

Two structural cautions for anyone tracking this event:

- **The website is not a reliable record.** It is a thin countdown page that is rewritten for each
  edition. By August 2026 it described only the March 2027 event and retained nothing about 2026 — not
  the dates, the price, the prize pool, or the venue.
- **Announcements go out through the Forge Utah Slack `#localevents` channel** well before the site is
  useful. In 2026 that channel carried the complete details; the website did not.

Employers wanting a table, and anyone wanting to present a workshop, should contact the organizer
directly — both were solicited publicly rather than through a form.

## Cost / Eligibility

**$10** in 2026, including breakfast, lunch, snacks, and a t-shirt. Open to everyone over 18; no
experience required, and no Weber State affiliation required. Free for employers attending the job
fair. Verify the current edition's price — nothing establishes that $10 carries forward.

## Best Fits

Someone in Northern Utah who wants to build a first real project with support rather than compete
cold — the two-week mentored runway is a genuinely different offer from a 24-hour sprint, and at $10
the downside is negligible. It also fits an experienced engineer curious about what current AI tooling
does to their own output, which is the audience the organizer went out of his way to recruit.

For Ogden-area employers, the free job fair attached to a room full of people who just shipped
something is a cheap and well-targeted recruiting venue.

## Evidence

- [Source: Weber State AI Hackathon 2026 announcements (Forge Utah Slack)](weber-state-ai-hackathon-2026-announcements.md) · https://greatutah.work/pages/weber-state-ai-hackathon-2026-announcements.md — 2026 dates, venue, $10 ticket, $1,800 prize pool, job fair, categories
- [Source: Weber State AI Hackathon official website](weber-state-ai-hackathon-official-website.md) · https://greatutah.work/pages/weber-state-ai-hackathon-official-website.md · https://hackathon.weber.edu/ — university subdomain; March 20, 2027 edition announced

## Open Questions

- **Did the April 2026 edition run as advertised, and what came of it?** Nothing located establishes
  attendance, completed projects, whether the $1,800 was awarded, or who won. Every 2026 detail here
  comes from pre-event promotion.
- **How many editions have there been?** The organizer wrote "our next" in February 2026, implying at
  least one prior, but no earlier edition has been dated.
- **Is this a university program or one person's project?** It runs on a `weber.edu` subdomain and the
  organizer is university staff, but no department, budget line, or institutional sponsor was located.
  Which of those explains the funding is unknown.
- **Who funds the prize pool and the meals?** No sponsor is named anywhere located.
- **Will the 2027 edition keep the two-week remote structure?** The 2027 page announces a single date
  and says nothing about format.
- **Why does the official site retain nothing about past editions?** The practical effect is that the
  institution's own record of its event is thinner than a Slack channel's.

## See Also

- [Forge Utah](forge-utah.md) · https://greatutah.work/pages/forge-utah.md — the community workspace where the event is announced
- [AI Builder Day](ai-builder-day.md) · https://greatutah.work/pages/ai-builder-day.md — the Utah County AI hackathon, two days rather than two weeks
- [Southern Utah Code Camp](southern-utah-code-camp.md) · https://greatutah.work/pages/southern-utah-code-camp.md — the St. George equivalent, also tiered by experience
- [Utah Tech Calendar](utah-tech-calendar.md) · https://greatutah.work/pages/utah-tech-calendar.md — where such events are indexed statewide