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GDG Rochester · United States

DevFest Rochester 2026: Coding Jam

This week you’re building
⛺
Camp Minnesota

Every state campsite in Minnesota. Build something people would actually use.

Submissions closedRSVP
What ships today

The version everyone leaves with.

Tonight's schedule (ignore the two-hour template shown below). You build through the talks and dinner: 5:00 Doors, drinks, networking. Get signed in to AI Studio 5:20 Welcome and jam kickoff 5:30 Get your first prompt in and your app building 5:40 Secure: Secuvy (keep building, sound off) 6:10 Scale: Isaac Johnson 6:40 Dinner and heads-down build 7:15 10-minute warning 7:25 Submissions close. Share your app, test the link in incognito, submit here 7:30 Finalist demos and judging 7:50 Prizes, group photo, wrap

Everyone builds on the same data: all 5,584 state park and state forest campsites in Minnesota, in a shared Google Sheet. Click Dataset under What you'll need, copy the Sheet link, and paste it into your AI Studio prompt. Your app has to use it.

Beyond that, bring in anything you want: weather, maps, traffic, photos, your own data, any API you can get working. Gemini has to do real work in your app, like deciding, filtering, ranking or transforming. Not just chatting.

Demos are 2 minutes: who it's for and what it does. Judged 1 to 5 on use of the data, what you added, Gemini doing work, it works live, and someone would use it.

While you build

Things worth deciding early.

  • 1Decide who your app is for before you write the first prompt.
  • 2Blank cells mean unknown, not no. Handle them on purpose.
  • 3Free, no-key APIs save time. If you need a key, put it in AI Studio Secrets.
The polished version

What the at-home build adds.

  • →Live weather for the trip dates
  • →Drive times from the user's location with Google Maps
  • →Photo input: snap your camper or tent, get sites that fit
Right tool, right job

Two tools. Two very different afternoons.

Neither is the beginner option. It comes down to what's already on your laptop, and whether you want a desktop IDE at all. Four questions, then bring the one that fits.

🎨 AI StudioAntigravity 🚀
Undecided — answer the first question.

Already know which one you want?

🎨 Set up AI Studio🚀 Set up Antigravity
Your setup

What's on the laptop you'll bring?

The shape of the session

Two hours, four movements.

  1. 0:00 – 0:15
    Intro

    Grab a name tag and a slice, say hello to the instructor, and meet the people either side of you — you'll be asking them things later, so it pays to know their names now. Low pressure, high creativity, ship something messy. Then a quick word on what the room is building tonight, and you're off.

  2. 0:15 – 0:30
    Credits & setup

    The instructor shares the Google Cloud credits with the room. Everyone gets their environment ready — whichever tool they brought. Nobody should be installing anything once the build starts.

    🎨 AI Studio setup🚀 Antigravity setup
  3. 0:30 – 1:35
    Build

    Heads down, and enjoy it — this is the part everyone came for. The agent does the typing; you decide what it's making. Ask the room when you get stuck; someone two seats away hit the same wall ten minutes ago. Want more structure? The codelab walks the spec-driven route — Setup → Plan → Review → Build → API → Verify — but nobody has to follow it.

  4. 1:35 – 2:00
    Share & submit

    Show the room what you made — two minutes, screen-shared from your seat. Half-finished is welcome; the wobbly ones are usually the most interesting. Say what surprised you along the way, and cheer for everyone else while you're at it. Then submit your build before you leave. This is the one thing not to skip — it's what puts your name and your chapter on the showcase, and it takes about two minutes.

Shipped from this jam

6 builds.

Submissions closed

Submissions are closed.

Submissions for this jam closed at the end of Thursday, October 15, 2026.