The Hot Dog Wars Are Over. Now Let's Dissect Our National Soul.
HotDogma | Sev Geraskin | Data Storytelling AI Hackathon Process | Vancouver AI
Hey hackathon crew,
Round 1 of the Data Storytelling Hackathon wrapped last week—and it was something else.
The prompt was intentionally absurd: *is a hot dog a sandwich?* But the work that came out of it wasn’t about food. It was about intention, identity, language, logic. Some projects used humor to sneak past our defenses. Others built full pipelines, interactive tools, even narrative worlds.
Data Storytelling Hackathon: 001: "Is A Hotdog A Sandwich?" | Vancouver AI
People brought code, poetry, visual design, storytelling, and systems thinking. Some submissions were scrappy. Some were polished. All of them showed heart.
And one of them stopped us in our tracks.
To everyone who submitted: thank you!!!
Some of you worked solo. Some formed teams on the fly. Some of you reached for tools you'd never used before. That kind of experimental energy is rare. We want more of it.
This time, the question is closer to the bone: What does it mean to be Canadian right now?
Not in a national branding sense—but in the messy, human, lived sense. We’re talking cultural memory, collective contradictions, invisible lines. Where we’ve been. Where we’re going. Who gets included. Who gets erased.
The dataset comes from 1,000 Canadians—raw responses about identity, fear, hope, frustration, and change. You can take it anywhere. Pick it apart, remix it, turn it into something others can feel.
Key details: