AI Summer Beach Party Highlights

London City Beach is not a typical venue for a day of AI building. That is part of what makes the AI Summer Beach Party worth showing up to.

Now in its third year, the event was organised by Nadio Granata and the AI Collective, a team that has built something genuinely worth being part of. The programme ran across the whole day with keynotes, panels, a pitch competition, and a hackathon running through the middle of it all.

The Hackathon

Our founder Eleni ran a Lovable hackathon as part of the day, alongside Erik Schwartz who was also building live on the day. A prompt guide designed specifically for the session walked first-time Lovable users through the build from scratch.

What came out of it covered a range of ideas: apps for education, intergenerational learning, confidence building, and one designed to help commuters track train schedules.One hour. Working products.

That is the part worth paying attention to. Not the tools themselves but how quickly people moved from idea to something tangible when given the right framework and starting point.

What the Day Covered

Beyond the hackathon, the programme moved across a wide range of territory. Nadio Granata’s Earth 2.0 keynote looked at the broader shift coming and whether our institutions are ready for it. Tim Bennett presented BOB-E AI. The wider gathering included Carolina Posma, Hayley Brown, Max Corbridge, Marco Landi, Eugenia A., Prof Sylvain Rochon, Laura Goodsell, Charlie Hills, Kerry Sheehan, Fe Gemade, Andrew W Robinson and Andrew Grill addressed AI from different angles, from personal brand building and ethical hacking to creativity and what AI means for smaller businesses.

The pitch competition, led by Stuart Malcolm Honey alongside a panel of judges, produced a winner in Adam Woodhall of GCS Forum.

One observation from an attendee captured the spirit of the day well. An artist used AI to generate an elaborate artwork, and the group helped her paint it. The AI provided the starting point. The taste, the judgement, the colour, and the expression were still entirely human.

That is not just a nice story. It is an accurate description of where the value sits.

Why It Matters

The AI Summer Beach Party draws the broadest cross-section of the UK AI community into one place. Founders, builders, corporate teams, students, and practitioners from different sectors, all in the same space, having conversations that do not happen in more formal settings.

Showing up there, running a hackathon that puts building tools directly into the hands of first-timers, is consistent with what we do everywhere else. The venue changes. The work does not.

If you missed this year, the energy alone is a reason to be there next time.