We put $600 on a question and let a room in Milwaukee answer it.

What could you build that brings people together?

That is the whole prompt for Season Zero, a three month build challenge running out of one cafe on Van Buren. September to November. Free to enter, free to attend, open to anyone.

Two tracks, $300 each:
• GM Spaces Track, built for or with our app
• Custom Track, your own thing, any stack

A few things that make it different from most hackathons I have been to.

You do not have to write code. Four of the six things worth weighing have nothing to do with engineering, and a well run community project beats a mediocre app.

There is no judge panel. On Demo Day the room votes, in the app, and you have to be standing in the room to cast one. One vote each, enforced by the database rather than by a rule in a document. Nobody's friends decide it from out of town.

It is three nights, not one weekend. September is conversation, October is ninety second previews, November is build all day and then demo. You can also walk in for the first time in November and still compete, which is what the Sprint lane exists for.

The prize pool comes from Red Foundry and Obsrvr, $300 each.

Everything is written down, including what we have not built yet: gmcarl.xyz/season0

If you know somebody in Milwaukee who is building something, send them this. That is the whole ask.

Come say gm.