New Mexico’s Largest Software Hackathon Tackles Food Access
Teams pitched their projects to investors and industry leaders.
The City of Albuquerque returned as a founding partner for the second annual Desert Dev Lab hackathon.
NM Tech Talks, a collaborative of local technology organizations with the shared mission of supporting diversity in the industry, hosted the event, which gathered coders of all experience levels to solve real world problems. Teams used software, data and AI to develop prototypes to address challenges in the New Mexico food and agriculture industry. Talin Market sponsored the event, held at WESST Enterprise Center.
“This hackathon is more about collaboration than competition,” Mayor Tim Keller said. “Uniting our experts will always result in better solutions.”
This year’s event drew 27 teams comprised of 70 “hackers” competing for four different honors:
- First place winners were Crimson Devs for their AI meal planning solution.
- Second place went to Beep Bop for water-saving crop recommendations.
- Third place was Sowit with a food-sharing platform designed to reduce food waste.
- Local Innovation award was given to Koko for their automated coordination alerts for food distributors.
“Desert Dev Lab brought out New Mexico’s best,” said competition judge Carly Heidenfeld, manager at Talin Market, one of the event’s 21 sponsors. “From up-and-coming students in the southern part of our state to established professionals right here in Albuquerque, it showed that solutions to ongoing food and agriculture issues here exist in our own community.”
“Events like this are so important because they offer a safe environment where people challenge themselves to build something useful and real that can help others,” said Jacky So, event organizer and FUSE executive fellow. “I heard so many people say, ‘I could use this.’”
The first Desert Dev Lab competition in 2025 tackled climate and energy variability, and the winner of that event, OptiGreen, presented an AI-driven solution to reduce LLM token usage, which lowers overall energy consumption. The annual hackathon advances sustainable community development, environmental protection, economic viability, and career-building resources that prepare Albuquerque workers for success.
Desert Dev Lab’s 2027 event is already accepting hackers.