From 9 AM to 4 AM: Building Tools for Venezuelan Democracy at the AI Hack for Freedom
Some hackathons are about building clever apps. Others are about building something that might actually matter.
In the latest episode of Soapbox Sessions, Derek Ross and Heather Larson recount their team’s experience at the AI Hack for Freedom—a hackathon that paired developers with activists fighting for human rights around the world. For the Soapbox crew, that meant collaborating directly with Leopoldo Lopez, an exiled Venezuelan political leader working to restore democracy in a country where free elections remain a distant hope.
The stakes were real. The hours were brutal. And what emerged was a reminder of why building in the decentralized space matters.
The Assignment
Leopoldo Lopez didn’t show up asking for a simple website or a basic contact form. He needed infrastructure—a full-blown application capable of mobilizing supporters, facilitating secure communication, collecting election data, and processing donations. The kind of tool that could serve as a digital backbone for a political movement operating under hostile conditions.
“He wanted a massive community full-blown application built,” Derek recalled, describing the moment the scope of the project became clear.
For a traditional development timeline, that’s months of work. The hackathon gave them roughly 19 hours.
Six Developers, One Mission
The event brought together around 30 developers and eight activists representing causes from across the globe. Teams formed organically, and the Soapbox squad—Alex Gleason, MK Fane, Chad Chadwick, Derek, and others—ended up with six developers, giving them more firepower than most groups.
They needed every bit of it.
The team worked from 9 AM until 4 AM the following morning, fueled by the kind of focused intensity that only emerges when the work feels genuinely important. Features were scoped, built, tested, and integrated in rapid succession. Sleep was not a priority.
The Tech That Emerged
Two features stood out from the marathon session.
First, Alex Gleason integrated an AI chatbot directly into the application. The bot provided users with real-time information about Venezuela’s political situation—useful context for activists coordinating on the ground and supporters trying to stay informed from abroad. Implementing conversational AI under hackathon time pressure is no small feat, but the team pulled it off.
Second, they developed a Bluetooth mesh communication feature. In environments where internet access is unreliable, monitored, or actively suppressed, mesh networking offers an alternative path for information to flow. Phones can relay messages to each other without touching centralized infrastructure—exactly the kind of resilience activists need when operating under authoritarian conditions.
The Human Element
Hackathons are often described in purely technical terms: features shipped, problems solved, code committed. But Derek was candid about the emotional reality of the experience.
There were moments of doubt—wondering if they’d scoped too ambitiously, questioning whether they could deliver something meaningful in the time available. There were also moments of genuine celebration when pieces clicked into place and the app came to life during testing.
The team leaned on each other throughout. Technical collaboration blended with emotional support, creating the kind of camaraderie that makes grueling work feel worthwhile. When you’re building something that might help people fight for their freedom, the 4 AM exhaustion hits different.
Why It Matters
Events like the AI Hack for Freedom demonstrate what becomes possible when developers orient their skills toward causes larger than themselves. The activists who attended weren’t looking for theoretical solutions or proof-of-concept demos. They needed working tools they could deploy in the real world, often under dangerous circumstances.
Decentralized technology—encrypted communication, peer-to-peer networking, censorship-resistant platforms—isn’t just an interesting technical challenge. For people living under oppressive regimes, it’s a lifeline.
The Soapbox team walked away exhausted, inspired, and reminded of something easy to forget when you’re deep in the day-to-day of building software: this work can matter. The tools we create can empower people who are risking everything to demand basic rights.
That’s worth losing a night’s sleep over.
Soapbox Sessions explores decentralized communication, freedom technology, and the people building tools for an open internet. New episodes drop weekly.
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