Shaping the Future: Romax Sponsors CCCU’s 24-Hour Hackathon

Background

The future of technology doesn’t just happen. It is built by those with the creativity to imagine it and the skill to execute it under pressure.

At Romax, we live and breathe data management and strategic customer communications so we know firsthand that true innovation requires a unique blend of technical proficiency, sharp creativity, and a highly agile mindset. That is why we are absolutely thrilled to announce our official sponsorship of Canterbury Christ Church University’s (CCCU) second annual 24-Hour Hackathon + GamesJam.

This high-octane event brings together 140 of the university’s highest-calibre students, challenging them to develop creative, real-world solutions for industry-sponsored problems within a grueling, non-stop 24-hour window.

As official sponsors, we had the privilege of setting a real-world challenge, mentoring the teams, and judging the final submissions. Now that the event has successfully concluded, we are delighted to share the challenge we set, the brilliant winners, and our experience witnessing the future of tech come to life. 

The Romax Challenge

Out of the massive pool of talent at the event, seven teams, representing approximately 35 brilliant participants, stepped up to take on the official Romax challenge. 

The Brief: Website to Wallet Pass Creator

In the fast-paced world of digital communication, businesses need to see value instantly. We challenged our teams to build a simple, clever sales and onboarding tool that turns any client’s existing website into a draft digital wallet pass.

By the end of the 24 hours, teams are expected to deliver a working demo with the following guidance: 

The idea

• Build a simple sales and onboarding tool that turns a client’s website into a draft digital wallet pass.
• The user enters a website address, and the tool creates a first version of a pass using the website’s logo, colours, name, and basic public information.
• The aim is to help a potential client quickly see what their own digital pass could look like.

The goal

• By the end of the hackathon, we want a working demo that shows:
• A website being entered
• A digital pass being created from that website
• A live preview of the pass
• A live preview of the pass information
• The ability to make small edits
• A clear next step inviting the client to create the pass properly on our Digital Card Platform

What Success Looks Like

• A successful demo will show someone entering a real website, clicking one button, and seeing a useful first draft of a digital wallet pass.
• The final screen should invite them to take the next step and create the pass properly on our Digital Card Platform.

Stepping Up To The Challenge

Watching these 35 students dive headfirst into our brief with such enthusiasm reinforces exactly why we sponsor events like the CCCU Hackathon. 

For Romax, supporting this event is about more than just putting our name on a banner. It is about bridging the gap between academic theory and real-world application.

The Chosen Winners

The seven teams did not give us an easy task when it came to judging the entries. In fact, selecting the winners proved to be incredibly difficult because the calibre of innovation across the board was outstanding. Each team brought a completely unique perspective to the “Website to Wallet Pass Creator” brief.

Some groups blew us away with their slick, user-friendly front-end designs, while others engineered incredibly robust back-end logic that pulled data seamlessly. Seeing how much functional, creative code these students produced in just 24 hours was inspiring. 

In the end, we had to choose the winners and we were delighted to share the winning entries below.

The Winner:

Creator: Hassan6237 Ali

Project Overview

Users simply paste a website URL, and the platform automatically scrapes the site to extract its brand colors and logos. It instantly displays a live, editable preview of a branded digital card (such as a loyalty card, ticket, or coupon) on a simulated smartphone screen. Once satisfied, the user can immediately download a functional digital pass ready for Apple or Google Wallet.

The frontend is built with responsive HTML5, CSS3, and JavaScript, utilising QRCode.js to handle real-time, dynamic barcode rendering. The backend is entirely powered by a Python and Flask architecture. They used BeautifulSoup to handle the web scraping and automated asset extraction, alongside Python’s native file handling and data packaging utilities to compile the downloadable wallet files.

We chose this project as the overall winner as Hassan worked on his own to create the entire submission, covering all of the requirements and providing excellent support documentation.

Read the full entry

WINNER

Creators: Shayne Yong, Angle 0, Michael Altea

Project Overview

A sales and onboarding tool for Romax Digital. Client pastes website URL where the backend scrapes, Gemini analyses it and animates a digital wallet pass with preview built in real time.

Inspired by Romax Digital’s Challenge prompting us to work on a sales and onboarding solution that involves brand identity extraction, AI interpretation and a complete full stack development.

We chose this project as a winner as the submission was excellent, containing all of the required features and more. Both of the winning projects were incredible and deserve to be joint winners really but we had to choose one. 

Read the full entry

Conclusion

To celebrate their incredible achievement, the members of the winning teams were each awarded a brand-new laptop stand, courtesy of Romax, to support their ongoing studies. We were also delighted to offer one of the CCCU students a paid summer internship at Romax this year. 

Events like the CCCU 24-Hour Hackathon + GamesJam are a powerful reminder of what is possible when passion, creativity, and technical skill collide. By investing in these bright minds today, we are doing our part to cultivate the agile, tech-savvy innovators who will drive our industry forward tomorrow. Seeing their passion firsthand reminds us that the future of digital communications is in very capable hands.

We want to extend a massive thank you to Canterbury Christ Church University for hosting such an incredible event, and to all 140 participants, especially the 35 students, who stepped up to the Romax challenge. The future of digital innovation is exceptionally bright, and at Romax, we are incredibly proud to play a part in fueling it.

We look forward to seeing where these talented developers go next, and perhaps, welcoming some of them into the industry very soon!