Over the weekend, we joined Girringun Aboriginal Corporation and community from the nine Traditional Owner groups it represents for a community hackathon.
We began the day around a large sheet of butcher's paper, talking through the challenges and opportunities people could see in their communities. The conversation covered working on Country, cultural knowledge, tourism, business, jobs, training, health and access to technology.
From there, we sketched a possible solution together and began building it with Claude Code.
Before lunch, we had a working prototype of a shared digital home for Girringun. It brought the nine nations together while giving each group its own space, and included early ideas for cultural tourism, jobs, business training, events, art and a clearer way for organisations to engage with the right people.
The prototype was not the finished answer, and that was not really the point. It gave everyone something real to click through, question and improve while we were still together in the room.
That changed what we could do with the rest of the day.
Instead of spending the whole discovery session talking about what the idea might look like, we could begin working through what it would take to make it real. Who would need to be involved? How would cultural information be approved? Who would maintain the platform? What training would be needed? What should be built first?
The conversation had already moved from "Could we do this?" to "How would we do this well?"
By the end of the day, we had gone from a broad set of community priorities to a sketched solution, a working prototype and the beginnings of a project and implementation plan. We even had time to show how tools such as Claude and Canva could help communities explore and design more ideas together.
This is what feels most useful about rapid prototyping now. It is not simply that we can build the first version faster. It means teams can get ideas out of their heads, test them together and reach the important conversations about ownership, implementation and long-term success much earlier.
In this case, it all happened in one day.