The Milestone Developer Summit 2025, an event spotlighting advancements in video technology, gathered innovators, developers, and partners at the Carlsberg Museum in Copenhagen.
This historic venue, famed for scientific breakthroughs like the invention of the pH enzyme, provided an ideal setting to explore new frontiers in open platform development and responsible artificial intelligence, highlighted by the Hackathon event.
Speaking about the rapid pace of technological change, Sebastian Döllner, VP of Technology Partnerships & Open Platform, remarked, “Technology is evolving faster than ever, and no single company has all the answers."
"The winners are those who can bring together the best technologies, the best minds, and the best ideas. The essence of Milestone’s open platform is to empower innovation. We’re building more than video management software—we’re building an ecosystem that allows partners and customers to innovate on top of it.”
Global Insights and the Hafnia hackathon
The summit featured keynotes from industry pioneers such as NVIDIA, AWS, Dell, and Intel, supplemented by breakout workshops and the Hafnia Hackathon. Participants from around the world exchanged insights on the future of video technology.
Before the event, AI developers from 15 countries accessed Milestone’s specialised Vision-Language Model (VLM), designed using NVIDIA Cosmos-Reason and enhanced with Hafnia’s domain-specific data to interpret urban visuals, symbols, and environmental conditions.
Enhancing smart city solutions
Developers were challenged to integrate third-party applications with the VLM through its API, aiming to advance smart city solutions. A key concern addressed was the labour-intensive task of processing vast amounts of video footage to extract valuable insights.
AI innovations: New generative plugin
In a strategic move to enhance urban infrastructure management, Milestone is introducing a new generative AI plugin for its XProtect Video Management Software. This plugin aims to streamline traffic management by transforming video inputs into comprehensive reports, summaries, and real-time alerts.
Recognising major innovations
Out of six finalists, a judging panel from Milestone and NVIDIA recognised Thomas Kreutz as the winner. His project, "Ask The City," employs the Hafnia VLM API to convert live city camera data into real-time, privacy-respecting insights.
Kreutz commented on the Hackathon experience, saying, “I wanted to build something that is relevant and useful in real life. What I liked the most about the hackathon was how easy it was to get started. The API and documentation made it simple to build a demo quickly, brainstorm more ideas, and try them out.” Kreutz was awarded €5,000 and the NVIDIA Jetson AGX Thor Developer Kit.
Roland Harwood, Community Lead at Hafnia, expressed admiration for the finalists, stating, “We are very impressed with the innovative integrations from all finalists. But Thomas Kreutz and Ask The City really nailed it. The hackathon success is promising for the future use of our platform and data library to train computer vision models on compliantly sourced, curated, extensively annotated, and anonymised real-world data.”
Hackathon finalists
- Ask The City / Thomas Kreutz: Utilises live city cameras to answer questions in real-time using Hafnia’s VLM API.
- VLM for Emergency Response / Flynn Owen, Dan Towers & Tom Aldridge (Blaize): Integrates edge AI devices for real-time emergency response planning.
- SmartMap / Gabriel Crosnier de Bellaistre (Citilog): Combines incident, traffic, and weather data into live map overlays for quick decision-making.
- RevoFlow / Rawinder Singh: A no-code solution for AI video analytics creation, winning the Audience Award.
- Clipnotes / Magnus Guldberg Pedersen: Converts video clips into actionable insights with the Hafnia VLM.
- Hafnia Video Event Analyzer / Jojy Saju Joseph: Aids advanced search and summarisation using semantic metadata from video analysis.
The Milestone Developer Summit 2025, dedicated to innovators, developers, and technology partners in video technology, took place at the historic Carlsberg Museum in Copenhagen—a venue renowned for scientific breakthroughs, including the invention of the pH enzyme, a milestone in biochemical innovation.
This legacy of discovery provided the perfect global stage for a new era of open platform development, responsible AI, and, not least, the Hackathon.
Fast evolution
Sebastian Döllner, VP of Technology Partnerships & Open Platform, said:
“Technology is evolving faster than ever, and no single company has all the answers. The winners are those who can bring together the best technologies, the best minds, and the best ideas. The essence of Milestone’s open platform is to empower innovation. We’re building more than video management software—we’re building an ecosystem that allows partners and customers to innovate on top of it.”
With keynotes from e.g. NVIDIA, AWS, Dell and Intel, breakout workshops and the Hafnia Hackathon, participants from all over the globe were able to share insights and predictions on what the future might look like.
First access to the future
Before the summit, AI developers from 15 different countries had early access to Milestone’s upcoming specialised VLM. The VLM is developed using NVIDIA Cosmos-Reason and post-training it with Hafnia’s domain-specific data library to better understand city-specific visuals, languages, symbols, events, weather, lighting and more.
The Hackathon challenge: create innovative integrations with third-party applications and leverage the VLM via API to enhance smart city solutions.
Today, millions of video cameras capture valuable footage that could improve everyday life. Yet much of this potential remains untapped due to the time-consuming task of reviewing and analysing countless hours of video to uncover meaningful insights.
Generative AI-powered plugin
In addition to the specialised VLM, Milestone is also launching a generative AI-powered plugin for XProtect Video Management Software The upcoming generative AI-powered plugin for XProtect is designed to improve traffic management across cities, ports, airports, and other urban areas.
It delivers advanced video intelligence by automatically converting video footage into detailed written reports, summaries, and validated real-time alerts.
The winners
Of the participating developers, six were shortlisted, and a panel of judges from Milestone and NVIDIA selected the top three. The winner: Thomas Kreutz, who used Hafnia’s VLM API to turn live city cameras into instant, privacy-aware answers to real-time questions, said:
“I wanted to build something that is relevant and useful in real life. What I liked the most about the hackathon was how easy it was to get started. The API and documentation made it simple to build a demo quickly, brainstorm more ideas, and try them out.”
Thomas Kreutz took home €5,000 and the NVIDIA Jetson AGX Thor Developer Kit. Roland Harwood, Community Lead - Hafnia, commented:
“We are very impressed with the innovative integrations from all finalists. But Thomas Kreutz and Ask The City really nailed it. The hackathon success is promising for the future use of our platform and data library to train computer vision models on compliantly sourced, curated, extensively annotated, and anonymised real-world data.”
FACTS: The six Hackathon finalists ranked from winner
Ask The City / Thomas Kreutz
Turns live city cameras into instant, privacy-aware answers to real-time questions. Pick a place on the map, ask in natural language, and get a response derived only from the last few seconds of video. Powered by Hafnia’s VLM API.
VLM for Emergency Response / Flynn Owen, Dan Towers & Tom Aldridge (Blaize)
Leverages edge AI devices to generate events and contextualise, triage, and create response plans for emergency situations in near real-time.
SmartMap / Gabriel Crosnier de Bellaistre (Citilog)
Uses Hafnia’s VLM to unify incident detection, traffic levels, and weather/visibility data into live map overlays with operator-ready actions, enabling faster decisions and better visualisation.
RevoFlow / Rawinder Singh
A no-code workflow builder that lets security integrators create AI-powered video analytics through drag-and-drop design, powered by Milestone's VLM API. Audience Award winner.
Clipnotes / Magnus Guldberg Pedersen
Converts short video clips into structured, interpretable insights in seconds using Hafnia’s Vision-Language Model.
Hafnia Video Event Analyzer / Jojy Saju JosephS
A multimedia intelligence platform that uses a VLM API to analyse images and video, generate semantic metadata, and enable advanced search, summarisation, and event detection.
