The Milestone Developer Summit 2025 brought global innovators, developers, and technology partners to Copenhagen’s historic Carlsberg Museum, a site steeped in scientific discovery. The summit showcased the latest in open platform development, responsible AI, and hands-on experimentation, including the much-anticipated Hafnia Hackathon.
“Technology is evolving faster than ever, and no single company has all the answers,” said Sebastian Döllner, VP of Technology Partnerships & Open Platform at Milestone. “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.”
AI-Powered Video and Smart City Solutions
A major highlight was Milestone’s specialized Vision-Language Model (VLM), which developers from 15 countries accessed ahead of the summit. Built using NVIDIA Cosmos-Reason and trained with Hafnia’s domain-specific data library, the VLM understands city-specific visuals, symbols, events, weather, and lighting conditions.
The Hackathon challenge encouraged developers to integrate the VLM with third-party applications to create smarter urban solutions. From emergency response to traffic management, the goal was to convert raw video footage into actionable insights, saving time and improving decision-making.
Milestone also announced a generative AI-powered plugin for XProtect Video Management Software, aimed at urban operations. The plugin can automatically generate written reports, summaries, and real-time alerts from video streams, promising smarter traffic management in cities, ports, and airports.
Hackathon: Turning Video into Real-Time Answers
Six teams were shortlisted, with the top prize going to Thomas Kreutz and his project “Ask The City”, which uses Hafnia’s VLM API to convert live city cameras into instant, privacy-aware answers to real-time questions. Kreutz received €5,000 and an NVIDIA Jetson AGX Thor Developer Kit.
“I wanted to build something relevant and useful in real life,” Kreutz said. “The API and documentation made it simple to build a demo quickly and brainstorm more ideas.”
Other finalists showcased a range of innovative integrations:
- VLM for Emergency Response – Edge AI generates and triages real-time event responses.
- SmartMap – Unifies traffic, incidents, and weather into live map overlays for faster decision-making.
- RevoFlow – A no-code workflow builder for AI-powered video analytics. (Audience Award winner)
- Clipnotes – Converts short video clips into structured, interpretable insights.
- Hafnia Video Event Analyzer – Advanced search, summarization, and event detection from video and images.
A Glimpse Into the Future of Video AI
The summit demonstrated that video technology is moving beyond surveillance toward actionable intelligence powered by AI. With open platforms like Milestone’s VLM, developers can rapidly build real-world solutions that transform urban safety, efficiency, and citizen engagement.
“We are impressed with the innovative integrations from all finalists,” said Roland Harwood, Hafnia Community Lead. “Thomas Kreutz and Ask The City really nailed it. This success shows the potential of our platform and curated, anonymized data to train next-gen computer vision models.”
The Milestone Developer Summit 2025 underscores a broader trend: AI-driven video management is no longer just about capturing footage—it’s about unlocking insights that enhance everyday life.
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