From October 23 to November 6, 2024, IT Services’ 23 co-ops participated in a hackathon, gaining highly sought-after, marketable skills by building software solutions using Salesforce. On the final day of the hackathon, the teams presented their custom Salesforce apps to a panel of judges, and a winner was crowned.
What is a hackathon?
Hackathons have become popular ways to crowdsource technical solutions to a wide range of problems. They’re generally brief and organized like a scrum sprint. In 2023, Northeastern organized a hackathon event for students on the West Coast campuses to build “tools of the future.” Each project focused on one of the categories: hybrid work & school solutions, climate change & sustainability solutions, or mutual aid/community building solutions. The teams had 26 hours to create and present their projects.
Tech giants, KPMG and Oracle, recently hosted a joint hackathon where consultants leveraged Oracle’s GenAI technology to solve business problems for clients such as Penske and Wendy’s. Dell and NVDIA are currently hosting a hackathon that “invites developers and data scientists to build groundbreaking Generative AI projects using NVDIA AI Workbench.”
Hackathons are a great way to drive teamwork and innovation; give participants an opportunity to experience working on a project from ideation to execution, and help participants sharpen creativity and critical thinking skills.
The hackathon
For this hackathon, the ITS co-ops were split into groups comprising of developer, administrator, and business analyst roles. The ITS leadership team tasked them with using Salesforce’s extensive range of tools and platforms to solve a real-world business problem.
The goal was to build a professional development planner app that could track employees’ professional development, manage their skills and trainings, and set professional goals. The app also had to include the use of generative AI.
An ITS staff member was assigned to each team as their mentor to help them work through any technical difficulties. The ITS mentors gained invaluable skills as coaches for the co-ops and were also able to learn about newly released Salesforce AI capabilities, right along with the co-ops. Naren Kolli, the Salesforce developer and mentor for Team Career Catalyst, said he liked that he “got an opportunity to dive deeper into the AI Prompt Builder.”
In the weeks leading up to the hackathon, the co-ops completed over 40 hours of training each to familiarize themselves with the Salesforce platform and gain skills relevant to their roles and the project. They achieved tens of thousands of Salesforce Trailhead points and dozens of application badges as they advanced their Salesforce and generative AI skillsets.
Many co-ops were excited to take on the challenge because, despite the growing popularity of hackathons, they’d never done anything like it before. Emily Nguyen of Team Bear recounts, “The Hackathon was a fun experience for me, especially since it was my first time participating in one.”
The teams each worked to ideate, design, and build unique apps that could answer three main questions:
- How can employees create plans to reach their professional development goals?
- How can managers help to manage and audit the employee’s development plans?
- How can generative AI be integrated to enhance the app’s functionality?
Demo day
On November 6, the teams presented their apps to a panel of judges and an audience at the ITS Headquarters in Boston. Many also watched the novel event via Microsoft Teams.
The group of judges included:
- Ken Henderson, Chancellor & Senior Vice President for Learning
- Thomas Sheahan, Executive Vice Provost
- Madeleine Estabrook, Senior Vice Chancellor for Student Life
- Michele Grazulis, Vice President & Chief Human Resources Officer
- Javed “Jay” Aslam, Chief of Artificial Intelligence & Professor
- Steve Duncan, Associate Vice President: Enterprise Platforms
- Jerry Conrad, Distinguished Strategic Solution Engineer, Salesforce
After the presentations, the judges deliberated and decided on winners in the five award categories: Most Creative Solution, Best Use of AI, Fan Favorite, Best Application Design, and Overall Winner.
Diana Susi, technical product manager for Salesforce at Northeastern, was delighted with the apps the co-ops produced and pres
Team Plan-Demic team took home four awards, including: Most Creative Solution, Fan Favorite, Best Application Design, and Overall Winner. Team Career Catalyst won Best Use of AI. Thomas Myers, the team’s analyst, said, “The project was more straightforward than anticipated, which allowed more room for creative enhancements.”
Naren Kolli shared that he enjoyed seeing Team Career Catalyst’s growth over just two weeks, especially in their technical skills and their ability to apply those skills to the real-world conditions of the project.
According to Jim Lemmon, director of enterprise platform development, Salesforce usually conducts hackathons individually, but after being impressed by the co-ops’ teamwork, they are considering implementing a group hackathon model.
Congratulations to all five teams for their hard work and excellence.
