New Salesforce Virtual Agentforce Hackathon Announced With $140,000 in Prizes: Details Here

Salesforce is running an Agentforce hackathon with a total of $140,000 to be won.

The event, dubbed the Agentforce Virtual Hackathon, is marketed as an opportunity to “push the boundaries” of agentic technology and build “groundbreaking solutions on Agentforce”.

How to Compete in Virtual Agentforce Hackathon

Participants will develop a new solution using Agentforce, building a new agent using the Agent Builder and a series of custom actions to solve a business problem.

The agent can be internal (employee-facing) or external (customer- and partner-facing).

Salesforce says the project must show the capabilities of Agentforce, “solve a specific business problem”, and use specific Salesforce orgs.

Participants must submit a video of “about five minutes” which demonstrates their submission. The videos must be uploaded to YouTube, Vimeo, or Facebook and made public.

Salesforce stresses that judges will “not be required to watch beyond five minutes”, highlighting the importance of staying within this time frame.

Competitors should submit their admin credentials, Salesforce org ID, and a one-to-two sentence pitch explaining the project.

Optional things which participants may submit include: identifying whether they are opting in for the Slack Bonus Prize, explaining what was used and what else they would do if they had more time, and a URL to their code repository for judging and testing.

Prize Money and Judging Breakdown

There is a total of $140,000 to be won in prizes, broken down into the following fields:

• Overall Grand Prize: $50,000
• Best Use of Slack Prize: $25,000
• Honourable Mention: Most Creative: $20,000
• Honourable Mention: Most Impactful: $20,000
• Honourable Mention: Best Demo Delivery: $20,000
• People’s Choice (Public Voting): $5,000

The judges who have been announced so far include:

• Christophe Coenraets, SVP, Technical Audience Relations, Salesforce
• Susannah Plaisted, Director, Product Marketing, Salesforce
• Mike Martin, Chief Customer Officer, 10K
• Jim Ray, Director, Developer Advocacy, Slack
• Maria Jose Hernandez, Senior Developer Advocate, Slack

More judges are set to be announced soon, Salesforce says.

Entries will be judged on five criteria:

1. Business Relevance: Does the solution address a specific, real-world challenge or opportunity? 
2. Creativity: Entries should be unique or introduce a novel approach to an existing problem.
3. Potential Impact: How effectively does the project deliver measurable value? 
4. Design: Entries with a well-thought-out user experience and design will perform well in this category. 
5. Technical Implementation: Judges will consider if the solution demonstrates quality software development.

The hackathon registration period stretches from 11am on March 4 to 4pm on April 30. All times referenced are Pacific Time (PT).

The submission period is from 9am on March 5 to 4pm on April 30.

The judging period runs from 1pm on May 2 to 1pm on May 15.

The public choice voting period is from 1pm on May 2 to 1pm on May 15.

The winners will be announced “on or around” May 20 at 2pm. 

The hackathon is open to individuals who are 18 years of age or older (20+ in Japan) or who have reached the age of majority in their jurisdiction of residence as of the date of entry and are legal residents of the following countries:

• Argentina
• Australia
• Belgium
• Canada (excluding Quebec)
• France
• Germany
• India
• Ireland
• Japan
• Luxembourg
• Netherlands
• New Zealand
• South Africa
• Spain
• United Kingdom
• United States of America (incl. District of Columbia)

Teams should be composed of up to five eligible individuals.

Final Thoughts

A top prize of $50,000 is nothing to sniff at, and it may be yet more evidence of Salesforce’s willingness (and eagerness) to promote Agentforce in every way possible. It’s also worth noting the second largest prize is $25,000 for the “Best Use of Slack”, which also highlights the importance of this product in the cloud giant’s portfolio.