Ulta’s first Hackathon
This year Ulta teamed up with the Google Cloud Chicago team to create a fun challenge for our first-ever hackathon! The hackathon was part of the Dare Mighty Things conference, if you’re unfamiliar with this great Chicago conference, check out http://daremightythings.co. McDonald’s co-sponsored the event and graciously hosted the hackathon at their Chicago headquarters – my dream of having unfeathered access to their fountain drink machines came to fruition!
We supplied the participants with multiple sample data files, representing our complete product catalog, store inventory, and store details and challenged them to create a voice-powered experience. The winners would receive up to 5 Google Stadia Founder’s Edition package.
Of the 53 teams involved, 15 chose to work on our challenge and we were delighted with the results. Some of the entries included: Google Assitant for Ulta, Product Recommendation for Ulta, Speech Analysis Platform to make Conversation Smarter.
There were also some pretty interesting team names: “Big Brother is Watching,” “I Like Chicken,” “Nuggets,” “Hopper”, “Ultrasist,” “Sushi Sahworma,” “Serving Looks,” “@therealDMI2019,” “ISU Seniors,” “Team Van,” and “Kangaroos”.
