BigCommerce & Google’s BigAI Hackathon: Results & Recap 🚀
A few weeks ago, together with Google, we launched our first-ever AI-centric hackathon: The BigAI Hackathon! Over 150 hackers from all over the world came together for our 10-day event to dream up & make reality new innovations at the intersection of AI and e-commerce.
TL;DR — It was an AWESOME 10 days and our teams were blown away at what the hackers built in just 10 days.
Let’s dive into the details!
BigAI Hackathon Details 🚀
What made this hackathon different? For starters, it was one of the first of its kind! BigCommerce and Google realized that the intersection of Artificial Intelligence and e-commerce is a space that is just beginning to catch fire — and we wanted to be at the forefront of innovation at that juncture.
From August 7th through August 16th, hackers from all over the globe were tasked with using Generative AI in Google Cloud, along with the BigCommerce platform, to develop AI-driven solutions with App Extensions, large language models, and Vertex AI that enhance the experience, efficiency, personalization, and/or profitability for BigCommerce merchants, shoppers or developers.
Here’s a breakdown of the details:
- 10 days of hacking
- 150+ hackers
- 6 continents & 30+ countries represented (🤯)
- 13 live speaking events
- 1,000+ live session streams
What Was Different About this Hackathon?
Our Emphasis on Innovation 💡
Together with Google, we created this event to encourage innovation at an intersection where we believe there to be an incredible amount of opportunity and potential.
Previous hackathons have resulted in amazing new apps and ideas, but as AI becomes increasingly available to developers and consumers, this felt like a really exciting opportunity. Developers that participated in this event not only built amazing things for our ecosystem but have helped contribute to and inspire what our own thoughts about AI in ecommerce look like.
The Speaker Series 🎙️
Throughout the hackathon, we hosted over a dozen live speaking sessions about topics ranging from generative AI to product design, streaming live on our YouTube channel! We brought in subject matter experts from both BigCommerce and Google Cloud who presented on a myriad of topics, ranging from LLMs to App Extensions to Product Design, and so much more.
If you missed our video series, check it out on our YouTube channel! Visit the BigCommerce X Google BigAI Hackathon playlist here!
The Hack Pack 🎒
We built out the Hack Pack for this hackathon inside our Developer Center! Previously, Hack Packs were static PDFs distributed to registered hackers. Though this worked, we thought creating Hack Packs that are dynamic and live on beyond the event, available to all developers who could learn from them, would have a larger impact on our dev community.
Thus, the Hack Pack you can check out today was born! Feel free to check it out and give us any feedback you may have — we’d love to hear from you and continue improving our offerings for hackathons to come!
And the Winners Are…🥁
🥇1st place | EcomAI Excellence Award: Human Marketing & Fueled.io — Scott Williams & Sean Larkin
🥈2nd place | Innovator’s Choice Award: Ildecimo — Maksym Dmukhovskyy & Brad Adams
🥉3rd place | AI-Commerce Disruptor Award: Wasserman DD&T — Kim Kraft, Jignesh Thummar, Vvanessa Paolantonio, Ilya Pokrovskiy, Vijay Vadhadia, Vipul Limbasiya & Misha Medvedev
⭐Honorable Mention | Outstanding Achievement Award: Grit Global — Vu Thanh Tung, Thien Nguyen, Chi Ngo, Thong Do Van & Long Kieu Tuan
I’d Love to Participate in a Future Event!
Great — we’d love to have you join us! The more devs, the merrier! To learn about future events, be sure to subscribe to our newsletter! This is a great way to keep up to date with what our team is up to, and will be among the first places we’ll announce any future events.
Additionally, follow BigCommerceDevs on Twitter, subscribe to our YouTube channel, and get familiar with the Community Hub in our Developer Center!
Congratulations to the winning teams, and we hope to see even MORE of you at our next event. Stay tuned!
#LFG🚀
