AI Buildathon for Marketers at Tech Week 2026

Volunteering is moving into the digital age. During Tech Week 2026, I participated in an AI Buildathon hosted by SURU Labs. The goal was to collaborate with other digital marketers and use the latest AI technology to deliver marketing solutions for the United Way of NYC, specifically to support the region's ALICE (Asset Limited, Income Constrained, Employed) population. We had to build out all of our deliverables in a single afternoon sprint with less than three hours on the clock.

The Challenge:

Non-profits often deal with resource constraints that prevent them from scaling their digital footprint and updating their websites. Doing this work during a short hackathon meant we had to move quickly to solve a few major bottlenecks.

• Discovery Gaps: We needed to audit site-wide content to ensure discoverability across search engines and AI answer engines (AEO) without doing a slow, manual review.

• Data Inaccessibility: Socioeconomic data regarding the ALICE population existed, but it lacked interactive web tools to make the data easy for the public to digest.

• Production Time: We needed high-quality video content to anchor our campaign messaging, but we did not have the time for traditional pre- and post-production workflows.

The Strategic Pivot

With less than three hours to build everything, we couldn't rely on slow, manual execution. Instead, we used a powerful stack of AI middleware and creative tools to handle the heavy lifting. By acting as the operators of these systems rather than building everything from scratch, we completed weeks of traditional work in a single afternoon.

Our strategy focused on three specific tools:

• AirOps: We built a custom playbook to crawl every page of the UWNYC website, identify content refresh opportunities, and optimize the site layout for both traditional SEO and modern AI citations.

• Base44: We used this specialized application builder to rapidly create two interactive web tools: an "NYC Cost of Living" calculator and an ALICE geographic heatmap to visually show which neighborhoods need support.

• PlayPlay: We utilized this intelligent video builder to quickly package our campaign messaging and create an engaging presentation about why it is important to support the ALICE population.

The Result

We successfully shipped a suite of deliverables in under three hours, proving how powerful advanced AI middleware can be when you need to prototype quickly.

The real value was the hands-on experience. I was able to move beyond basic text prompts and step into true workflow engineering using tools like AirOps and Base44. The event was a great opportunity to network with forward-thinking professionals while directly contributing actionable digital solutions to a meaningful non-profit.