Step 1
Local businesses
Bring the real challenges — repetitive workflows, customer questions, scheduling, reporting, translation, anything that slows your team down.
Vibe-a-thon · Business Challenge Intake
Bring us the problem — we’ll bring the builders.
Sponsored by
The goal of the Vibe-a-thon is to help jumpstart a flywheel of economic growth in the Coachella Valley: local businesses bring real challenges; teams of builders, students, designers, and entrepreneurs use the latest AI tools to prototype solutions live during the Summit; and our colleges, educators, mentors, and technical advisors develop that talent so the next cycle keeps spinning.
Bring us your real problems — we want to help solve them. Repetitive workflows, customer-service bottlenecks, staffing challenges, messy data, manual processes, communication gaps, or opportunities to improve visitor, patient, employee, resident, or customer experiences.
Local businesses
Step 2
Builders & workforce
Teams of students, builders, designers, and entrepreneurs use the latest AI tools to prototype working solutions during the Summit.
Step 3
Educators & mentors
Our colleges, instructors, and seasoned advisors guide the teams, develop local talent, and pass that knowledge back into the community.
Businesses → workforce → educators → back to businesses. Every cycle grows the region’s capacity to solve its own problems.
What kind of challenge should I submit?
Submit a real business or community problem that is specific enough for a team to prototype during the Summit. The best challenges involve repetitive tasks, customer questions, staff workflows, forms, scheduling, documents, data, communication, translation, reporting, or service delivery.
You do not need to know what the solution should be. You only need to understand the problem.
✓Good submissions
- “Our hotel staff answers the same 40 guest questions every day, often in multiple languages. We have the answers in PDFs, web pages, and staff notes, but nothing guests can use easily.”
- “Our nonprofit receives intake forms by email and manually routes people to services. We want a simple way to summarize needs and suggest next steps.”
✗Weak submissions
- “We want an AI strategy.”
- “We want an app.”
▸See challenge ideas by industry
Tourism, Hospitality, Resorts, Hotels & Short-Term Rentals
“What guest, visitor, booking, service, or staff workflow would you improve if you had a simple AI-powered tool?”
Restaurants, Bars, Cafes & Food Service
“What repetitive customer, kitchen, inventory, or staffing process takes too much time today?”
Retail, Boutiques, Galleries & Local Shops
“What would help you sell more, serve customers better, or reduce repetitive back-office work?”
Healthcare, Wellness, Senior Care & Medical Services
“What patient, client, scheduling, intake, or follow-up process could be made easier, faster, or clearer?”
Do not submit private health information. Use mock data or general workflows only.
Agriculture, Agribusiness, Food Production & AgTech
“What field, operations, water, labor, compliance, or supply-chain process is still too manual?”
Arts, Culture, Festivals, Events & Creative Businesses
“What would help you plan, promote, operate, or measure your event, exhibit, performance, or creative business?”
Real Estate, Construction, Architecture & Development
“What client, project, property, permit, vendor, or document workflow could be simplified?”
Energy, Sustainability, Water, Climate & Environmental Organizations
“What energy, water, sustainability, education, reporting, or customer workflow could benefit from better software or AI?”
Local Government, Civic Services, Nonprofits & Community Organizations
“What resident, client, volunteer, form, reporting, or outreach process could be made easier for the community?”
Education, Workforce, Students & Training
“What would help students, workers, employers, or training programs connect more effectively?”
Professional Services & Small Business Operations
“What repetitive client, document, communication, or administrative task slows your team down?”
IT, Software Development & Technology Services
“What internal tool, customer-facing feature, support workflow, or developer-productivity gap could a small AI build close?”
Other
“Tell us about your industry and the workflow you'd like to improve.”
If your challenge is accepted
At least one person from your organization must register for any pass they qualify for and attend in person during the Vibe-a-thon to help the team understand the problem and give live feedback.
Questions about the Vibe-a-thon? Back to the Vibe-a-thon overview or email hello@palmspringstech.org.