Innovative Ideas and AI Solutions Shine at Camp Marley: AI Summer Games 2024

Marley IO began as a 24-hour hackathon, where Hi Marley teams competed to build innovations ranging from enhancements to existing solutions to brand new experiences, aiming to bring the most value to our users, business and industry.

The goal is to engage in collaborative thinking and teamwork and see what participants can create in a short period of time. While there is no guarantee that Hi Marley will implement the ideas into the product at the end of the competition, past Marley IOs have led to popular Hi Marley features such as sentiment, notifications, translation and more!

This year, Marley IO transformed into Marley AI, focusing on crafting AI-supported innovations and how teams could utilize AI in-product to broaden our capabilities.

AI was not only required for the competition; the event committee also used AI to plan the event. Marley AI’s theme, “Camp Marley: AI Summer Games 2024,” came from a list of ideas generated from Chat GPT. All employees also received an official Camp Marley t-shirt, which Chat GPT designed.

Preparing for Camp Marley: AI Workshop with Mitch Weiss

A tent, cozy campfire and Marley campsite greeted campers as they walked through the office entrance on Monday morning—Camp Marley was underway.

Camp Director and Hi Marley Chief Product Officer Jonathan Tushman kicked off Camp Marley: AI Summer Games by introducing Mitch Weiss, a Richard L. Menschel Professor of Management Practice at the Harvard Business School and author of We the Possibility (2021), who led a two-hour interactive workshop for the entire company.

Mitch leads AI studies and theories at Harvard Business School and helped Hi Marley open our minds to the possibilities of this new and exciting frontier.

According to Mitch, Generative AI can help Hi Marley accomplish its purpose to protect people, simply. “You make important decisions about how to use tools to accomplish your mission and purpose,” said Mitch. “But to understand the tools, proficiency is the first step. And proficiency comes from curiosity and use; the main way to get good at these tools is to use them.”

Splitting the room into three teams, Mitch tasked the groups with solving the issue of “Storrowing,” an ongoing issue for commuters when a box truck gets stuck under the bridge on Storrow Drive in Boston due to low clearance. Teams were to take two steps: use AI to understand the issue and then use AI to solve the issue. Prizes went to employees with the best prompts, best solutions and more! One group even used AI to write a song for community outreach.

Throughout the workshop, Hi Marley employees across departments were asked to think more expansively about what gen AI can do to boost productivity in our day-to-day work.

Encouraging everyone to keep experimenting with AI tools, Mitch provided guidance and actions that Hi Marley employees could take to get the most out of AI tools, including types of questions to ask, how to reframe questions and ideas for prompts.

Mitch cautioned, “If it’s safe, try it. But watch for errors and bias.” He continued, “Use AI for things you’re good at. For example, you wouldn’t know if AI is giving you buggy code if you don’t have a tech background. You will get the most out of AI if you use it for the domains you come from.”

At the end of the workshop, Hi Marley employees had dozens of ideas and were ready to get to work.

Let the Games Begin! Campers Gear Up for Pitches

Next, Camp Marley counselors and Marley AI co-chairs Principal Product Strategist Hugh Allen, and Manager Product Marketing Allison Paraskevas outlined the rules of the hackathon and camp schedule before sending groups off to start developing their ideas and presentations for the pitch session the following day.

Mitch Weiss joined a panel of Hi Marley executive judges, including SVP Customer Success Kim Johnson, Chief Marketing Officer Lauren McCollem, Chief People Officer Stef Bishop, and Chief Financial Operating Officer Neil Murphy, to score the final pitches on six categories:

• AI/code utilization– Did the team use AI? Did they actually build something?
• Presentation– How well was the pitch given? Was there a clear problem and solution presented? Were you sold on the idea?
• Completeness– How “done” is the project from end to end?
• Creativity- How far did teams think out of the box?
• Value- How valuable is the solution to our product, business, or industry?
• Team Diversification– Are there several team members from different departments?

With eight teams competing this year, ideas included AI chatbots and AI assistants to handle service and operator questions, coaching support for managers and more. Many of the innovations aimed to increase efficiencies and decrease resolution time.

“This year, we tried something new and different with Marley IO by requiring teams to use both AI elements and written code in their submissions,” said Marley AI Co-Chair (and Camp Marley Co-Counselor) Allison Paraskevas, Manager, Product Marketing at Hi Marley. “Every pitch was beyond impressive. Everyone really stepped up, adapted to the new rules, diversified their teams, and pulled off presentations that wowed the judges and kept the competition fierce.”

For the first time ever, one team—team, including Senior Software Engineer II Leah Haas Sanborn, VP of Architecture Michelle Brooks, Principal Industry Strategist Alex Burgess, Manager of Analytics Dave Rosenberg, and Principal Software Engineers Bruce Kaufman and Ian​ Swain—swept both the First Place Judge’s Choice and People’s Choice Awards.

The winners received a cash prize and name on the Marley IO trophy.

“All ideas that come out of Marley IO are reviewed by leadership and included in the prioritized product backlog based on feasibility, fit and value, amongst other measurements,” said Marley AI Co-Chair (and Camp Marley Co-Counselor) Hugh Allen, Principal Product Strategist at Hi Marley. “The magic of Camp Marley was that this year, when we heard the pitches, it was clear that all of the teams really included the voice of the customer and tried to solve their pain points with tangible AI-supported solutions. I think these ideas could be a great start for features in our future!”

“While the main goal of Camp Marley was to have fun, the potential value it brings to our company cannot be overstated,” said Camp Marley Director Jonathan Tushman, Chief Product Officer at Hi Marley. “The future of companies and software will be AI-first; the future of insurance tech is the combination of human and AI and a real premium of authenticity. All of the ideas at Camp Marley showed that we are well-positioned to take advantage of this moment and bring our product to the next level.”

Thank you to all of the Marley AI judges, committee members, participants and employees who made Camp Marley a success!