This first appeared in the January Orange Rag newsletter
US national employment law firm Jackson Lewis kicked of the year by announcing that, in partnership with Microsoft, it has conducted a series of prompt-a-thons across its various business services’ departments.
The prompt-a-thons – which going forward we’re just going to call promptathons because why not – took place last year, led by the Jackson Lewis knowledge management department, to help participants explore generative AI use cases and develop advanced AI prompts using M365 Copilot applications.
Jackson Lewis says that the promptathon allowed its own people and Microsoft experts to work together to hone their skills in AI prompt engineering. The marketing & business development and communications departments held subsequent promptathons.
While promptathons popped up periodically last year – Goodwin, for one, took part in the Microsoft’s inaugural Copilot promptathon at the MTC in Massachusetts in May 2024 – we predict that you will hear about them much more this year.
Microsoft is fully embracing and doubling down on the promptathon concept. At the start of January, it hosted an in-person promptathon/workshop to create solutions with Copilot, commenting on LinkedIn: “This brand-new format was a fantastic experience, and we’re already looking forward to hosting many more Copilot prompt-a-thons [sic] in the future. We hope you want to bring this concept to your own office as well!”
Microsoft needs customers to progress their Copilot implementations and also learn from customer feedback on use cases, so it’s not surprising that they are keen to engage with customers in this format. For law firms, it’s a fairly fun way to achieve much the same objective.
Remember in 2018 and 2019 you couldn’t move without being asked to attend a hackathon? We think this will be much the same thing.