With the Dreamforce 2014 Hackathon approaching, participants are encouraged to utilize resources from Ionic, Salesforce, and Heroku to efficiently develop their apps, with a chance to win a $1 million prize. Ionic, highlighted for its ability to streamline the development of cross-platform apps using familiar web technologies, will be showcased in the DevZone, where attendees can learn about its Creator tool for building hybrid apps. Heroku offers a mobile app template that integrates Ionic, Angular, Cordova, and NodeJS, providing a strong foundation for app development with both backend and frontend capabilities, including force.com support. The emphasis is on leveraging these tools to focus on the unique aspects of apps rather than getting bogged down by complex native configurations.