Salesforce announced the return of its $1M Hackathon, coinciding with the October 13th Dreamforce conference, where participants have two days to develop a mobile app using Salesforce technology. To assist developers, Ionic has collaborated with Salesforce to offer the Ionic Salesforce Survival Kit, a pre-configured app template designed to streamline the development process by providing necessary tools to connect to the Salesforce platform. The template, which runs on web technologies like AngularJS, allows for easy cross-platform development on iOS and Android without the need for native development skills, although some experience with JavaScript and HTML is beneficial. Developers are encouraged to install Ionic and Cordova ahead of the event to ensure a smooth start, with additional guidance provided for configuring development environments and incorporating Salesforce authentication into apps. The template also includes instructions for setting up Salesforce OAuth and testing apps on various platforms, with resources available for further learning about Ionic and AngularJS to enhance project capabilities.