Did someone say shots? Oh, Moonshots! #DomainInnoDay
In tech speak, a moonshot is an ambitious, exploratory and ground-breaking project undertaken without any expectation of near-term profitability or benefit and also, perhaps, without a full investigation of potential risks and benefits. According to our mates over at Google, it is project or proposal that:
- Addresses a huge problem
- Proposes a radical solution
- Uses breakthrough technology
And if it is good enough for Team X at Google, it is damn well good enough for us at Team Domain, cue InnoDay September 2018 where teams were tasked with creating a moonshot! EASY, right?
The concept definitely spurred us on as the ground shook with teams stampeding to come together from across the business to create their moonshot — there were 31 registered projects!
We kicked off Inno Day festivities with an Ideation session run by Mark and Jon explaining what the hell a moonshot actually was, as some of us don’t speak fluent tech. Check out this vid — https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2t13Rq4oc7A. Jon ran us through some activities on creating big, bold, moonshot ideas, which is where our idea formed and started to perculate.
Next up were the Pitch sessions — an opportunity for teams to pitch their ideas and ask for team members of a specific expertise to help them bring their idea from the buzz in their head to saving the world. Some of these wild ideas were Dorothy Decides, Lunch Buddies, Valuations on the fly, Domain the Game, Domain: Next Level, Domain BFF, Domain After, Make Rentals Great Again, MyPlace by Domain….and so many more amazeballs ideas!
InnoDay 1 rolled around and each team was off and running, marking their territory with white boards, markers, paper, coffee, post-it notes, laptops, ideas, more coffee, chocolate snacks — but where were the Inno Day stickers? Everyone was bouncing ideas, researching, coding, designing, interviewing and creating logos.
It was such a great vibe in the office as people from different teams frantically worked together to make their idea fail — oh, did I forget to mention that one of the prizes this Inno Day was going to be for “The most successful failure”. Game on.
InnoDay 2 dawned with the the obligatory free brekkie — great ideas don’t come on empty stomachs. Time sped by as we all worked hysterically to pull all the research and ideation together from the previous day. Videos were in production, products were being coded, slide decks were being tweaked, tweaked and then tweaked some more, people were aging right before our very eyes — and we got the InnoDay stickers! (isn’t it all about the sticker?).
The best thing for me about Innoday is seeing people create something of intrinsic value out of nothing but a good idea, in record time. Innoday is not a time to be innovative — it’s a time to remind us what we should do every other day, always.
Mark Cohen, CTO @ Domain
As the sun set on Day 2, the hype around the presentations the next day was palpable and with very good reason. Everyone had smashed it out of the park.
The heats kicked off in two separate streams; pitch and product. From each heat, three would be chosen to fight it out present in the final, which would take place after the free pizza for lunch.
All six ideas and presentations were unbelievable and I had no idea how anyone would actually be awarded the winner….but there were three winners, one by popular vote (that included ML — always going to be a winner), CEO vote and Most Successful Fail (which should also have won Best Comedy Routine as the preso was hilarious).
After the three days of innovation, fun, collaboration and learning, I had to go home for a nap, I was exhausted!
