Semi-organised chaos: a common theme during company hackdays.

Making the most of Internal Hackdays

To celebrate the latest ‘Making Things Easy Day’, Focusrite & Novation’s Head of Innovation explains how to make hackdays an integral part of business.

A year or so back, I wrote about my love of hackdays and how hack culture resulted in some unique, user-liberating features being built into the Novation Launchpad Pro. But that wasn’t the only time that hacking had an affect on business. We’ve been using internal hackdays for five years now, so I thought I’d talk more about how we implemented them in our regular business, tell you about some of our unexpected hacking achievements, and share some things I’ve learned along the way.

We ran our first internal hackday back in 2011. At the time, I knew that branding was important, so we called it Making Things Day. (The word ‘hack’ wasn’t in daily usage like it is now, so we decided to call it something less intimidating.)

At that time, we only anticipated the engineering team taking part. Software, electronics, mechanical and QA engineers: people used to making stuff. So the moniker made perfect sense. Our format was simple, with only two rules:

1. Work on whatever you want
2. Share your work!

This could never have stuck without support from the top…many of the company Directors attend our demo sessions, offering pithy feedback and encouragement.

Focusrite’s Ian Hodges takes a day out of project-managing audio interfaces to make lunch for everyone at HQ.

We had a lot of fun, created things which amused us, and explored new ground. Some of the ideas even made it into products — our first iOS audio app began at Making Things Day, for example, as did the incredible Launchpad Intro, and the firmware for the Focusrite Red 4Pre was packaged by a script which started life as a hackday project. We’ve also built some mundane but very useful things, like internal tools that make day-to-day work more streamlined.

This could never have stuck without support from the top. Thankfully, that’s always been there — Phil Dudderidge and many of the company Directors attend our demo sessions, offering pithy feedback and encouragement. The message — that the company takes innovation seriously — is greatly appreciated!

Over the years, our project management systems grew more predictive. Taking a day out to work on something differently was suddenly not an option for some. This year, we’ve carefully scheduled our events to coincide with quieter periods. In particular: when our partners in the far east are on holiday, and when customer support rates are lower (Tuesdays, for some reason!). This has helped to keep the engineering team engaged as we’ve grown.

But, in the back of my mind, I knew something was missing from those early hackdays: non-technical people. The technology industry has a habit of undervaluing the contributions of non technical folk, and placing daft emphasis on the ‘rock stars’ and ‘ninjas’ of the tech world. Dismissing all they have to offer is of no benefit to anyone, least of all our customers!

I’ve tried various things to help engage the broader company. Once, I spent a morning in Customer Support, to cover for them so they could take part. That mainly resulted in them babysitting me, but it did inspire me to make a bot to answer emails (see below). I don’t think they’re using it.

My tongue-in-cheek tech support bot, with added confusion.

Joking aside, I like how this example highlights the importance of the nontechnical. My AI skills are weak, sure, but people like to talk to people, and our CS team are really good at that.

Apart from trying to lead by example, I wondered how else we could improve engagement outside engineering. The answer, I thought, might be simple: bribery. As I said in my post last year, I have mixed feelings about offering prizes at hackathons. But we had to do something, so for the first time, at Making Things Easy Day 2016, we’re trying cash prizes!

A small wad of cash is on offer for the best projects in these three broad categories; wherever you sit in the company, from sales to software engineering, there’s something you can do!:

• Nontechnical
• Accessibility and inclusion
• Communication

Web and product developers (l-r Bash Ahmed and Dan Clarke) collaborate during Making Things Easy Day, October 2016.

But aside from the money and fame, why should you take part? The joy of a good hack is often intangible. The amusement, satisfaction and pleasure of creating, making and hacking just don’t have business metrics. For me, the greatest benefit is empowerment. If you spend a day doing something differently, you’ll discover two things:

1. The world doesn’t fall apart when you step back from routine.
2. You can achieve incredible results!

Combine this with the surprises and cross-departmental connections made, and you have a powerful thing. You could even call it culture.