iTech’s Hackathon: Everything You Need to Know
Just before Easter, all 250 of us at iTech embarked on two and a half days of learning, collaborating and game-changing ideation. In short, we did a hackathon.
But first, what is a hackathon?
A hackathon is a design sprint-like event where a group of cross-disciplinary people join forces and collaborate on — traditionally — software projects. You start with nothing and hopefully end with a fully fleshed out idea, ready for take-off. We had everyone from developers, UX designers, content editors and more ‘trusting the process’- even our CEO got involved!
As we’re still in a pandemic, it was all based online complete with a bespoke mini-site with everything we could need. We’re a global company so we had teams made up of Arcs across the UK, the US, Poland and even Bali! Thanks to an expertly organised schedule there was hardly any confusion over time zones. Kudos to the organisers!
And we’re off
Hack 2.5 kicked off with a high-energy whole team call hosted by the Challenge Owners, Coaches, Facilitators and Guides. If anyone was feeling the afternoon slump, it’s safe to say they were soon wide awake. The hosts took our 30 pre-allocated teams through the design thinking methodology with bespoke masterclasses, so we’d all be on the same page. We’ve done hackathons before at the company, but as we’re scaling fast many of our team have joined since the last one!
Each team was then given their briefs and started trying to understand the problem they needed to solve. The goal is to take that solution from concept to ideation. This required a lot of thinking, discussing, iterating and concept.
It’s fair to say the mantra for these 2.5 days was ‘trust the process’.
Legend’s Lair
On the final day, having spent almost two days working through the why and the what, we got stuck into creating prototypes for our concepts aka products. Now we’d done the thinking, it was time to pivot to presenter mode by coming up with a pitch. As we know, how you present something is just as important as what you present.
All teams submitted their concepts through ‘Peer Cheer’ on the mini-site where everyone got to vote for their favourite idea. (No voting for your own allowed — we tried!) The top 5 teams got to pitch their concepts to the dragons of the Legend’s Lair — any resemblance to a TV show is purely coincidental. We had the opportunity to win some really cool prizes including the top prize of having your idea brought to life by the company. It’s safe to say the teams were fighting to win the top spot.
What did I learn?
Shockingly, my team didn’t win the big prize, but we did win the most creative idea award. It was overall a great experience and although it was hard work at points, it really paid off. Working in an agile company we’re used to collaborating across chapters, but this was on a whole other level.
A hackathon allows you to draw out your creativity, and the design thinking methodology forces you put the user first. We learned to shift the process. We evolved from trying to come up with solutions first, to focus on the problem. That way you can really understand the core of the issue so you can be more informed when trying to think of the solution. Another big plus was getting to meet new colleagues and to spend time with those I don’t normally see now that we’re mostly online.
We already have plans for more Hackathons in the works for 2021, so it’s safe to say it was a runaway success. Plus, the winning team’s product is in the works behind the scenes so watch this space. I can’t wait for the next one, and in the meantime, I’m just trusting the process.
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