Thoughts on our Nestathon
Find out all about our first edition of Nest-à-tona.
At Nest Collective, we’d been thinking about doing an internal hackathon for quite some time. Get everyone together for a weekend and do what we like the most — build stuff. Thankfully, ShiftAPPens was just the push we needed to get this going (even without a mechanical bull)!
So, now, we’re sharing with you all the juicy details about our Nestathon (aka Nest-à-tona)— from the rules to the projects and how it all went down!
First things first
The amazing organization gave us a briefing: you had 24h to do something that adds value to the Nest. It can be something for the community or something only with internal impact. However, it’s not restricted to software projects, just be creative! So, the question was: how can we improve our beloved Nest Collective? 🤔
We all threw a couple of ideas to a form, which were then sorted in a Trello board. This was very important because people could see all the ideas that were on the table in advance — and that’s how teams were made! We simply assigned ourselves to the idea we liked the most. The golden rule: no team could have more than 2 elements from the same company! The idea was to shake things up a bit, not to team up with the people you already work with everyday.
Hack, hack, hack
Some days before the Nest-à-tona we already had more ideas than people to make them. So, we chose the following to work on for those intensive 24 hours:
- A slackbot to check if the kitchen is full.
- A Summer Internship board.
- A Nest mobile app (door opener, manage events, resources, etc.).
- Face recognition to open the door.
- A very cozy disco (no, not a typo).
And now, the fun part: from Friday to Saturday, we occupied our lobby, put some music on 🎵, grabbed some fresh fruits & minis 🍻, and hacked the heck out of our ideas!
Sadly, the 24 hours came to an end and it was time to stop and show everyone else what we’d been doing. And, of course, choose a winner!
After the final showcase, everyone voted in two of their favourite projects.
The lucky winners 🏆
You guessed it! Of course the A Super Small Disco won the Golden Nest.
By the end of Nest-à-tona, it was not only sound proof (almost), but was also already fully installed with multiple sound systems, awesome lights, a bar full of choices, and even a rustic refrigeration system. All this was financed by pre-selling packs of shots for the inauguration party, so it’s a self-sustaining project!
So far, our record is 13 people. Whenever you want, show up and help us beat that!
Space to improve
This was a pretty awesome weekend! How can we do it even better next time? The immediate suggestion was: a stronger trophy. 😅 As we talked about it, several teams said we could try to do a longer hackathon. This way we’ll have more time to gather the teams and do some short activities and challenges. Plus, having a plan to finish and mantain all the projects.
We are very proud of this first round of Nest-à-tona and super excited for the next one.
Overview
We now have a slackbot we can ping to ask if there’s space in the kitchen, or ask to take a picture so we can check for ourselves. Not only that, but every once in a while it takes a photo, giving us some cool timelapses. 😎
We also have a platform to manage and share short-term internships (which will soon be at full speed at intern.camp). And all internships are going to be reviewed by us, so a seal of quality is guaranteed to all the applicants.
The team doing the Nest mobile app made sure we won’t be locked outside the office if we forget our keys. 🙌 Now, we can open the door using the mobile app or an authorized NFC card.
However, we thought we could do even better — considering we could still forget our phones and cards. Because of that, the “Fronhas” team spent the weekend working on a face recognition system so we could open the door just by looking at it! It started by using Kairos’ API and then trying another solution with OpenFace. No more keys or cards, just your face — something you’ll truly never forget.
And, of course, we used to have a dusty useless bathroom, now we have daily lusco-fusco parties! 🕺 Don’t forget to pay us a visit!
All said, this event was a great excuse to get everyone working together on a more informal setting, know a bit more about all members and enjoy our fantastic sunset.
A big thank you to the organisers for putting this together: Sara Baião, André Macedo, João Miguel Marques, João Gonçalves, Cláudia Acabado and Samuel Nunes! 💙 🤘
And to all the Nest’s companies for taking the Friday off. ⛱
