Hooking into a Hackathon with Tanda
This guest post was written by Dom Tuck, a member of the Customer Success team at Tanda.
Tech-savvy Brisbane has been toted as “The Silicon Valley” of Australia, supporting a versatile community that loves to collaborate. Just last month in October, there were 5 Hackathons! There’s nothing quite like being able to share and learn from notable members of your community. But of course, there’s nothing quite like the Tanda Hackathon.
If you don’t know what I’m talking about, the Tanda Hackathon is an annual creative soiree for Brisbane’s booming IT community, hosted by the world’s #1 platform for workforce success: Tanda. Its purpose? To pit competitors against each other in a frenzied, pizza fuelled contest to create the most kickass software project.
Think of it as trying to pull off that last minute assignment that still haunts you past your student days; you’re staying up late, running on creative energy and good music, procrastinating a little, maybe even stressing a little. The difference is that you’re having a dope time collaborating with like-minded individuals, learning valuable tips and tricks of your trade, and binging on free beer and pizza. And there’s prizes!
This year, the Tanda Hackathon collected a mob of budding designer students, professional software developers and intrigued coding enthusiasts, eager to step up to the challenge. Every hackathon needs a theme, and this years was celebrating the magic of Webhooks.
For those that aren’t familiar with Webhooks, a quick Google search will inform you that a Webhook is ‘an HTTP callback; a simple event-notification via HTTP POST.’ Basically, you can link one event occurring within an API (application programming interface) to a new event. Some more research told me that notifications and data collection are primarily the function of a webhook. But what can a horde of go-getters achieve with the humble Webhook and a market leading workforce success software?
The night began with all sorts of ideas running wild, notably “Tinder for Tanda” and “Tanda Plays Pokemon”. Amid the barrage of creativity, and after a long night and early morning, a few winning pitches emerged. The delivery of these webhooks and the value they could bring to the workplace shined. “Mood Metrics” was a hook that used facial recognition on clock in photos to measure employee happiness. I quite liked “Flowpay”, who built a system that triggered an instantaneous payment based off time sheets, rather than having to wait for payroll. Then the winner of the lot appeared, “Love Your Work”. Promoting team morale and connectivity, the webhook would send team members a notification when a new member started, giving some introductory facts and information so as to help the employee be better welcomed. The webhook would also send notifications of notable dates such as birthdays and work anniversaries.
All in all, the weekend was a fantastic way for members of our tech-loving community to flex their skills and come together to make cool stuff happen. If you missed out this year, be sure keep an ear to the ground for our next one. Thanks to everybody who attended, we hope to see you next year!
