Fully remote Hackathon in Ethworks style! 💻

During our last office lunch, shortly before we said goodbye to our office once again this year (Hello Covid-19 my old friend 😢), we came up with a spontaneous idea of organising the first Ethworks Hackathon. We followed the simple, classic idea of the Hackathon event, where all team members, including software developers and graphic designers (and even backoffice members!) collaborate intensively on company-related projects. The rules were simple:

1. Various team members pitched their ideas for projects that would fit the idea of hackathon and were doable in a day’s work.
2. When we had project ideas it was time to split teams. Everyone was free to join any project that corresponded best with their skills/interests or just the one that sounded most interesting.
3. Projects were chosen, teams were set up. Now it was time to divide responsibilities in a group, and once everything was clear — teams had about 24 hours to complete and finish their project (or at least to do as much as they could).
4. After some rapid and intense work every team had to pitch a demo of their project to the rest of the company workers. Then everyone voted on the best or most interesting project.

Seems easy-peasy? You couldn’t be more wrong.

Hackathons are usually considered as large events with multiple teams working together side by side. You can imagine that, with the COVID-19 times and remote work model, it wasn’t really the smartest to gather everyone in the office for a hackathon. So we decided to slightly change some rules and make it a fully remote event. Our Hackathon wasn’t supposed to be only a competition, but also an inspiring team building activity. The competition element was there only to spice things up a little.

This was the first time we had organized a hackathon. And for some of our team members it was the first time they participated in one. We decided to focus on topics that are close to us — projects that can support our daily work and ones to share our work with a wider audience. This way, it was proposed to prepare a new tooling framework — Mars, and to develop some of the already existing tools such as: Waffle, Reactive Properties, Restless and a tool to support our designers.

In addition, some of our team members had an opportunity to write tutorials on how to use our very own testing framework — Waffle. They were able to prove themselves as true experts and explain to any potential user how to use some of the features Waffle offers.

Some may ask how we performed and if the EthWorkers are satisfied with the results. No need to make up stories. It’s best if you read some of their comments:

Albert (Front-end Developer):

I liked the hackathon and the fact that there were many different teams with very interesting projects.

Hubert (Junior Blockchain Engineer):

I have always liked the visual side of programming, and the idea of building a simple website seemed to be a good way to check whether I could create it according to the given design. By the way, Asia prepared a very nice project, so it was nice to work with it :)

Bartek (Blockchain Engineer):

I’ve picked the Mars project, because this idea was running through my head for a long time. Thanks to my amazing teammates, we managed to deliver something really interesting and worth showing to the world. I think it really has a great chance of having a positive impact on whole Ethereum development ecosystem.

Daniel (Junior Blockchain Engineer):

It was my first hackathon and honestly I hope it wasn’t my last. I’ve decided to try something different this time — writing my first tutorial. It seemed, at that time, the task was going to be complicated, and believe me, it was. However, complexity aside — I had much fun writing it :)

So all that happened on Friday and we decided to give everyone a couple of days to polish up their projects and prepare a perfect pitch. On Monday, it was time to pitch the results of their work. Each team chose one representative, who was supposed to present their product and convince others that their project should win. Curious who was the best? So were we, but we had to give it another few hours so everyone could vote. And trust me, the choice wasn’t easy.

So, what happened next? At the beginning, someone was just joking that it would be nice to organize some kind of prize for the winning team and until the very end, this information was kept secret. We organized a reward for the winning team — each participant received the main prize — a LEGO set. It looks like we’ve hit their tastes, just look at their smiles. Oh well… My bad. Please, look at his smile. Congratulations to our one-man team who won the first edition of Ethathon. Or Hackworks… Nevermind. Just the first edition of Ethworks Hackathon!

The best ideas are often the spontaneous ones. But after all, even such ideas need to be well organised and planned, especially nowadays. At the end of the day, it’s not only about who’s the winner. It’s also about reminding the value of teamwork, personal development, setting goals, exploring different approaches, and practicing. We’re staying safe, but at the same time we’re staying active, curious and wide-awake.

Blogpost written by Martyna Żaglewska & Mateusz Myśliński from Ethworks

We are Ethworks!

Truly remarkable team for your blockchain project.

Find us on Twitter, Dribbble and Github.