What it’s like to host a hackathon
How organizing a hackathon brought my team closer together and helped us explore.
We have to find the time to do cool stuff
We’re all busy. Sometimes, like, way too busy. I work in “professional services”, which means every hour I spend should, ideally, be billed to a client. Sure, there are administrative things that pop up, but by-and-large, if something isn’t tied to money coming in the door, it’s pushed aside. Gotta keep the lights on…
Our technological expertise is often our differentiator, yet it can be difficult to be the “expert” when we’re so busy delivering for our clients. We win because of our expertise, and while we’re busy building, then industry breezes past us.
So, when do we get to do our own shit? When do we get to “play” with new technology? How can we explore new ideas with the freedom to fail?
I think it requires our own investment. In the past, our office has shut down for an entire day to hold a “Hack Day,” where many disciplines combine to play with novel solutions to innovative problems. The problem is, it’s expensive, hard to schedule, and tough to justify with regularity.
Scheduling
Instead of organizing an entire office of designers, developers, and managers (over 80 people), I focused on one discipline: Front End Development. Reducing the head count made the budget, and scheduling much easier.
Saturday won.
We’re Better Together
We could all explore technology on our own time, this is true. I’ve just never been that developer. The one who built a new templating framework “for fun” over the weekend. I’d like to think it has something to do with experience, once you’ve learned a handful of frameworks and have seen them rise and fall in popularity, you start to become a more guarded with your time.
That’s the flattering justification. You could also comfortably say that I’m just too lazy.
The truth probably lies somewhere in the middle. I’m a little lazy, and I have more fun working with other people. I justlove being a part of a team. I love learning directly…
