Blueshift’s 2020 Hackathon Recap

From the desk of Blueshift’s Amazing Officer Manager, Jessica Weber:

Hackathons, just for engineering teams? Think again! Before Blueshift, I had only ever heard of hackathons and my perception of them was just an event for engineers. Well, it turns out that that is a false assumption. Hackathons are for the whole company and they’re a whole lot of fun! 

The What

The rules were simple:

• At least one person from each department (or close to it)
• At least 4 people on a team
• 48 hours of time
• 5 minute presentation on the What, the Why and the How

After that, the co-founders would select their top three based upon the overall impactfulness. 

The Why

It was refreshing to [1] be able to work with people you don’t normally speak to on a daily or even weekly basis (especially since shelter-in-place started almost 10 months ago) and [2] let your mind pinpoint a higher level project that may never had received the time of day in the grand scope of things. 

When you challenge yourself to learn or collaborate in a new environment with new ideas, it makes an impact when you get back to the everyday. After taking time away from our day-to-day tasks and being hyper-focused on another, yet still impactful project, our minds were invigorated.

The How

The first formal Hackathon the Blueshift team completed was in 2019. So this being only our second go, there were still some kinks to work out on the logistical side. On top of that, everyone is still working from their now familiar global home offices. 

Everyone was able to work efficiently and build some majorly impressive projects. Some of which were even completed by the end of the week and others that will be rolled out before we ring in 2021. Overall, with everyone working remotely and expanding the overall length of our hackathon to accommodate time zones, we were able to achieve so much despite the physical distance and time zone constraints. 

The inclusivity of the company wide hackathon was so energizing! After it was completed, the organizers asked the team for feedback. What was the only thing missing from the 2020 hackathon? Cupcakes!