Hackathon as a source of life improvement in the company

It is not a secret for anyone that hackathons in large IT companies are being organized with the aim of attracting and hiring new people from outside. But we decided to do an experiment and conducted a hackathon “for our own”, dedicated to improving office life.

The idea was transparent and clear to all: it was necessary to implement a project that would make it more convenient and better and so a good life for the average Rambler & Co employee. The main condition for participation was the use of the company's internal services, of which a great many were gathered in a large media holding. Also, respected people from the top management of the company were chosen as the jury to show the significance of this event, including for business.


From the point of view of the organization, everything is pretty standard: the teams had 2 days to develop and show a presentation of the finished product from scratch. Well, of course, the hackathon could not do without valuable prizes for the teams that won prizes.
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There were many who wanted to improve their lives and others: as a result, nine teams were registered, and almost every one before the start of the hackathon had a completely ready and mature idea that they wanted to implement. The ideas were very different: from the office navigation application (for you to understand, Rambler & Co is several buildings in the Danilovskaya Manufactory territory) to a social network with an assessment of the skills of each individual employee in a given area. What is very valuable, each idea was brought to a product ready for presentation, and at the output we received nine completely different business decisions that were appreciated by the jury and will soon be widely implemented in the holding's internal projects.


What did we understand for ourselves as a result of this experiment?

1. An internal hackathon can be no less useful for a business than an external one, if you correctly select a topic and convince employees of the likely “exhaust” from their work.
   
   
2. Hackathon gave employees an excellent chance to become better acquainted with the internal services of the holding and their capabilities, as a result of which many of them had an incentive and desire to interact with them in the future.
   
   
3. At the hackathon, people get an ideal opportunity to try themselves in those roles that are not in any way in contact with their usual office work. So, project managers successfully wrote code, and mobile application developers quickly learned how to program in Ruby.
   
   
4. Even in such a huge company like Rambler & Co, there are many simple things that can be improved. These things often lie on the surface, but it is people who give the necessary impetus for their development and implementation.

What is your experience with hackathons? Write in the comments, we are very interested in your opinion.