How we collected more than 1K registrations of creative IT minds for our first hackathon
As a result, we received more than a thousand applications for participation. 247 teams of cool, young, creative guys with interesting approaches gathered. Their names can generally be considered as a separate type of art: Dog Diplomat, Double Apple…. Already at this stage the organizers had a lot of fun.
No matter how interesting the tasks, more than half the success of any event depends on a well-planned advertising campaign. Hackathon is no exception, if you want coverage and registrations, tell your target audience about it,” emphasized Kristina Bobrova, head of the internal communications and HR brand department.
How did the tasks for the hackathon come about?
Participants had to choose from two problems. The first is to develop solutions for determining the subject of a web resource, which will help automate the collection of information for website promotion. Or the second is to create an enterprise web application that converts physical activity into charitable donations.
These ideas did not come to us overnight. I had to think carefully about the goals of the hackathon. First, we wanted to identify an issue that is 100% important to us. But then we realized that it was too difficult for the short time frame in which the event took place. Then we decided to consult with all departments. The guys from our agency Kokoc.com responded, in particular, the head of the optimization department. They work quite closely with our IT department, together with whom they proposed a task about a resource that can automatically determine the subject of a website page. Since there is no good solution to this problem on the market now, and the guys mostly do everything by hand, this was important for them.
As a result, in the first task, the victory was won by a team that consisted of only one person – a former SEO specialist and a current developer. His system was able to most correctly determine the topics of the site.
As for the second task, it was born from the current direction of development of our entire company this year – ESG. This area resonates with our team; the guys want to help, realize their potential in charity, and at the same time they are young and athletic. In addition, our employees live in different cities and even countries, and it is very difficult to bring everyone together to even hold a corporate Health Day. In this regard, we came up with the idea to combine all factors together: this was a good opportunity to combine passion for sports and charity and make our mark in the world of technology by doing good. We were sure that the market would be interested in this.
The hackathon participants really enjoyed the task, and they amazed us with their creative ideas. Someone came up with an application strictly according to the specifications, and someone proposed ideas that went beyond the scope.
In the second task, the winner was an application that, using artificial intelligence, reads activity, that is, it understands what exactly a person is doing at the moment: squats, push-ups, or something else. Then he counts how many times he did this, after which he writes it to the employee’s account. The guys tested the program live first themselves, then the experts themselves did it to check the program in action. By the way, the participants had only two days to create their unique IT developments. It would seem not too much time, but they succeeded, they took full advantage of their chance to ensure that the product they created in the field of AI and ESG was developed and brought to life.
About the atmosphere
There was a lot of humor, the checkpoints were very lively and interesting, these were meetings with experts. The participants were accompanied and assessed by specialists from the Product and IT Departments, SEO and HR departments of the Kokoc Group. This is a large team of professionals whose portfolio already includes more than a hundred unique products.
During the hackathon, we had three checkpoints; each team was given 5 minutes to ask a clarifying question. Some guys came from the first checkpoint with some intermediate solutions, showed what they had already worked on, and asked if they were moving in the right direction. Experts answered questions and shared opinions. With each such meeting everyone became closer and closer.
As a joke: someone’s front fell asleep after 18 hours of coding, and the guys promised to finish the project if it woke up, but in the end they didn’t have time, and in the presentation they wrote that the front didn’t wake up, so they couldn’t submit the project, but thank you for participation. Someone didn’t have enough time to write instructions for the application, they decided to get creative and send us a recipe for cabbage rolls and an anecdote. We appreciated the humor and laughed.
By the way, not all solutions were working. Some were cunning in the second track. They just rendered the design with empty code. Some applications did not launch. There were also a lot of half-baked ideas that were missing something: instructions, presentations, etc. But at the same time, 68 projects eventually reached the final assessment.
Growth zones
As for our future plans, we definitely want to repeat this all next year! We took into account the mistakes and realized that:
Tasks need to be prepared in advance. Test on your own, because during the competition we had to add and change something.
Consider the composition of those preparing the event. For example, this time we were missing a product manager.
Be prepared for a situation where there are twice as many registrations and participants.
Allow more time for checking, evaluating, and selecting solutions. The main thing is not to miss something interesting.
The hackathon was a good experience for our company and a very unifying event. If you have an idea to do a hackathon on your own, it’s worth doing it not only to meet new interesting people with whom we can continue to collaborate, but also to unite within your team, because there will be a lot of interactions during checkpoints and discussions. And employees who had little interaction with each other before would get to know each other and become closer. By the way, our hackathon worked not only for the external brand, but also for strengthening communications internally.
