Usually at this time of year, places of work are twinkling with decorations and the staff holiday party is never far from conversation. This festive season is just another moment that is looking very different in 2020 and we wanted to take a different tactic to celebrate the end of the year and the hard work of the previous 12 months. Whilst traditional celebrations don’t work in the current environment, for Appnovation EMEA, it was an opportunity to utilise the skills and expertise of the whole team in a day of innovation and collaboration with the Holiday Hackathon.
A hackathon is an event where teams get together for a short period of time to collaborate on a project. A portmanteau of “marathon” and “hack” – the idea is to generate ideas outside the usual project constraints and allow the team some unbridled creativity to see what they come up with. The region-wide Appnovation EMEA team was split into 8 teams and presented with a selection of open-ended briefs for inspiration. These themes were:
The goal was to create an idea for a product or experience in a short space of time, and show how this might be delivered as an actual project.
Adding to the excitement of the event was the mysterious Survival Box each team member received to their doors. A box filled with little brown paper bags, each with a unique time to be opened. Early surprises included notepads and coffee to kick things off to an inspired start, while packages later in the day provided energy boosts in the form of sugary treats and motivational messages.
The event culminated in an awards ceremony the following evening, complete with fabulous attire, accessories for which were also included in the Survival Box, for teams to showcase their ideas and receive some Dragon’s Den style questioning from the Leadership team.
“I think the calibre of submissions was extremely high – as I’d expect from our talented, passionate team but I was surprised with how well thought out and viable the suggestions were, given the short amount of time they had available. I was impressed with how the team worked seamlessly across geographies – we’ve always said that being able to work well across distributed teams is a key element of our differentiator, but that’s usually with a well planned project management setup and supporting process – here we just threw them in the deep end and they excelled.”– Andrew Dunbar, General Manager EMEA
Over five days, we will be sharing the eight brilliant ideas the teams developed to give you an insight into the creative and talented team at Appnovation and provide the opportunity to vote for your favourite submission! And if there’s any clients out there who’d like to see any of them brought to fruition, we are only an email away!
https://insights.appnovation.com/cast-your-vote-emea-hackathon/