Even if you’ve never experienced an Adaptavist Hack Day (formerly known as Adaptavist ShipIt), you’re probably familiar with the overall concept of hackathons. In most companies, hackathons enable developers and programmers to engage in collaborative projects for a set period of time.
How are Hack Days different at Adaptavist?
When developers come together to solve a problem, good things happen. But when we add other skillsets into the mix, we’ve discovered that great things happen!
We do things differently by encouraging participation from all corners of the business–graphic designers, finance managers, and marketers, to name a few, have all been involved in our past events.
For 24 hours, our colleagues can step away from their day-to-day roles and come together to contribute to open source and collaborate on new concepts or enhancements to existing products.
By giving our Hack Day participants complete freedom to build or design whatever they want, we make way for truly innovative ideas and results that we might not have seen otherwise.
How many people can participate?
Our Hack Days are quite literally open to everyone! Last year, our Hack Day attracted 77 participants who made up a whopping 15 cross-functional project teams. They collectively hacked for an eye-watering 360 hours… phew!
The competition between teams and the level of talent emerging is only growing each year. One of the things that makes this soon-to-be bi-annual tradition so incredible is how inclusive our Hack Days are. We actively encourage a diverse range of skills and projects–the more the merrier.
What do people work on during an Adaptavist Hack Day?
One of the main rules for our Hack Days is: ‘If you can think it, you can do it!’
In 2021, our teams worked on a huge range of ideas and topics which included:
- Developing new or existing features for some of our partner products including Jira, Slack, ScriptRunner, Aha!, and Monday.com.
- Ironic and ‘just for fun’ apps.
- Investigations into machine learning.
- Further improvements to our culture and ways of working.
Who won last year?
The winning project in the ‘Best Insight’ category was ‘Investigation into machine learning AI applications to aid ScriptRunner users in writing custom automations’.
The team investigated how script-writing could be made easier through automation. Following the event, the project was taken even further by the ScriptRunner team. The team realised the scope and opportunity for improving and revitalising the existing Script Editor experience, ensuring script authors benefit from the best possible editing functionality. While developing the idea, it turned into something completely different altogether. That’s when the new Editor Experience for ScriptRunner was born, giving ScriptRunner users a smoother way to write their own scripts!
We also need to give a special mention to a member of one of our product teams who was spurred on to do some independent hacking. This resulted in the popular ‘Threaded Comments for Trello’ app!
So, what do the winners get?
Pride, of course! Oh, and a highly coveted Adaptavist Winners' hoodie to commemorate the occasion.
How can I get involved?
If you have a gem of an idea, drop us a message at hello@adaptavist.com or reach out to us on Facebook, LinkedIn, or Twitter.
We’d also love to hear from Adaptavist partners who’d like to run a joint Hack Day. If you’re interested, please get in touch with our partnerships team.
And of course, if you fancy your chances at our next Hack Day, don’t forget to check out our careers page! We’re always on the lookout for talented people with new ideas.
