Born in the early noughties, the Hackathon has traditionally been a tech-based “competitive event in which people work in groups on software or hardware projects, with the goal of creating a functioning product by the end of the event”. However, here at AT Internet, we have taken the hackathon one step further!
For the fourth year
running, this year’s Ship It was a searing, sizzling, sweltering, romper
stomper of an event! It was action-packed with creativity, inspiration,
perspiration(!), slamming music, moshing and enough luscious food and drink to
feed an army – in short, IT ROCKED!
Background
AT Internet started
running Hackathons (a combo of ‘hack’ and ‘marathon’) back in 2016 with the aim
of accelerating innovation and showcasing the dynamic and progressive nature of
the company.
Ship-It gives
employees the chance to let their imaginations run wild and rise to the
challenge of developing and delivering new innovations in just 24 hours. It’s a
great way to let teams show off their skills and generate project ideas that
could be useful in the future – both internally and for our customers.
It’s also a superb way for employees from different teams to meet up and share the positive company vibe!
Feeling hot hot hot…
This year’s Ship-It
coincided with Bordeaux’s first heat wave of the summer and temperatures rose
to over 40°C. Luckily the re-fuel team was on hand to provide refreshments in
the form of smoothies and cold drinks galore! And the survival supplies didn’t
stop there… There was a regular flow of snacks and sweets throughout the day to
feed the neurons of our creative teams. There was also a food truck serving
burgers and chips in the car park to soak up some of the ice-cold beverages on
offer at the company party.
Superkramp (AT’s
home-grown band), took the Thursday evening by storm with a pumping concert on
the terrace. Employees relaxed on the comfy pallet furniture had been built
that very afternoon by one of the Ship It teams, and those in the mood got
stuck into the mosh pit – ever seen a company CEO crowd surf?
Breakfast on day two
featured rounds of sweet pastries and healthy smoothies. For those that needed a
boost of rocket fuel to get through the morning, there were non-stop rounds of English
bacon rolls, fried up by our resident Londoner and bubbling to the sounds of
Bob Marley.
The projects – teamwork, hard graft and a touch of genius!
This was the 4th edition of our Ship-It Day and the teams were looking stronger than ever. A total of 14 groups broke sweat all hours to come up with an intriguing selection of projects. The topics covered everything from creating software that automatically generates digital charts by capturing the image of a physical one, to installing a private cloud on our on-premise infrastructure to build on-demand services for end users. There was even a project to design a new customer service chatbot!
And the winners are…
The clock stopped ticking at the 24-hour mark – 1pm on Friday. Each team then had 10 minutes max. to present their project and convince the audience why it deserved to win. The presentations were hosted by our marketing director who added his touch of je ne sais quoi…
Coming in Third…
Analytics for Green
The “eco project” looked at the impact of
day-to-day actions at work on the environment and is part of AT Internet’s strong
commitment to ecological issues. The team aimed to create ways to collect data and track activities such as water/electricity
consumption, carbon emissions from the daily commute as well as more specific
behaviour, such as which type of rubbish bins are most used, and how many bikes
park up each day.
They then displayed the information in a dashboard and report that could be regularly shared with the company to track our progress. Using this data, they then aimed to use automation to act on the measured results. For example, controlling when lights/screens turn on and off using technology such as Raspberry PI, Jeedom, temperature measurements, controlled power sockets, automation scenarios, tagging, and dashboarding.
In at second was…
The Real data collection counter!
This project looked to design a physical counter that could be used throughout the company to display a wide range of information. They came up with a large illuminated display counter with 10 digits (7 segments with RGB LEDs) and displayed how it could be used to display the number of hits collected on our site, hits collected for a specific customer, as well as more specific analytics data. A truly colourful and practical idea that could be implemented straight away!
And storming in at first place!
Explorer Quadricolor
The idea that won over
the crowd in the end was Quadricolour – a way of creating colour variations in Analytics
Suite, using Cascading Style Sheets (CSS). The presentation and idea were
simple but game changing – to give Analytics Suite a range of colour
themes that can be personalised according to the customer, personal preference,
weather and specific public holidays etc. They showed off a wide spectrum of
colour variations – fixed themes such as blue, green, orange, pink, red – colour
personalised to individual customers – and even various event themes such as Christmas
(snow theme), Halloween (pumpkin theme), and St Patrick’s day (Irish theme).
The possibilities are endless, and the idea could be put into practice
immediately.
The winning team
received a tour of Bordeaux’s Cité du Vin complete with wine tasting, followed
by dinner at the Halles de Bacalan high-end gastronomic food hall next door. A
superb gift for a worthy team!
A big shout to…
…everyone involved who
worked so hard to make this event a resounding success. To the events manager
for organising everything, the refuelling team for keeping everyone running on
all cylinders, the band who kept everyone rocking, and all the devoted and
talented teams behind the wealth of projects. Above all, thanks to a certain
CEO for making the company such a fun and inspirational place to work!
See you next year!
