Vistair’s First Hackathon - Cultivating Co-creation and Innovation
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During March, Vistair hosted its first internal Hackathon at Bristol Headquarters. Over this two-day event Vistair’s SMS development team were given the opportunity to take a break from their day jobs, form new teams and share ideas around the theme of ‘Engineering Efficiency’.
Thanks to a stellar team of planners, the event was nothing short of a huge success and was extremely well received by everyone involved.
Split into 5 separate teams, Vistair participants fully embraced the event with branded t-shirts and worked tirelessly over the 2 days to brainstorm new ideas. Red bulls, pizza boxes and snacks filled the kitchen, as many teams stayed long hours into the night to ‘hack’ away.
Lee Berry, Head of Product Management at Vistair comments: “The whole idea is to bring people together in a fun, collaborative environment and give them the freedom, resources and motivation to think differently and collaborate without constraints.”
At the end of the 2 days, each team presented their work to the judging panel – comprising of our and Chief Technical Officer -David Hedley, SMS Product Director - Matthew Spindler, and Head of Engineering - Jenny Strickland. The teams were awarded prizes for the following categories:
- - Best Pitch and Most polished
- - Most Innovative
- - Best “Bang for Buck"
- - Best overall idea
Matthew Spindler SMS Product Director at Vistair comments: “ It was obviously something completely different for the team and they really embraced the opportunity of working with new team members and being given the time to try new technologies and approaches. The teams put a great deal of effort into their presentations”
“We are currently developing the next generation of our Safety Management System Software solutions which involves full integration of our existing product suite; SafetyNet, RiskNet and QualityNet. Our choice to host an internal Hackathon has fully supported this, with two of the winning ideas immediately added to our development roadmap.” he added.
The wealth of positive feedback from the teams was a further testament of the Hackathons value to Vistair.
“The freedom to produce something which we as a team felt would add massive value without the constraint of approval and client expectations. Its really proven that individuals with different abilities can come together and create something in a short amount of time that could impact our products and internal workflow in a really positive manner!”
“Great idea to get people to try new things and contribute their own ideas. You can tell from the atmosphere in the office that everyone was so motivated and really enjoyed it.”
Due to the great success of this event, Vistair plans to run a company-wide Hackathon every 6-months.
For further information about our Safety, Risk and Quality Management solutions CLICK HERE.