Connect, collaborate and create: A recap of this year’s hackathon
In Serko’s fast-paced world, fostering innovation is our way of life. To further fuel the spirit of creativity and collaboration, we recently organized an exhilarating hackathon event. It was an action-packed time that brought together Serkodians from various departments to tackle real customer-facing challenges and spark some cool new ideas.
Setting the stage
The event kicked off with a buzz as people gathered in our co-lab area to pitch ideas and form groups. All ideas were welcomed and celebrated for their uniqueness, which encouraged participants to be their true selves. Cross-functional teams were highly encouraged, emphasizing this year’s focus on diversity. Once the teams were formed, everyone prepared to immerse themselves in a 48-hour marathon of brainstorming and problem solving.
Collaboration and creation
Groups delved into areas such as customer experience enhancement, efficient working environment, connecting Serkodians, and making best use of AI to solve our problems. The array of projects underscored the breadth of talent within the company and our capacity to address a wide range of challenges.
Judging and awards
Our judges – The Heads of Product Operations, Design, Engineering Architecture and PPC (People, Performance and Culture) – evaluated the projects based on innovation, feasibility and potential impact.
There were five awards up for grabs. Team Fully Loaded went big and won both the Best Product Improvement Award for their simple yet impactful idea to enhance user experience, and the People’s Choice Award. Their idea of keeping users engaged while the content on our booking page loads won the votes of not only the judges, but fellow Serkodians as well. The Best Productivity Improvement Award went to team GPT Genius for coming up with an idea to incorporate current tools to improve the way we operate.
Team Keros, who focused on creating a gamified security training platform to encourage best practices, bagged the Pitch Perfect Award for the best pitch and presentation. Finally, team Retro Remix, who wanted to make retros fun and effective, won the Team Spirit Award for their collective energy, enthusiasm and support for each other throughout the process.
This year’s hackathon was more than just a coding competition; it was a celebration of connection, collaboration, and innovation. We saw people who usually don’t work together, joining forces to create; and competing teams not only assisting each other but celebrating each other’s successes. This exemplified the true spirit of Serko. What’s next? Watch this space…
