Hacketse IX: Can't Stop (Won't Stop) the Hackin'
The latest K15t hackathon just wrapped, boasting 22 participants, and ten ambitious projects. With a time constraint of 24 hours, every team worked hard to get their great ideas shipped out the door. By the way, if you want a blueprint for how to run your own Hackathon, complete with a schedule and a task list, read our recent blog post on the topic. Without further ado, here's a look at the three highest voted projects.
Better Together is the name of the game
The team responsible for the "Better Together" card game – game enthusiasts Matthias G., Matthias J., and Laura – wanted to find an entertaining way of introducing people to the K15t Software Atlassian add-ons.
Examples of "Better Together" cards, including task, employee, add-on, and event cards
The result? A four-player card game in which players are tasked with solving different technical documentation and project management problems by hiring employees, purchasing Atlassian platforms, and installing add-ons. If you want to try it yourself, the team is working on a PDF version of the "Bettter Together" card game which will be available sometime in the near future.
Star that HipChat message
MessageStar is both incredibly simple and incredibly useful
If you use HipChat, you know that keeping track of important messages with information you need to retain for longer periods of time can be a challenge. Messages disappear into the stream of the feed, one never seems to remember which room a message was in, and searching for a message can be time-consuming. At least that's how Sebastian felt, which is why he chose to create a HipChat integration that allows you to favorite/star a message. This places it in your HipChat sidebar for easy access. MessageStar came just 3 votes shy of first place, and demand to try it has been so high that Sebastian has made MessageStar – though since it was built in 24 hours, he warns it is not yet completely bug-free should you try it yourself.
Getting on board
Sample page of the winning team's onboarding experience
The team that got the crowd excited most, therefore taking home the big trophy, improved our onboarding process here at K15t. Congratulations to first-time hackathon participant(!) Anne-Katrin, Victoria, and Martin!
Starting at a new company can be intimidating – a new job, new tasks, new people, new processes – the list goes on. To make new teammates feel welcome from day one, and to streamline their onboarding process, Anne-Katrin, Victoria, and Martin developed a whole new onboarding experience. Now, a new employee will receive a link their personal onboarding portal page with:
General company information (org chart, hours, essential policies, etc.)
An introduction to their buddy (person who will introduce them to office life) and their team lead
An overview of planned activities on day one
A floor plan with information on where colleagues sit, where to find office materials, etc.
A whole lot more including tutorials, checklists, and other helpful info
Join in the (challenging) fun
Hopefully you've enjoyed reading about these projects – but likely not as much as we enjoyed working on them.
If you're hankering to join us for our next hackathon, head over to our careers page and have a look at where you might fit in!