Why a hackathon?
At Blis, we want to be at the forefront of the market. And that means that we are constantly innovating. Not only with our customers, but also within our own company. With the rapid rise of AI technologies, we are in what we call the “4th digital wave” — a revolution that may have more impact than all previous technological waves combined. Especially now, it is crucial to explore and understand these developments. And you have to make time for innovation...
As you can imagine, it's quite a challenge: taking your entire company one day off from work. Technical planning. And it costs a bit too. In practice, a complete corporate hackathon means: 55 employees × 8 hours × hourly rate. That's quite a lot of money when you just look at the numbers. But we are convinced that it was worth it all.
Indeed, we wanted to achieve various goals with this hackathon:
- Promoting team building
- Explore new techniques and AI tooling
- Experimenting in a safe environment
- Improving collaboration between different teams
- Gain insight into how AI can strengthen our development processes
- Above all, we wanted to create a fun and informative day that would contribute to our company culture and our journey to a more AI-driven way of working.
And that all worked out (more than). But I'll tell you more about that later.
Preparation — the key to success
A good hackathon requires a very tight preparation. Our organization team consisted of Rutger, Richard and myself — all engineers with experience in community hackathons. Of course, we have experience with organizing, but we also used AI tools such as Copilot to generate ideas and make a plan.
Two months before the event, we started enthusing colleagues through the management team and team leaders, and, of course, internal communication.
We made a team layout and communicated that the groups could come up with an innovative idea from one of these themes:
😇 Tech for Good
🌍 Green IT
🤖 Future of Work
🧭 Ethical Tech
🚀 From Data to Decisions
These are themes that are important to Blis. By giving a choice, each group could see what would suit them best.
One month before the event, we tackled the practical issues: arranging development environments, capturing a photographer, catering, coming up with challenges and creating an evaluation survey.
Communication with the team was crucial — we sent regular updates via mail and Teams messages to keep everyone engaged.
The day before the hackathon, we prepared the spaces. We tried to make it as fun as possible, for example by giving each room its own name with funny posters. It's all in the details. The last communication went out, including a detailed timetable so that everyone knew exactly what would happen.
The hackathon day: energy, creativity and collaboration
The day itself started with a kick-off presentation explaining the distribution of points. The teams were already set up a week in advance so that they could pre-brainstorm via Teams, but the real magic happened on the hackathon day itself.
Each team did it in its own way, bringing together all areas of expertise. The challenges were intended to take participants out of their comfort zone or distract them from the main goal — just like with real projects. Some challenges were completely non-technical, such as building a tower with sticks or catching a potato. It was precisely those elements that brought a lot of energy and fun.
The day ended with presentations to an external jury. Each group had approximately 10 minutes to show their project using a prototype and slides. With the exception of a few minor technical problems, everything ran smoothly. In addition to “eternal fame”, the winning team also received an exchange trophy and a team outing.
Below is a short recap of the day. Text continues below the video.
The revenue: more than just technical innovation
What did this day yield? First, six original ideas that might never have come about without the hackathon. But the proceeds went far beyond just those project results.
- Everyone has worked with colleagues that you would otherwise not easily work with.
- Everyone has learned new (AI) tools and was amazed at “how much”, “how fast” and “how well” we can do research, prototype, generate presentations and validate
- Everyone has acquired new skills that are immediately useful in current projects
Our colleagues learned how to work with AI technologies, and it was cool to see how they later applied that knowledge to daily projects. The reactions from colleagues were super positive:
“Experimenting with tooling, frameworks and resources that are less likely to be experimented with in daily work due to deadlines.”
“Collaborate with colleagues that I don't often work with during the normal working week. Team spirit!”
“Working with colleagues you don't normally work with much. Very nice to see that dynamic. Laughed a lot and also learned from each other.”
“It's the acorn between teams to fool each other. And nice to see how we were able to really take things further with 5 teams.”
The return on investment
Our CEO Richard Schot puts it this way: “Such a hackathon with the entire company is highly recommended. Also in terms of “return-on-investment”. And certainly with the power of AI tooling, you can get so much more out of such a day and gain so much more learning experience. Provided you organize it properly.”
You don't immediately see that ROI in euros, but the value lies in accelerated innovation, better teamwork and new skills that are immediately useful in ongoing projects. The hackathon proved to be perfect for introducing the team to the latest technologies.
With AI and other technologies evolving so rapidly, companies need to find ways to keep their teams up. A hackathon proved to be an effective and inspiring way for us to do this.
A tradition in the making
The hackathon was such a success that we decided to repeat it at least next year, maybe even earlier. We're also going to organize hackathons with our customers — a great way to share our experience and innovate together.
We are further developing some of the ideas that arose during the hackathon as pilot projects. This hackathon was the start of a new way of working that focuses on creativity and collaboration.
As our CEO said, “The hackathon was a great line-up to even greater steps in innovating our own company.”
The power of a hackathon — your turn?
Are you inspired to organize a hackathon too? Just do it — and learn with your team! A hackathon is more than just a day of coding; it's a chance to let your team shine, discover new ideas, and strengthen the company culture.
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