For the past few days, everyone (yes, everyone) at Skimm HQ has been hacking it up. Aka it’s hackaton time. This hackathon’s theme? Deepening engagement in new ways.
THE WHAT
You might have heard of hackathons before. It’s like a marathon for your brain. Employees (usually at a tech startup) break out into teams and create an entirely new product or idea. At most companies, it involves the product team or a small subset of people who are accustomed to working together. At Skimm HQ, it involves every. Single. Person. And all of the snacks. No two people from the same team at the company are allowed to work together. So every hackathon squad has one from analytics, one from marketing, one from editorial, partnerships, etc. Variety is the spice of life, and the hackathon.
THE HOW
For 48 hours, all other work stops. No meetings. No calls. No bathroom breaks (jk). As mentioned, this year’s theme was ‘deepening engagement.’ We’re a media company that reaches millions of people every day by focusing on fitting into their routines. How can we engage with those routines and those Skimm’rs in more meaningful ways? We don’t just present suggestions. We build things. It’s a chance for everyone to shoot for the big ideas, and work with other employees to bring them to life. At the end of 48 hours, four judges — Carly, Danielle, our COO Josh, and CBO Brandon — decide who’s the winner.
THE DEETS
While we can’t reveal the secret sauce of the ideas teams came up with (since we’re going to be producing some of them) here’s a look at the highlights of the hackathon…
- The level of our competition is so high that all of our hacks featured functional prototypes.
- The engineers on each team were able to produce these so quickly because the development methods we use on a daily basis lend themselves to rapid prototyping.
- We produced prototypes on four different platforms — mobile, web, email, and voice.
There was only one winner. But there was a limitless amount of creativity and a limited amount of sleep. Oh, and did we mention snacks? And that we’re hiring.
Until next time,
Skimm HQ
