Weeks three and four: hackathon-ing
By: Daphne Zhang
Tags: Tech, Students, Internships, Atlassian, Design

All about ShipIt: the 50th edition!

During our internship orientation, we were given an overview of company events to look forward to, some of which would further our learning, and others for the purposes of socialising and enjoying participation. ShipIt was one of (if not the most) anticipated of these events, and a handful of interns already had their eyes set on taking part in a ShipIt long before we started at the company.

But let’s rewind: what’s a ShipIt?

“Every quarter, we run a 24-hour hackathon called ShipIt where we drop everything to make something awesome. It embodies our culture of innovation and puts weight behind a sacred company value: ‘Be the change you seek.’”

ShipIt is Atlassian’s quarterly internal hackathon. Once every few months on a chosen week, ad-hoc teams made up of employees from different departments come together for 24 hours to work on technical and non-technical projects alike, starting from midday Thursday in each timezone we’re based in. This usually starts with individuals or small groups pitching their hackathon idea in a scheduled pitch session to recruit team members who can contribute desired skills or knowledge to the end goal, whether that be a new product feature, community initiative, or new company swag. The first ShipIt in 2005 was a rather modest occasion that hosted 14 developers in one location. Today, ShipIt draws together hundreds of employees across at least 20 cities. Wow.

I had never participated in a hackathon before, let alone heard of ShipIt, but it was clear why people were excited about it. On the outset, it’s a rare opportunity to collaborate with people one might not usually work with on a daily basis. This point should be prefaced with the fact that ShipIt doesn’t care about hierarchy; everyone from fresh hires (e.g. us!) to senior executives can be working on the same project. Intentionally, there are few rules surrounding the event, all in the spirit of encouraging creativity. As long as the project is not business-as-usual work, or work that has already been roadmapped, the world is your oyster, they say. To top it off, prizes are awarded, including those that recognise projects contributing to company OKRs, and people’s choice. Super cool!

So then, how was my first hackathon?

It was fast, to say the least, which was a big part of why the whole thing was quite disorienting for a first-timer like me. But don’t get me wrong! I loved getting caught up in the buzz of it all, and was so glad I chose to take part after almost backing out. Yet ShipIt was unlike anything I had ever experienced. 😵

Hackathons are meant to be fast Daphne, is what you might be thinking. And I completely get that. But understanding the idea in theory is so different to seeing it happen in real life. You see, details is my thing. I like to take time with my work, exploring all options, and only publishing when I’ve turned the work inside-out, multiple times. Which is another way of saying: hackathons are waaay outside of my comfort zone. Having to start something, drop it when it’s “good enough”, and move on to another area of the project that needed to be worked on was an eye-opening experience, albeit a challenge. On top of that, I realised how much trust in a team, no matter how new, was required to successfully complete a hackathon. At no point did I feel like I knew exactly what each team member was doing, but Playing As A Team (one of our company values) means trusting that each of us will do our part in working toward the big picture — and of course have fun while doing so!

This was the 50th edition of ShipIt and, like everything this year, it took place remotely. And while I look forward to one day physically experiencing in the office the undoubtedly invigorating atmosphere of such an occasion, as captured in this not-at-all-FOMO-inducing video, I have to appreciate and applaud the efforts that went into recreating a 24-hour hackathon in a remote environment.

I joined a team made up of fellow interns and permanent employees to work on a non-technical project. Curiously, everyone on this team only joined Atlassian this year 👶🏼 For most of us, this was our first ShipIt, and our project was to create a remote mentoring program to empower women in tech. This involved drafting a landing page, building a mentor/mentee networking interface, and recruiting mentors. As a team, we only intended to do what we could in the 9–5 work hours (that is, we weren’t going to work the full 24-hour stretch) so we had even less time to complete our project before it would be showcased in the presentation rounds on Friday and voted on. My Thursday and Friday was a lot of frantic Zoom check-in calls in between a steady stream of Slack notifications.

I’m pleased to say our team made it to the second round, which preceded the finals, but I’m even more pleased to say I met some awesome ladies (pictured at the start of this blog!) and was inspired by how enthusiastic and collaborative our team proved to be, in a mere 24 hours.

And to top it off, I did a scary thing…

In the second week of the internship, there was a call for volunteers to help facilitate the ShipIt voting rounds. It was a one-time offer, with limited positions, and as much as it sounded like a crazy thing for me to put my hand up for (I mean, this was going to be my first ShipIt so what would I know?), in the spirit of “saying yes and figuring it our later”, I said yes.

And saying yes was the best decision ever *sheds tear* 💍.

Jokes aside, I got such a kick from being a facilitator. From scrambling last minute trying to collate pre-recorded team presentation videos to showcase, to very awkwardly trying to create excitement and hype by myself in a Zoom room, I thought the entire experience was a perfect example of just having fun and not taking myself too seriously 😛 It really was the cherry on top of ShipIt 50.