Why run a hack event in your organisation
By: Matt Whetton
Tags: Motivation, Engineering, Learning And Development, Innovation, Hackathons

Hack events are an important aspect of the technology colleague experience at Oakbrook. They’re an opportunity to experiment with new technology, work with different people and see what you can create in a short space of time.

All companies involved in tech delivery would get something from hack events, and whilst the benefits might not be obvious they are significant both culturally and practically.

What makes running a hack event worth it

On paper its easy to dismiss the idea of a hack event given the level of commitment, investment and the lack of clear, direct business value delivered, but the truth is far from that. The truth is that there is business value in running an internal (or external) hack event, not to mention the cultural impacts on innovation and personal development.

The benefits are numerous.

The most obvious benefit comes in the form of team building and colleague familiarity. Particularly if your team is growing and/or working remotely, the chance to work closely and intensely with people can really boost personal bonds, break down silos and build trust.

Something we talk about at Oakbrook is how to build-in a pressure valve to the delivery process. Working in a process such as scrum with a near constant focus on the current, and then next goals can be exhausting and feel relentless. It’s important to build in time to focus on different problems with less quality pressures and exercising more creativity.

These kind of events are also a great opportunity to test-run new skills and technologies especially when you’re working in anger trying to deliver to a goal, with less worry about long-term viability of the solution. If we can strip away some of the quality gates, some of the stress’ of going to production and the implications on risk, it can allow us to fully experiment with something new and embrace failure. Furthermore the events in general drive personal development and learning through exposure to new and different problems.

One of the benefits that can’t be ignored is that given the level of personal freedom and choice in these events, they create time to focus on things that don’t get attention. This could be pet projects, projects without a significant enough business case or even projects that we’re nervous of tackling commercially — in any case the chance to choose your own adventure or even choose someone else’s can help these unseen projects thrive.

The final benefit, and perhaps the one closest to my heart is that these events serve as a great reminder of what’s possible if we put our minds to it. All too often we as techies can forget what we’re capable of if we embrace failure and give it a go — a lot of the time we’re wired to analyse and find the problems with things, so its incredibly healthy to make space to exercise our innovate and creative problem solving muscles.

I’ve touched on several reasons and benefits for running hack events, and there’s almost certainly more. My honest feeling is that events like these can make a huge difference to the culture within an organisation, and almost all organisations involved in delivering technology solutions would benefit from them.

What if we don’t know how to run a hack event

It’s certainly fair to say that running a hack event isn’t always the easiest thing to do — its not always as simple as taking a day out and letting your engineers run wild! Quite honestly though that can work and whilst could somewhat without direction, would give an opportunity for learning and experimentation. I’ll write in a future article about how we approached our Innovate28 event Oakbrook, but for now here’s some food for thought on ways to take a step into hack events for your team:

Start small : Don’t try to tackle a large, mutli-day event on your first try. It is possible to run an incredibly effective hack within a normal working day

: Don’t try to tackle a large, mutli-day event on your first try. It is possible to run an incredibly effective hack within a normal working day Set goals or a theme : Make sure you have goals and/or a theme for your event. This could be technical (build something using Apache Spark), could be more solution focused (build something to aid developer productivity) or something business problem focused (a solution to aid pre-boarding colleagues).

: Make sure you have goals and/or a theme for your event. This could be technical (build something using Apache Spark), could be more solution focused (build something to aid developer productivity) or something business problem focused (a solution to aid pre-boarding colleagues). Set the end time with demonstrations : Its really important to have your hackers demo what they’ve built at the end of the event. Without a distinct deadline to aim for, you can often end up with no material output, and whilst it may not be production worthy, building something that functions is critical to getting benefit from the hack.

: Its really important to have your hackers demo what they’ve built at the end of the event. Without a distinct deadline to aim for, you can often end up with no material output, and whilst it may not be production worthy, building something that functions is critical to getting benefit from the hack. Keep it simple : Whilst there are a number of large and complicated events, not all hacks need to look the same. It could be as simple as a single day with a distinct problem statement and a lot of creativity.

: Whilst there are a number of large and complicated events, not all hacks need to look the same. It could be as simple as a single day with a distinct problem statement and a lot of creativity. Start with just the engineers : At Oakbrook we try to involve as many people as possible in our hack events, but that isn’t the case for ALL of them. Sometimes starting with a smaller group makes the job easier and more straightforward. So whilst a company-wide event might be where you want to end up, starting with just your engineering team (or even just part of it) is a good option.

: At Oakbrook we try to involve as many people as possible in our hack events, but that isn’t the case for ALL of them. Sometimes starting with a smaller group makes the job easier and more straightforward. So whilst a company-wide event might be where you want to end up, starting with just your engineering team (or even just part of it) is a good option. Encourage participation in public events : If you don’t have the resources to run a hack yourself, you could contribute towards and encourage your teams to get involved in more public events.

: If you don’t have the resources to run a hack yourself, you could contribute towards and encourage your teams to get involved in more public events. Partner with another organisation: Another option particularly if you don’t have resources to run a hack event is to partner with another friendly company and create an event together.

There’s a ton of options when taking a step into running your own hack events. The important thing is to find what’s important to you and your team, run an event that talks to that and recognise the benefits from it.