What happens when you put people with a diversity of skillsets (programming, design, data, marketing) under one roof to work towards an objective, turn up the pressure by adding constraints such as time (48hrs) and team size (3-7) and add heat (you’ll be assessed in front of your peers by a select panel of judges)?
You get an awe-inspiring display of talent and creativity such as the one seen at The Infinite Kind’s second finance-themed hackathon held in Edinburgh just over a week ago (1st-3rd April).
Our event was held at the stunning Deloitte office thanks to Kent Mackenzie. He was a sponsor at our inaugural finance hackathon in November 2015, and was impressed enough to be the first to offer his - and his wonderful team’s - support by offering to host us for this one.
The design of the space was spot-on with a beautiful communal area for socialising, relaxing and filling up on refreshments….
…as well as…
…lovely surrounding rooms for privacy and focussed work, and a large working area for teams that wanted the buzz of working alongside other teams.
The event officially started on the Friday evening at 6.15pm but people came bounding into the venue much earlier, quickly filling the air with an excited buzz as they exchanged ideas over beer and pizza.
Chatter, chatter…buzz buzz :) Happy hackers
The themes for the hackathon were financial products designed for (1) millennials, and (2) the ‘under-banked’ (i.e those excluded from accessing basic financial services).
…
By midnight, teams had planned what they were going to work on over the weekend and left the venue for some rest (hopefully) to prepare them for the intense weekend ahead.
On Saturday morning, the first team arrived at 7.45am! Once again, teams worked until midnight, fine-tuning their ideas, creating designs, writing code, coming across obstacles and chucking out work that had already been in done in order to try another approach etc.
…
