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When your employees are willing to work after hours to put in some extra elbow grease, you know you’ve got a good thing going. But when they go all in for a 24-hour hackathon, what you’ve got going is something else entirely.
That’s the case for Solstice Mobile, a digital tech leader that creates next generation technology for anything from mobile apps and wearables to connected IoT systems.
Twice a year, Solstice hosts a company-wide hackathon called “Express Day,” aptly named for both its breakneck pace and for the opportunity it gives everyone at the firm—from engineers and designers to recruiters and office managers—to express themselves as they sprint toward technological innovation.
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Start your engines
This week's Express Day marks the fourth hackathon that Solstice has organized for its employees. Over the course of 24 hours, the firm puts almost all of its day-to-day global client and administrative work on hold so the entire team can focus on developing a cutting-edge finished product from scratch.
Solstice’s 200 or so employees crowdsource ideas across the company before they begin, with no limits to what teams can work on. As long as they’re working on something that solves a problem using technology, employees are encouraged to be creative and explore projects using whatever coding language they want, in any industry they find fit.
Product categories include FinTech, next generation commerce enablement, and virtual and augmented reality, among others.
Last year’s winner—a “Baby Saver” app—leveraged bluetooth, low energy technology and sensors to send push notifications to a parent’s phone if they left their child in a carseat, a potentially life-saving idea.
Express Day started Thursday at 3:00 pm and commences Friday at 5:00 pm with a Shark Tank-style judging panel.
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A thriving office culture
The structure behind the event ensures that Solstice’s employees keep their creative gears greased and their technical skills sharpened. But that’s not the company’s sole motivation behind the event. According to Solstice, Express Day has become a crucial part of their cultural identity.
“The reason that we have this Hackathon every year is because we want to give our employees the opportunity to showcase all of their talents,” said Sarah Berger, marketing strategist at Solstice. “It’s an opportunity for all of our employees to step out of our comfort zones and work with people across the firm who we normally don’t get to work with, and really be creative and open-ended.”
Usually, employees group themselves into about 12 teams, with anywhere from eight to thirty members per project. Teams self-normalize, which allows for a cross-departmental and diverse pool of perspectives.
According to Solstice, employees take things pretty seriously.
“People are welcomed and encouraged to stay overnight if they want, but by no means do they have to,” said executive assistant Val Sokola, one of the event's main organizers.
At the end of the day, the hackathon is good for office morale.
“Express Day is something that’s really important for our culture. It’s something that both our employees as well as our clients get really excited about,” said Berger.
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Keeping clients happy
When you have happy employees, you usually have happy clients. That’s definitely been the case for Solstice, who says that their clients are excited about and supportive of the event—even though it means their work is put on hold.
“They know that we shut down, but they know that at the end of the day it really is better for the work we provide them, so they’re all on board,” Berger said.
And if the ideas are innovative enough, they don’t always die at the end of the hackathon. Sometimes, Solstice gets to take the ideas they generate and implement them into their everyday work.
“This is our opportunity to really be creative and innovative, and then we get to apply it back towards client work,” Berger said. “We get to continue to work on a lot of what we get out of Express Day, whether it’s an internal project or something we can apply for our clients.”
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