Multidots Hackathon 2016 – All About Passion For Technology!

Inspired from the concept of Hackathon, Multidots, recently organized a nocturnal event bringing together its employees to build something innovative together. In its very first official hackathon, the idea was to let employees work in different teams and work on something different than the routine work

Here’s how the day started:

Everyone gathered around in their cool, blue Multidots T-shirts at 9:00 AM. After a brief prayer (which is a daily ritual here at the Multidots Office, the day does not start without offering your prayers), the Hackathon was officially kick-started

The enthusiasm for the #MDHackathon16 was amazing as most of the employees turned up for the event. There were 9 teams each given a specific task to be completed in 24 hours and make a presentation. The winner was judged on the basis of the project and presentation. And, yes, did we mention there were silver medals waiting for the winning team.

" The only rule to be followed was: You have to do

something other than your routine work and stay away from your phone."

For Multidots’ leadership, Anil Gupta and Aslam Multani, organizing a hackathon is an amazing way to let people from different teams collaborate and make great ideas happen. It is about bringing teams together who share the same passion – PASSION FOR TECHNOLOGY.

Also, hackathons are important in the sense they allow different people to work together who might never have worked together. Plus, it adds great value to one’s learning skills, fosters team building, innovation, creativity and management skills too.

The Hackathon Teams….

These teams were given projects ranging from building WooCommerce Plugins to Mobile App for Parking, Dynamic API Testing Tool to engineering Google Rich Snippets. Other tasks also involved building one pagers, image annotation tool to A/B Testing.

Working all night with an endless supply of coffee, tea & sandwiches, and most importantly a chance to build a product overnight that might be used by millions across the globe is a phenomenal feeling.

"I really looked forward to the Hackathon and was
eager to work with other members because we usually
end up working with the same team. The hackathon
has expanded our horizons and I, personally, have
been able to learn a couple of skills during this all-night
event." Chirag Patel, Team Leader WooCommerce "

"We had been planning a Hackathon for quite some time now.
The whole idea was to bring these guys together and achieve
something bigger. 9 amazing products have been built overnight
and I am happy because these guys have enjoyed and learnt a lot."
Aslam Multani, CTO Multidots

Teams making presentations….

And, the winners are……
(It was quite difficult to pick a winner, everyone who participated was a winner in true sense.)

On the whole, the hackathon was super-awesome and we look forward to having another one next year. And, for those of you who want to organize successful, productive hackathons, here are some tips as bonus:

• Plan ahead of time and think about what outcome you want out of the event.
• Ensure cross functional teams come together.
• Organize some fun events to keep the environment interesting and less stressful.
• Make sure your teams have access to unlimited tea, coffee and gourmet food.
• Try and foster learning of technical, business and management skills.
• Let your teams explore innovation and creativity. Give them full freedom.
• To create engagement, plan teasers before the event.
• Make sure your infrastructure is proper to handle the work load.
• Your employees should actually feel motivated and passionate about the event.
• The event is for your employees. Their happiness matters the most so have projects they would love working on.
  Feel free to leave your thoughts in the comments below. Till then,

Happy hacking!