Hackathon: working together to improve lives at Jellyfish

The beginning of October welcomed the Hackathon for our Jellyfish Technology Solutions teams! Three offices based in London, Paris and Bangalore (and a few extra Jellies all over the world remotely) took part in this year’s Hackathon on the theme of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR)

“Build anything which can help Jellyfish and Jellyfish employees have a positive impact.” 

 – with a focus on Environmental Impact and Measurement, Diversity and Inclusion, and Personal Development and Mental Health tools.

The second-ever Jellyfish Hackathon spanned four days (10th – 13th October) in which individuals were randomly allocated to one of seven teams. Their first tasks were to choose a team name and logo as well as a subject for the Hackathon.

Once this was done, the different teams were challenged to find the most innovative idea and deliver their project on time. 

The scoring system mixed points from:

Votes from all participants post-demo day

• Best practice points (Continuous Integration Pipeline, Tests, Production Ready
• Bonus points (best logo, best team name, green clothing items on demo day – some went so far as to have green clothes on 🙂 )

All of these points were collated to crown one team as the winners to be treated to the building of a golden lego cup and a team lunch!

On the above picture: The Flower Rangers, dressed in green for their presentation

The winning team was ‘SixVenture’, having built a Chrome extension called ‘O’, which addresses inclusive writing. This chrome extension highlights keywords in a body of text that are stereotypically not inclusive, suggesting alternatives to the author.

JTS Hackathons are an exciting way to drive engagement and bring teams together to work on something different – with a chance of actually developing a usable product for Jellyfish in the future.

“It was a great experience that took us out of our daily tasks while working with new people. The main strength of this hackathon was to recreate social links within the teams by creating a buzz around a common project. The 4-day format forced us to be focused and to get to the point to produce the best possible product in the time available. A format that is replicated more often when we want to launch new products or features.” David Lataste Senior Manager, Product Management, team Inglorious Jellies.

Although the main objective for a hackathon is team-building and continued learning, it’s exciting when the projects have a business outcome and can be developed. In 2021, the winning team built the new Jellyfish IQ engine, which is now used hundreds of times per month by Jellyfish employees and clients worldwide.

This year, at least three of the seven projects will be deployed globally.

The Hackathon team hopes to run the event once to twice a year and strives to involve as many Jellyfish employees as possible from all different levels to create this community-run, collaborative event.

Between stress, laughter, and coding, this second hackathon was a real moment of sharing and positivity.

Chief Solutions Officer for Jellyfish Technology Solutions Benjamin Pipat would like to thank Philip Garnero, Angele Neuve-Eglise and Michael Takla for helping to organize this event!