Hack Days

Occasional hackathons and fundays were already present at Infobip Engineering, but honestly - we didn't have the stable pace nor a company-level approach to it.

Hack Innovation Days were born as an initiative to use the huge potential of our engineers for innovation on the products they work on, as the best ideas are usually brought by people who work on the products day-to-day .The ones that track and are excited about the bleeding edge technologies.

As COVID-19 and the global pandemic set in and affected our lives, we organised the first iteration of Hack Innovation Days remotely. Engineers who wanted to participate formed teams, decided what they will work on, and had a full day of hacking. They were supported by colleagues in Product and Product Marketing and had all the hardware and software resources they needed.

At the end of the Hack Day each team presented their project and our Jury, consisting of C-level and senior leadership from Product, Marketing, and Engineering, rated the solutions in multiple categories.

We even added a twist - pushing (but not forcing) teams to be randomly distributed, so people met colleagues they don't work closely day-to-day. Diversity is the key to innovation, right?

Were solutions any good for one day? No... They were great! It's surprising how much you can do in one day. The top winning ideas were pitched to product teams and ended up on our backlog. We actually have a new product that was conceptualised at the previous Hack Days. If you want more details about it, you will have to join the team since the product is still in its early stages of development.

Is this the final format of Hack Days? Of course not. But we'll keep the pace. We'll pivot, we'll experiment until we make it perfect (never).The last iteration was done in hybrid mode and had some confetti, teams had much more time for preparation and teams had a direct line to the Jury while the solution was in development. We're currently preparing the 3rd iteration of Hack Days and would love to have you attend as a team member.