Return of the hack: collaboration and innovation thrive at Dotdigital 

Here at Dotdigital, every year we take some time to step away from regular work and give employees the ability to work on a project that interests them. Hack week is a way to create an intentional space for creativity, innovation and collaboration.

What is hack week?

Employees work in teams to work on innovative solutions for previously identified problems. These solutions could involve an emerging technology, a novel way to apply existing technology, or just simply making things better. It’s been exciting to see previous years’ hacks that have made their way into the Dotdigital product and the quality of the ideas this year were no exception.

Thirteen teams had three days to bring ideas to life and create a video showcasing what they had created. A panel of judges then identified winners in four categories, plus a fifth ‘bragging rights’ award for the best team name, voted on after the presentations.

This year, hack week was lead by Simon Letch, our Software Development Manager and the judges included a member of HR, a member of Customer Success, along with members of the Product and Technology team. The entries were strong, making the decisions very hard. Let’s get to the winners.

Most Innovative

The unacceptables – Next Generation Dotdigital took the award for most innovative. Their goal was to enable simple and consistent integration of our scripts in the latest and greatest of front end Javascript frameworks.

Most Wanted

The team Moebius theory and their project: RPP (Rapid program pollination) was given the Most Wanted Award! They worked on creating a feature for the program builder that adds an “execute immediately” option for programs which will execute enrollments based on the current enrollment rules.

Chief Product & Technology Officer Award (awarded by our very own Steve Shaw)

The Explosive Architects – C4 was the winner of our CPTO award! Using Structurizr, this team is championing creating living C4 models of our architecture and proposed goal state architecture to ensure any changes we plan are moving towards that goal state.

Best Hack

Team Plan for Success introduced Omnibox which is a calendar view of scheduled Email and SMS campaign activity.

Bonus Award: Best Team Name

And last, but not least, the Sheriffs of Noteingham took the bonus award and bragging rights for Best Team Name!

Join us and hack too

If experimenting with new technology and solving customer engagement problems in new and innovative ways seems like something you’d excel at, have a look at our open positions over at careers.dotdigital.com. We are always on the lookout for outstanding additions to our team!