Clearpool hosted its first development team hackathon this month, bringing together our team of technologists for a day dedicated to coding, creativity and complex problem solving. A few days prior to the hackathon, members of our software development and quantitative analysis teams were paired up and the eight teams began brainstorming ideas. The requirements for each team’s “hack” were that it benefit the company in some way and that they take only one day to come up with their proposed solution.
Creativity ensued and concepts for each team began to take shape based on the individual skill sets and interests of each team member. The teams’ ideas ranged from using voting theory in polling questions, to applying machine learning to improve client communication, to examining the flow of data between systems in a graphical manner to learn from our existing structure.
At the end of the day, the entire Clearpool office gathered for a happy hour event to watch each group present the problem they were solving for and their proposed solution. Employees then voted on the solution they deemed both most creative and best executed. The winning team walked away with bragging rights for their proposed solution that could enhance communication in our client portal.
Marshall Hayden, U.S. head of development, who organized and participated in the event, closed the day commenting, “Big thanks to everyone for participating. We saw some awesome concepts and I was extremely impressed with every single team.” The hackathon proved to be a valuable event for all of our Clearpooligans—fostering our culture of community and teamwork and demonstrating how we’re able to push the limits of our creativity and our technology to solve problems and create innovative solutions for our clients.