Hacking (y)our way to fame and fortune
During the first week of April we organized our 6th annual 4mation ServiceNow hackathon. This 2-day event was attended by 110 participants from four countries and 20 different nationalities. They hacked their way to fame and fortune (metaphorically speaking) with a simple goal in mind: to have as much fun as possible while building a working product based on the Now platform.
The 4mation hackathon has had a fixed place on our agenda’s since the very beginning. A 2-day sandbox event like this without predefined requirements except having fun allows each and everyone of us to shine and excel.
As was the case in previous years, all teams came up with interesting ideas. We unfortunately do not have enough space here to describe all 18 of them, so we’ve made a selection which undoubtedly does no justice to the teams and products that remain unmentioned for now (sorry!).
Excitement and insatiable hunger
One team developed an app that triggers ‘excitement and insatiable hunger for continuous learning’ to help professionals to further develop their knowledge and skills (and their career) in a fun and engaging way. Another team thought of an effortless way ‘to store the details of all your games and sports activities, and compare where you rank amongst colleagues’, because ‘few things are more satisfying than running faster than a co-worker or beating a colleague in a game of pool, foosball or Super Smash Bros.’ Both apps help employees to enjoy the time they spend at work, which is all we can hope for.
Next to these efforts to improve personal skills or foster camaraderie amongst colleagues, some teams seized the opportunity to experiment with new product propositions. One aimed at ‘solving the employee expense nightmare’ by providing a prepaid card solution in ServiceNow. It promises to lift the financial burden on employees that pay for expenses in advance (for travel, or dinner with clients for example). In addition, it makes the lives of managers and employees that have to clear these expenses and make sure they are reimbursed a lot easier.
Solving continental problems in just 2 days
Another remarkable idea was the ‘Agency in a box’, which is specifically aimed at European Union institutions. These institutions, the team explained, are scattered all over Europe and have over 85.000 employees that use over 900 applications. As one can imagine, it can be a pain to organize the events of all these employees (think of all the Brexit talks lately for example) using these applications, or to create a consistent way of working to apply changes in all EU facilities (I.e., replacing a router). The team proposed to reduce the 900+ applications to 9 ServiceNow modules and two scoped applications in one system of records managing activities across all European Institutions.
Hack-a-ton with us
We look back at a very fun, exciting event with tons of hacking, creativity and enthusiastic collaboration. We already look forward to the 2020 edition, with hopefully even more participants.
Do you want to know more about our hackathons or maybe even if there would be room for you in the 4mation family? Feel free to contact us or take a look at our job openings.
Take a look at the hackathon videos to get a full impression of this year’s hackathon:
Video of the start of the hackathon 2019.
Video recap of day 1, Hackathon 2019.
Video recap of day 2, Hackathon 2019.
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Elmer de Valk