Department manager, STP
The first Hack Day took place in Schibsted Tech Polska in November 2012. Employees wanted to create something new and cool that was not necessarily connected to what we do on a daily basis. Since then Hack Days have become a traditions.
Hack Day Rule 1: Pizza
The rules are simple: There must be pizza. Apart from that there are no strict regulations about what can be developed, which technology can be used or what is the team structure and size. The best we can do during that day is to mix each other – letting out our ideas to contribute not only to the Partners we work for – but to others as well.
Hack Day Rule 2: Be social
Social aspects of the events also plays the key role – it is possible to work with colleagues from other teams – teaching them or learning from them – creating the environment we want to work within. The winner team is announced based on the demos and presentations given at the end of the day.
Presentations at Hack Day are often very entertaining. Photo: John Einar Sandvand
Can lead to real projects
Between many original development ideas like continuous deployment suitcases from VG , funny and creative HTML5 games and a Maslow’s needs optimizer, there are projects and ideas which later contribute to our production ecosystem.
One of them is VG´s current product Notifave which is supposed to increase news consumption using notifications. Also, the Fastenposten project developed during a Hack Day emerged into production software giving Aftenposten readers better performance and improving the way news are edited.
Testing ground
Hack Days are good chances to test out the new solutions which are about to be put into production ecosystems like beta versions of API, new frameworks, coding and testing approaches, new point of views – and building valuable prototypes or even minimum viable products on top of them.
Next Hack Day on November 27
The next event will take place on 27th of November in Kraków. It is open for all employees and representatives from partners who would like to come to Krakow.
Please RSVP mateusz.jaracz@schibsted.pl if you want to attend!
Schibsted Tech Polska´s CEO, Stig A. Waagbø, listens to one of the presentations