As every year in spring, last week we had our third hackathon at ePages. This year it has been all about trying out new stuff for our very latest backend architecture ePages BEYOND, adding value to ePages Now as well as automating internal processes.
Getting prepared
Just as last year, our Scrum Masters did an outstanding job organizing our two-day hackathon and ensuring a smooth flow of the whole event. They organized travel tickets and hotels rooms for the colleagues from Barcelona, New York, and Jena, checked with our CTO upon final topics and the time schedule, prepared meeting rooms for the teams, and most importantly ordered delicious snacks, drinks, and food 😉.
And then off we go
The first day started off with a surprisingly blue sky and a vitalizing breakfast to get us fuelled and ready to hack away. The atmosphere was very relaxed and we had a lot of time to chat with colleagues we had not seen for some time.
Ready to hack away! Starting off with a breakfast! #ephack17 pic.twitter.com/Gf552CgNc9
— ePages Developers (@epagesdevs) March 22, 2017
After the breakfast, each of us started to hack away in one of the 14 teams - all with different exciting topics. The whole day was determined by concentration, creativity, and, of course, lots of fun and laughter. Some teams got so hooked up and passionate about their project that they even worked until the wee hours, and then again continued early the next morning.
#HACKATHON @epagesdevs at 3.30 AM: Everyone left for beer.. BUT #smartshop hackers are #unstoppable #ephack17 @oozpy pic.twitter.com/xui2qukGNE
— Benjamin Nothdurft (@dataduke) March 23, 2017
No wonder, then, that the results the next day in the evening were brilliant:
Final presentations
During the two days of the hackathon, the teams mainly focused on pushing forward our new architecture BEYOND, enhancing ePages Now as well as improving internal processes. The audience was quite impressed by the creative outcomes of every single team.
To try out some new ideas for BEYOND, some teams dedicated the two days to simplify API interaction by using the query language GraphQl. Another team coded with Amazon’s voice service device Alexa to enable merchants to interact with their shop administration. Yet another team created a dashboard app to visualize KPIs for the merchant.
In order to enhance our latest shop software ePages Now, one of the teams developed an Amazon mass uploader to upload a bulk of products at once instead of merely one by one.
And there were teams, that dedicated their time to improve internal processes. Amongst others, one team made the source of our API documentation and Developer blog, epages-docs, fast again, another automatized the Linux setup for new colleagues starting at ePages.
In the end everyone could vote for their favorite project. The first three winners were the lucky ones and received Amazon vouchers.
The winner team’s project was a new, stylish theme. New features that came with this team were, amongst others, modern styling techniques, special fonts, a full screen slide bar, a featured products section, hovering effects, and much more.
#ephack17 WINNER TEAM of #epages #hackathon : Building a #theme for #epagesnow and #beyond
— ePages Developers (@epagesdevs) March 23, 2017
Congrats! Well done! pic.twitter.com/nHWxyWkOoV
But of course, in the end every single team contributed to the complete success of the ePages hackathon 2017 and this needed to be celebrated extensively 😉. So it ended with a nice party with Italian food and drinks, all presented by our Italian colleagues. Thanks for all the positive energy, great projects, insightful chats, and simply being such great ePagees!
If you’d like get more insights on our hackathon, check #ephack17 on Twitter.
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