In July 2014, Meltwater decided to hold its first ever Innovation Day, called meltwhatever day!
The goal of the Innovation Day was to take some time and let our engineers focus their energy on something of their own choosing – something that they were passionate and excited about, that was important or meaningful, and where they felt they could make an impact for themselves, their team, Meltwater, or in some cases, just take a little time to experiment with something new.
More than 60 engineers from Manchester, San Francisco, Berlin, Budapest, Gothenburg, Stockholm, and Bangalore participated in Meltwater’s first Innovation Day. Each office had their own Innovation Day Ambassador, who decorated the office with posters, handed out Innovation Day stickers, supplied food and drinks, and answered questions throughout the event.
The event went late into the night for most offices and project submissions were trickling in throughout the weekend. In the end we counted 30 Innovation Day projects. Imagine that: 60 people creating 30 new ideas within a bit more than 24 hours. Simply amazing!
We are still overwhelmed with the abundance of great projects that were submitted, and our Product Management team is reviewing in which form we can get some of these ideas into Production.
One thing is for certain though: Our engineers rock, and we will certainly hold similar events again in the future!
What is your experience with company-internal hackathons or similar concepts? Share your thoughts with us in the comments below.
