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Employee engagement2020
Ready, Fire, Hack: communicating an internal hackathon
Communications for 14 West's internal hackathon, from the build-up to the 'No Dev is an Island' takeaways piece, plus a 'Word on the Street' series that made agile approachable.
- participants across 18 teams
- 120+
- projects carried forward into the product roadmap
- 5
The challenge
Hackathons only build culture if people show up and the ideas outlive the weekend. Ready, Fire, Hack needed to pull in developers and the teams around them, not just the usual volunteers, and then turn two days of building into something the whole company could learn from.
My approach
- Build-up. A three-week runway of invitations, a “find your team” thread and a one-page guide to rules and schedule. The message to non-developers was simple: you belong on a team, too.
- During. Short live updates and shout-outs that kept the energy up and gave leadership a reason to drop by the demos.
- After: “No Dev is an Island | Takeaways from Ready, Fire, Hack.” A recap that turned the event into lessons for the whole organization: the best ideas came from mixed teams, small scope beats big ambition in 48 hours, and demos land when they start with the problem.
- “Word on the Street: Agile.” A plain-language series explaining agile practices for non-developers, built on questions people were already asking in the hallways.
Results
More than 120 people joined 18 teams, and five projects moved into the product roadmap. Leadership asked for Ready, Fire, Hack to become an annual event, and “No Dev is an Island” became one of the most-read pieces in the internal newsletter that year.