We’ve always had recurring hackathons at Visiba. To build the team, to get new ideas and to solve quite komplex problems at a pace. But must of all, to have fun! From last year we evolved the hackathons and moved them out of the office to what we call House of Hack.

House of Hack takes place in a huge house “in the middle of nowhere” on the shores of Vänern. If you’re not able to stay over, we had people that came by over just one day or you can be a part of the Hackathon remotely as well. “Participating remotely worked really well. We felt included and that even if we weren’t in the house together with the others, the dedicated time for the hackathon was dedicated for us too - that was an important thing to feel”.

At House of Hack the focus is to:

• Learn new things as individuals and teams
• Test new things to solve customer problems
• Have fun and be together and hang out within the Product Development department

How do we get to learn and/or test new things? 
As individuals or as self organised teams we focus on one project during these days. Also with the aim to demo a proof of concept at the end, so we can learn from each other too.

What do we do for fun?
House of hack is fun in itself. Except from that we are outside the hackathon hours organising a couple of non mandatory activities just for fun. Some examples was this year a Mario Kart tournament, Robo Rally tournament and a rare and exotic soft drink tasting.

What some of the participants have mentioned about the House of Hack is:

• “What makes it extra special is that you get to work/collaborate with so many different people you wouldn't otherwise work with. It’s also very useful to get time to think outside the box and discover all the possibilities that you can then take advantage of in your daily work”
  
• “I got a reminder of how far we could get when we worked focused a few colleagues together! A good way of working to probe unexplored ground and get a jump start”.
• “HoH gives an excellent opportunity for us to hang out with our colleagues and to work together, or by ourselves, in different projects. These projects could be learning something new you have been curious about, build a PoC for a product idea, or even to build a smart solution that could come in handy at home. Apart from the project you are working on, it is amazing to meet all the colleagues that usually work from another office, just to play some games and enjoy some food together.”
• “I think the best part about HoH is the chance to, together with my colleagues, solve a challenging problem in such a short time. When you really have to think outside the box, you learn more about each other and as a reward you may solve a problem you have been thinking about for a while..”

So the summary of this is that we will surely continue the tradition of our yearly house of hack and of course modify some things as desired. Our employees develop, the teams develop and we develop!

If you would like to read even more about our yearly Hackathon, now called House of Hack, click on the link and you’ll have more details regarding the days and the outcomes.