Another great hackathon is coming up! As with previous hackathons, many Spryker developers are excited to participate and showcase their skills. However, getting your team on board for the next hackathon can be a challenge.

That’s why we created this guide. With its help, you can create your own game plan to make sure your Spryker team gets the most out of the next hackathon.

Introducing the opportunity 💬

Why let your team go to a hackathon in the first place? After all: this will take time away from other projects and incur travel cost. Here are some reasons why you should consider sending your team to a hackathon:

• Face-to-face learning experience - Teaming up with other developers from the Spryker ecosystem and facing a challenge is an experience that can’t be replicated in a virtual meeting. You can use this as part of the yearly education budget;
• Spryker experts at your fingertips - attending a hackathon is a great opportunity to interact directly with key technology stakeholders;
• Engage with your peers - there are few event formats that give you access to your peers when it comes to the technology you use. Networking with them is a great source of inspiration;
• The chance to make a difference - hackathons feeds Spryker’s innovation pipeline with ideas that matter to your company, meaning your ideas can become part of the Spryker technology;
• Joining hackathons can help expose you to the Spryker Community, build your reputation as an employer and active participant, promoting future collaborations;
• The icing on the cake: the best ideas have the chance to be promoted and showcased at Spryker Excite.

This is all about how you introduce the hackathon opportunity to your team. Pitch it in an engaging way. Instead of “I would like you to attend this event”, say something like “Spryker is organizing a special event that we can participate in, I think this could be a great opportunity for us”.

Remove doubts & fears ❌😱

Participating in an event can create a sense of risk, as your valuable time will be allocated to the hackathon, which could negatively impact open to-do’s. Here’s how you can combat these doubts and fears and ensure that everyone can sleep while the developers enjoy a slice of pizza while coding with other developers.

• Check if there are any clashing dates around the time of the hackathon. If so, find ways to make sure they don’t interfere with each other.
• Ask your colleagues & team if there’s a chance that some of your tasks could be done by someone else.
• See if some of the activities could be done in advance to create the opportunity to participate in the hackathon without compromising.
• Illustrate how spending a few days at the hackathon will have a long-term impact that’s worth pursuing.

Landing the eagle 🦅

To get to a good result, it’s important to discuss as a team how you can maximize the outcome of a hackathon. Here are some suggestions:

• Prepare the topics from your innovation pipeline that you want to work on during the hackathon;
• Connect the potential outcome of the hackathon to your company goals and share this with your team;
• Provide a summary of the event during your stand-up meetings to share insights with the team;
• Do some personal branding on LinkedIn (or wherever your team is active): share your event preparation or recap, for example, while wearing the company T-shirt.

And there you have it: a guide to help you persuade your team to let you attend the next hackathon 😁

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Ready-made template

Below is a copy-paste template suggestion that you can use to send to your Spryker developers. Of course the more you can personalize it and relate it to your company goals and challenges, the better!

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Dear [Developer’s Name],

I hope this message finds you well. I am writing to discuss an exciting opportunity that has come up, which I believe aligns well with our goals and presents an invaluable learning experience for you and our team.

Spryker is organizing a hackathon, an event that promises to be both enriching and impactful for our team and our company. This hackathon provides a unique chance for us to engage directly with Spryker experts, collaborate with peers in the industry, and work on our innovation pipeline.

Here are some key points to consider:

• Face-to-face Learning Experience: Hackathons offer a hands-on learning experience that cannot be replicated in virtual settings. By teaming up with others and facing real challenges, we can enhance our skills and bring back valuable insights to our work.
• Access to Spryker Experts: Attending the hackathon allows us direct access to key technology stakeholders at Spryker. This presents an invaluable opportunity to deepen our understanding of Spryker’s technology and roadmap.
• Networking Opportunities: Engaging with peers who share our interest in Spryker technology is a rare and valuable opportunity. Networking at the hackathon can spark new ideas, collaborations, and inspiration for our own future projects.
• Innovation and Recognition: Participating in the hackathon allows us to contribute our own ideas to Spryker’s innovation pipeline. We can bring in ideas and solutions that could improve Spryker specifically in ways that benefits our own Spryker project.

To be able to attend the event, I have secured the following for you:

• Travel/loding for the following days: [dat-range] for a total of [cost];
• Ticket fee for the event itself: [Price, most Spryker hackathon events are free!];
• Time logging for the event can be done on [ticket ID].

If you submit these through our travel and time tracking tools, these will be approved by me shortly.

Of course we need to make sure that our usual business is not impacted by your absence. I would like you to take care of the following:

• Ensure there is no conflicting work with other commitments;
• Explore options to delegate tasks or complete them in advance.

Furthermore, we need to be committed to maximizing the benefits of attending the hackathon by:

• Preparing the topics from our innovation pipeline that we want to work on during the hackathon;
• Providing a summary of the event during our stand-up meetings to share insights with the team;
• Engaging in employer branding activities by sharing your experience on LinkedIn and representing our company at the event.

I firmly believe that attending this hackathon will not only benefit you personally but also contribute to our team’s growth and success. Let me know what you think and let’s address any questions or concerns you may have.

Warm regards, [Your Name]