One of our longest-running traditions at Mito is the Hackathon. The idea was cooked up by a mad scientist of ours in 2012 after taking part in one. We’ve haven't been the same since then.
24 hours of challenge, pain, glory, exhaustion, mission, survival, hopelessness, joy, synergies, moonshots – it really depends on whom you ask.
But our official version is: work in teams and deliver a complete product in 24 hours.
(Both contenders and audience after 24 hours, watching the demo presentations)
A Hackathon always has a scope and a purpose which varies from year to year. In our case, it has previously revolved around efficiency, fun, games, smart hardware, charity, anything you can put in a physical frame, and once it was even love, that is all around. With the brief always slightly shifting every year, different competencies and roles have an advantage or rather a significant increase in demand. But that never changes:
And what does all this look like? Well something like this:
Of course, these various briefs and topics have spawned many-many clever, silly, outrageous, brave, and really inspiring solutions.
Just to name a few:
And it’s not just the volume but also the diversity: from software development through digital art to using fabrics we had it all. We even have a handful of platforms and applications that help run Mito which was created during Hackathons.
And hopefully, we will keep on creating lots of useful, sometimes weird but definitely exciting stuff.
One of the most eloquent examples of these is the game called No Hope for Us. It’s a co-op survival multiplayer game that was created for a Mito Hackathon back in 2013. After its success in the competition it was bumped for release and you can still play it to this day.
“As an Agile Coach with a background in education, I find that people generally learn Agile concepts most quickly by being able to practice and play in a low-stakes environment. There are tons of Agile games that allow folks to do this in person, but in this COVID pandemic, I’ve noticed a distinct shortcoming of games that can be facilitated remotely. That said, I stopped looking for specifically Agile games, and began looking for games that fit particular criteria, namely:
I normally use this game after I’ve run the team a deck I have on what it means to be a self-organizing team, what the roles in scrum are, and what the importance of running retrospectives is. I first frame the hackathon that created this game in Agile terms: self-organization, working MVP, proactive communication, and a growth mindset when troubleshooting problems…the rest is pretty self-explanatory. :)”
So that’s how we involuntarily helped coach…with zombies. And it all started out with a day filled with boxes of pizza, infinite amounts of energy drinks, and a couple of toys we tinkered around with.
The Mito Hackathon celebrates its 10th anniversary in 2022 and we can’t wait to find out what clever and silly things it will bring to life.
