Curiosity, with a side of global collab at the annual Nintex Hackathon

Cooking up recipes fit for innovation, the 2022 Nintex Hackathon was a hacking extravaganza fueled by teamwork, curiosity, as well as intense encouragement and freedom to learn and try something new.

Whether participants in the annual hackathon tackled problems thought too difficult to solve, applied emerging technology to optimize a process, created novel features for our products, or worked on interdisciplinary teams to cultivate an even better customer experience, they hacked their way to some awe-inspiring, pioneering solutions.

“My team spanned five time zones, but I was so impressed with how quickly we felt like a strong team working in sync with each other, from ideation to the final pitch. The teamwork was the most rewarding aspect of the whole experience.”

– Julia Cervantes (U.S), Technical Content Manager

51 ideas, 250+ hackers, and a saucepan

More than 250 people across each of our global locations came together for a 26-team-strong hackathon. Employees across Nintex contributed to an ideas marketplace to create, collaborate, and vote on ideas. From there, teams formed around the top ideas.

Then, across different time zones and products, Nintex devoted two days for participants to come together to hack. Product manager, Mike Talley (U.S.), didn’t just appreciate the break from routine – he said the hackathon created dedicated time and “positive pressure” to “think about how to extend our products and solve problems across the portfolio.”

While primary judging criteria incorporated measures of impact, curiousness, presentation, as well as global and product interconnectivity, there were a few interesting awards as well…

• Best team name: Because creativity doesn’t start and stop with hacking. With team names like DocMan, Ninterns and Guardians of the Galaxy, it’s a wonder we could pick a winner. It was the FreeLoaders [freeLoaders.js] that came out on top!
• Tool: Our virtual-first, globally-dispersed workforce doesn’t just happen – it requires awesome tools. This award is for the best use of one of Mural Board’s virtual whiteboarding and collaboration resources and the Ninsters, a South Africa-UK team, came out on top.
• Easter egg: The team that most subtly and humorously integrated a saucepan into their final pitch would win this award. Yes… a saucepan. And who else could have taken it home but The Source Pan (U.S.-South Africa), touting Process Manager as “your process cookbook”.
• Best pitch: Awarded to an outstanding Australia-Malaysia-New Zealand-Singapore combo of hackers, including the owner of Karl, the budgie (pictured here in his second hackathon appearance), Checkmate took the honors for the most compelling pitch.

The winners of the challenge were contested – resulting in a tie between The Source Pan and Peripheral (U.S.-Australia-South Africa). Peripheral, spanning four time zones, sought out to create a 3D process companion in virtual reality, but landing on a Nintex Process Manager augmented reality trainer. The Source Pan “got cooking” with process success, seeking to bring together disparate processes and systems with direct integration in a system-agnostic process success tool by way of a Chrome extension.

One Nintex

“With a busy schedule and remote working, the hackathon has served as an innovative and effective way to build global company culture and cross-team relationships. This event creates the opportunity for out-of-the-box” thinking and collaboration with teammates around creative ideas.”

– William Van der Walt, Senior Lead, Engineering (South Africa)

Effective teamwork across time zones, countries and cultures is core to our success, and core to who we are as an employer. Principal engineer, Fanie Mostert (Australia) said of the experience, “Exploring the problem space with a diverse team ranging from customer success to quality assurance allowed us to gain a better understanding of our customers and how we can solve the challenges they face.”

We bring together teams around the world every day to form new relationships, deepen existing ones, play with new tech, try new tools and techniques, and have a few laughs. The hackathon extended this into an innovative challenge, primed to amp up product performance, professional creativity, and fun.

Interested in hacking your way into an engineering career at Nintex? Start here.