What happens when you bring together 120 developers with differing skills and interests for one common purpose?
In December 2014, Visa held a hackathon dedicated to tackling one of six themes: Mobile, Big Data and business intelligence, Innovations in Payments for Financial Inclusion, Payments Security, UI/UX and “other.”
“It’s really neat to see people coming together who have never met each other before and never worked on anything together, and just different skill sets sitting down at a table together and produce something,” said Chief Enterprise Architect Wayne Boland.
You could almost see the energy crackling through the room.
It’s been quite electric,” Gemma Thompson, Associate QA, Belfast, said in a video. “Everybody’s trying to come together, get different ideas together—everybody’s just kind of all, ‘Go, go, go!’ at the minute.”
Teams were given early access to the alpha release of the new Visa Developer Portal ahead of the hackathon. In just nine hours, the groups were asked to come up with an innovation or new software idea in their category.
“The huge win is, this really builds a culture of innovation within the company,” said Brian McManus, Director of API and Developer experience.
The top ideas won participants not only bragging rights, but also earned presentation at the executive level with the intention of rolling them out to Visa customers and clients.
Watch the video to hear more from participants about the hackathon.
