Athletes spend years training to sharpen their skills. Years of dedication, sweat and tears, hoping to get a spot on the podium.

Well, our developers are not that different. You can be sure that when it comes to IT, they are ready to enter the arena. Our own annual hackathon event gives room to our developers to show what they are made of; 33 teams, 199 participants from 3 different countries – ready for an intense sleepless 24hrs of IT athleticism.

Every year, a different challenge needs to be met, and it’s all about apps, software, innovations and challenges. This year, following the immense success of our last Open Source themed hackathon Hack9, we gave our Levi niners something they can’t get enough of: fundamental IT. Our teams composed of Levi niners and teams from our customers came together to triumph over our new challenge: Designing the same highly performant app.

Everyone got briefed just a moment before the kick-off. The difference this year? Everything took place in the cloud – a technology progressively taking a bigger place in our daily work. Teams chose their own cloud platform and were encouraged to utilize all the managed services that the cloud of their choice offers, to cut down cost and the effort of implementation.

There was no jury this year. Every app was auto tested and its performance was displayed live on a big screen. The teams were evaluated on the functionality of their app, its performance, its cost efficiency and the team member’s ability to work with colleagues that they haven’t worked with so far. We sure love to get someone out of his or her comfort zone to explore new skills. On a practical standpoint, the skills we learned will definitely help every Levi niner thrive on an everyday basis. Yes, we like to learn a thing or two.

Events like this one, aside from celebrating our company culture and helping us to bring innovative ideas to life, allow our Levi niners to sharpen skills that we use regularly in our daily jobs and to enable our customers in their challenges.

It’s not about the prize, it’s about the pride. After an intense 24h event, it was time for some sleep. But you can be sure that we are already looking forward to the next Hack9 edition! Levi9 organizes several interesting events throughout the year, aimed to share insights and inspire. Check out our events page to find out about our upcoming events and to sign up https://www.levi9.com/events/.