Last week I had the pleasure of organising and managing the first ever company wide internal hack at JustGiving. Under the catchy moniker of JustHacking (lazy I know!), I asked the business to join me in helping to realise a few internal goals:

• increase awareness and understanding of our API stack
• have a go at innovating some internal ideas that we had previously shelved or not found time for
• have some fun building stuff.

Having already trimmed down some 40-odd ideas from across the business into a shortlist of eight, we all met on Thursday afternoon (24 April 2013) to assemble into teams and kick off our inaugural company-wide hack.

We captured the story along the way so we could share it with you.

Day 1

Ideas shortlist #justhacking pic.twitter.com/xldFTzt4Ub

— JustGiving Hackers (@jghackers) April 24, 2014

Marco is the most excited #justhacking pic.twitter.com/KBVyNqsRH1

— JustGiving Hackers (@jghackers) April 24, 2014

And here is the glorious trophy the #justhacking teams are vying for. pic.twitter.com/t7XZCxMbQP

— JustGiving Hackers (@jghackers) April 24, 2014

The @redbull has arrived to power the #justhacking contestants!!! #coderush pic.twitter.com/Hy8lmWVhn5

— JustGiving Hackers (@jghackers) April 24, 2014

Boiling down a month's worth of dev work into a neat little package we can test in 24hrs. @JustGiving #justhacking pic.twitter.com/5gWfGvxhIi

— annemariehuby (@annemariehuby) April 24, 2014

https://twitter.com/tellastoryalex/statuses/459389416164065280

https://twitter.com/tellastoryalex/statuses/459396099066060801

First verbal demo from the #justhacking teams. Great to see the ideas taking form. #mvp pic.twitter.com/9ftDCRvvDA

— JustGiving Hackers (@jghackers) April 24, 2014

Paper prototyping rules! #justhacking pic.twitter.com/tbJGS9bpYi

— JustGiving Hackers (@jghackers) April 24, 2014

Ironic that as CIO, we have no dev support for Team Kinder's #justhacking efforts. We'll make it anyway. 3hrs into 24 @jghackers

— Richard Atkinson (@ClickRich) April 24, 2014

Quaffing and hacking #justhacking with style pic.twitter.com/5LMTq7Ct6P

— JustGiving Hackers (@jghackers) April 24, 2014

That moment – mid hack – when you have a great new idea!! Aghhhh. #anyone? #justhacking

— JustGiving Hackers (@jghackers) April 24, 2014

We're looking forward to the designers coming in tomorrow to touch up our work. #justhacking #badge pic.twitter.com/4q2QBGVgMo

— JustGiving Hackers (@jghackers) April 24, 2014

Day 2

Rise and shine! The hackers are emerging from the morning mist. Day 2 and we're off…well kind of. #justhacking

— JustGiving Hackers (@jghackers) April 25, 2014

https://twitter.com/repackchris/statuses/459610027096281088

Energy levels on the #justhacking event currently looking like this pic.twitter.com/HOxwdFfMv4

— JustGiving Hackers (@jghackers) April 25, 2014

Don’t ask…

https://twitter.com/repackchris/statuses/459644296854274048

Hahaha @jghackers looks like an awesome day, great going guys #justhacking

— Andy Allison (@AndrewAllison) April 25, 2014

It’s lunchtime! Three hours to go…

It's not a hack without…https://t.co/ltA7Trc1yM#justhacking

— JustGiving Hackers (@jghackers) April 25, 2014

Even our founder – the amazing Zarine – is getting in the #justhacking mood. pic.twitter.com/dsAmjB4djd

— JustGiving Hackers (@jghackers) April 25, 2014

We're so nearly there! 5 mins until the #JustHacking demos. Some serious blood, sweat and tears coming up.

— JustGiving Hackers (@jghackers) April 25, 2014

Demo time!

https://twitter.com/tellastoryalex/statuses/459711173106352128

https://twitter.com/tellastoryalex/statuses/459712299612512257

https://twitter.com/tellastoryalex/statuses/459713661675012096

https://twitter.com/tellastoryalex/statuses/459716433942179840

https://twitter.com/tellastoryalex/statuses/459717202586128384

https://twitter.com/repackchris/statuses/459719989638217728

https://twitter.com/tellastoryalex/statuses/459720073616580608

https://twitter.com/tellastoryalex/statuses/459721960608776192

https://twitter.com/tellastoryalex/statuses/459725237366841344

The whole JustGiving office got to vote for their winner by SMS or tweet, thanks to PollEverywhere.com

https://twitter.com/tellastoryalex/statuses/459726617368330241

And we have a winner!

JG's 24 hour hack has come to an end. YAY team Stuff On A Map for winning! #justhacking pic.twitter.com/ylFaLwFDbf

— Helen Osborne (@helen_osborne) April 25, 2014

So exactly 24 hours later, Team Stuff on a Map took home the JustHacking trophy. The initial idea was to visually showcase giving, so that within the four walls of JustGiving HQ, people could get a quick and exciting feel for the sheer volume of donations we process on a minute by minute basis.

Developer’s Jon and Jaspreet took the idea rapidly forward and were able to eventually demo a mash-up with Google Maps that pins every donation made in real time to the donor’s postal code. After feedback, they then finessed the visuals so that the pins were colour-coded by value.

Certainly the most visually impressive of the hacks, the room erupted as donation after donation around the world landed. A worthy winner that will soon grace the office screens for employees and guests to enjoy. 

And so all good things must come to an end

Epic #justhacking hackathon in the end, the best I've been involved with. Catch the full story here https://t.co/KRVhSwDNqk

— Mark Gibaud (@markgibaud) April 25, 2014

What’s next?

A common challenge post hack is how to take the ideas forward.

Of the eight demoed, we’re confident that there are two or three that can be quickly finessed and pushed to production for internal and external use. The larger challenge lies with developing some of the ideas in our spare time, as the aim was to never overly disrupt our day-to-day product road map.

So next week the teams are meeting again to decide which hacks to develop more in our personal time. You could well see some beta versions of products we developed coming your way soon. We sincerely hope so!

But it needn’t stop there. There’s already enough interest to warrant another hack – probably some time early next year – and we’d be interested if further down the line this is a model we roll out to our partners, such as charities and agencies.

Could we hack around a certain theme or problem next time? There’s some questions to be answered, but if you’re keen to get involved do let us know.