2024 W2 - Hackathon 2024 edition

Humberto

Every week I post about one thing that happened at Rows. We're building in public!

Last week we had a 4-day hackathon. There were 8 cool projects that the team picked.

Rows Chrome Extension - a way to load data from the web directly into Rows.
Smart Drag Fill - a smarter way to drag-fill cells with numbers, dates, and even text.
Grid improvements - big improvements to the tables, including more layout flexibility and new formats.
New API endpoints - more API endpoints for larger companies to automate spreadsheet creation.
Command+K v2.0 - a big upgrade to accessing quick commands for navigation and editing.
Google Ads integration - a new Integration for Google Ads.
Dashboard UX - a new main dashboard when users get their workspace home.
Revamp State Management - a technical improvement to managing state.

On Friday, the team presented each project for 5 minutes, answered a couple of questions and then we voted. The team of the most voted project will get a prize, which is a small tech purchase on the company.

One of the most requested features is a more flexible layout.. and one of the hackathon teams delivered a great solution!

There were 2 highlights:

All the projects were super high-quality, and well presented. This is not our first hackathon, so it makes sense: we're getting better at it!
All ideas were relevant, split between things that are UX improvements for all users, functional stuff for some users (Integration), and improvements for the engineering team.

Note: Not everything is production ready (some are), but all the developments are in very advanced stages. Soon you'll see them out in the wild. That's what matters!

But Hackathons are a great way to get the team energized at the beginning of the year, plus they make everyone think about the user, use cases, and the value of each challenge to the business.

I also think they are a great way to start on any project, in general. Work from a problem statement to a first demo in a few days, and then iterate around that very real, tangible, testable, exciting artifact.

Have you tried doing hackathons at your company before? What was your experience! Ask me anything about the hackathons!

See you next week

Humberto