A Pointless Review
Hey friends,
This week is a little different—we're just rolling off our annual hackathon at Viget: Pointless Corp. While we're still working on this year's wrap up, there are a few things I love about this tradition:
Stretching the old gray matter
Each Pointless team rallies around a pitch idea, but you don't know what your final team composition will be. This means folks often have to streeeeeeeeetch into new roles, which can reveal hidden talents, introduce new ideas, or spark curiosity in an area they haven't explored.
This year I was unexpectedly deep in DevOps and data territory, working to ferry and transform data into the shape we needed. And while data and DevOps aren't usually my thing — we have a lot of big brains at Viget who were happy to give me a helping hand and some pointers when I got stuck.
I'd like to think I picked up a small wrinkle or two.
Collaborative creative energy
There's a special energy that comes with a malleable idea, a deadline, and a good team. Being in a brainstorm, hearing ideas spark other ideas, or spinning a thread down a path just to see what's down there — it's magical.
Because these pitches are experiments, it reduces the pressure to 'get it right', which makes it easier to explore rather than simply execute.
Investment in culture and innovation
If you look at a hackathon like Pointless on an organizational spreadsheet, it's a whole bunch of unbillable hours. Financially it's a 'risk', but the outcome of these events are invisible accelerators that pay dividends in culture and innovation.
Where a company puts their money speaks volumes about their values.
That's all for this week, see y'all next week!