The 6th Hackday was held at Magazine in der Heeresbäckerei, an impressive industrial monument with a prominent appearance in Kreuzberg, directly next to the Spree. It is extremely important to have a amazing location for such a long, intensive day and we’re happy that we could spend it in this wonderful venue! To make sure nobody was hungry we had lunch from Knofi and delicious Italian pizzas from our good friends at LaPausa.
Unlike the participants of the hackday, our organization team had a little longer than 10 hours to prepare their ‘product’: the first steps towards the event were taken already a couple of months before. It is very satisfying to see how all the small parts we’ve been working on are coming together like puzzle pieces, creating one big event that so many people can enjoy.
Enough background, let’s talk about the actual Hackday!
The 6th Babbel Hackday started at 8 o’clock in the morning – which is considered the middle of the night for some of the Babbellonians – with coffee and sleepy faces, and people happily putting on their work uniforms: this year’s Babbel Hackday T-shirts. With every zip of hot beverage, more and more smiles appeared and our day with ten hours of hacking was ready to begin. The energy levels were rising by the minute and if this Hackday would have had background music, it would definitely be Reel 2 Real’s ‘I like to move it’!
Our hackers came up with 18 different creative projects, of course concerning the obvious subject of language learning, but also very different, innovative ideas – all of that in only ten hours of hacking. One of the most interesting facts of the 6th Babbel Hackday was that the winning team was not just programmers and computer scientists, something one would likely expect, but consisted of seven people from different departments including Marketing, Didactics, Product and IT-Support.
All of the teams (including those working from home) presented their kick-ass ideas in the evening, when everyone from the company was welcome to drink some beers and check out the results. This years winners created a very cool RPG game, and went home with their very own VR-headsets. For Veronika, who was a part of the winning team, the 6th Babbel Hackday was very successful:
It was literally the first time I’ve ever won something this cool. And it’s not about the prize, I’m talking about the event in general. It felt amazing, the fact that there were so many great projects and the audience decided to vote for our project. I can’t express how happy I am.
See you at the next Hackday!
Well, check out our open positions; you might be part of it!