Bitrock Smart Hackathon 2023

The Bitrock Smart Hackathon 2023, organized in partnership with our sister company ProActivity, ended with an exclusive Pitching & Award Event at Museo Nazionale della Scienza e della Tecnica in Milan. It was the perfect opportunity to meet the participants and spend some quality time with our colleagues, partners and clients.

The challenge

The hackathon challenge consisted in developing a smart tool to help employees that work remotely maintain social relations, stay motivated and collaborate with their colleagues.

The topic, i.e. how technology can enable and strengthen social bonds, attracted great interest. We are really satisfied with the achieved results: more than 150 registered people, 17 competing teams and a lot of inspirational and interesting hints concerning our topic.

The Winners

The final event was the icing on the cake, and we have to thank the hackathon’s organizing team,  Mentors and Judges, who all contributed to the success of the event. 

A special mention to our external Jury composed of Michela Bianchi, Chief of People and Sustainability Officer at Moneyfarm, Paolo Zilioli, Director IT Eyecare Systems at Luxottica and Federico Cella, journalist for Corriere della Sera, and our special host of the award ceremony.

For all those who couldn't be there, we would like to describe the winning projects that, more than others, have centered the hackathon aim: recovering human balance in a digital world.

The 1st classified team, the TATEAM (Niko Zarzani, Costanza Pollastrelli and Daniele Mariotto), won the hackathon with their App Workie-Talkie, ​​a dynamic workspace where employees can effortlessly collaborate on projects, exchange knowledge, and foster strong relationships.

The mobile App offers several features that promote and reward positive behavior: it offers breaks with colleagues available at that moment, it allows you to create and participate in thematic rooms for conversations via voice chat, and earn points by interacting and receiving reactions. The app also offers advice on managing workspace and concentration, and promotes physical health with notifications for active breaks, stretching exercises and daily quizzes. 

The 2nd team to stand on the podium was Team JM, with their innovative platform called Meetrock. A solution that combines new Social, Machine Learning and AI technologies to let you and your colleagues organize, join and enjoy a unique experience both inside and outside the office. 

With Meetrock you can easily create any type of event you want and let other people join with zero effort and no spam emails. Once the event is finished, every participant can send a report about the organizer and other participants to let Bitrock HR know if anything went wrong, guaranteeing continuous improvement and making the event always better than the previous one.

The last project we want to talk about is Social Buddy Bot, developed from 42 Monkeys, ranked third at Bitrock Smart Hackathon. 

Social Buddy Bot is an application that helps remote coworkers socialize. It’s integrated in the mainly used communication platforms and it uses AI to engage coworkers to do activities together. 

The activity of users is analyzed and, based on interactions, the system interacts with them: in case of a low rate of interaction, the system asks if everything is ok, trying to make the participants interact with others. The aim of this bot is to make people more used to remote work interaction and, given the appropriate amount of time.

Taking stock of our first virtual hackathon, we are really happy to have organized this type of event… we don’t want to spoil too much, but stay tuned to discover the next news we have in store for you!

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Bitrock Hackathon

The Bitrock Smart Hackathon is finally here!

We’re thrilled to present the first edition of our virtual hackathon, organized in partnership with our sister company ProActivity.

Our hackathon is dedicated to all coding lovers: there’s no need to know a specific programming language, we only ask for passion and creativity!

The participants - divided into teams - will deal with the challenge remotely, but they will have the opportunity to get to know each other in person during the amazing Pitching & Awarding Event at Museo della Scienza e della Tecnologia in Milan.

If you already have a work group (of friends or colleagues), feel free to register along with them. But you can also participate alone: in this case, we’ll assign you a team to join. 

Bitrock Hackathon

The Challenge 

At Bitrock we strongly believe in the efficiency and proficiency that remote and agile working can bring to every business. Indeed, we have adopted remote working since its first appearance on the Italian job market.

However, we are aware of the possible negative effects of remote working on employees. More specifically, the most common highlighted problems are the feeling of isolation, the loss of a sense of belonging to a team (especially for new hires), and the lack of effective sharing relations with their colleagues. 

Working in an office is full of spontaneous moments that allow you to interact with others. Remotely is not that easy: there are no hallway conversations or having coffee with colleagues.

Human connection is essential, not only for work productivity, but more importantly for mental well-being.

For todays’ businesses it is thus imperative to create spaces and opportunities for their employees to connect and create relations, and technology can play a fundamental role in this mission.

And here’ s how the challenge was born!

During the event, all participants will have to develop a smart tool to help employees that work remotely maintain social relations, stay motivated and collaborate with their colleagues.

Some examples? An interactive platform through which employees can have a “virtual coffee” and take a break together, or an App that allows you to connect with your colleagues in a fun way by organizing virtual games or other specific activities.

In addition, we strongly believe that a topic regarding the world of work and possible ways to improve it could really motivate all participants: those who are not working yet, those who have just started working, and those who have  already been working for a while. 

The perks of joining

In order to motivate the competing teams,  our virtual hackathon showcases a total prize pool of 10.000 Euro for the top three projects.

However, there are many other reasons to participate, including incredible networking opportunities: both during the competition and at the closing event, indeed, you will have the chance to meet and have fun with your friends and colleagues,  as well as with other developers like you, not to mention Bitrock and ProActivity’s team members.

Moreover, our experienced Professionals, in the role of Mentors, will support you throughout the whole project by giving you and your teammates constant feedback - which will allow you to improve your skills and learn some ropes.

To sum up: a prize up for grabs, an interesting and inspiring challenge, and a great occasion to enlarge your network.

Isn’t this enough? There’s still something in store for you: we are organizing a special Pitching & Awarding Event for all participants! The party will take place in an exclusive and inspirational location: the Museo Nazionale Scienza e Tecnologia in Milan, on 6th of June.

Bitrock Hackathon

What are you waiting for?

Discover all details and register now on the dedicated website!

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