Hacketse VIII: The Hacketse Strikes Back
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Hacketse VIII: The Hacketse Strikes Back
Last week, K15t Software hosted its final 24-hour 'Hacketse' hackathon of 2016. This time, the field was bigger and stronger than ever, with a record amount of participants (24) and teams (14), and a number of extremely impressive projects vying for victory.
But before we delve into the events of Hacketse VIII, let us explain where the name comes from. 'Hacketse' is a wordplay on a local German tradition in Baden-Württemberg, the area where K15t Software is based. This tradition is called 'Hocketse', and is the rough equivalent of a day-long block party. A perfect fit, as our hackathons are also about people coming together to make great things happen in a one-day segment of time.
Hacketse VIII kicked off on Thursday the 24th at 4pm in our kitchen, with a now-traditional huddle where the teams announced their projects and objectives...
...and afterwards, they split and worked deep into the evening on a variety of tasks.
Unfortunately, at Hacketse, not everyone can be victorious. However, so many inspirational things were made that we want to spotlight not only the winners, but also some projects that narrowly missed out on the big prize. Read on to find out about some of the most impressive creations!
The runners-up: Unicore
The most charming project at Hacketse VIII was Unicore, created by Martin and Thomas. Unicore is a retro-style HTML5-based game starring K15t's very own 'rocketcorn' mascot, who the player must guide through an array of dangerous obstacles, collecting gold coins and Scroll Add-on icons on the way.
The game is still being fine-tuned, so we couldn't embed it here. But, keep your eyes peeled – you never know where you might find it once it's finished!
Confluence Add-on Installation Helper
Team 4's entry wasn't quite as quirky as Unicore – but it was extremely useful. They created a utility for OSX that lets users install Confluence add-ons directly from the status bar, without needing to enter Confluence at all.
This nifty tool is especially useful for developers who need to test multiple versions of add-ons, as it lets them avoid navigating through the Confluence UI every time they want to swap to a different version. It currently only works with Confluence Server, but cloud functionality is a future possibility.
K15t Sticker Pack for iMessage
Roman and Anja brought some color to Hacketse VIII with their awesome K15t-themed sticker pack for iMessage, the messaging app for Apple iOS.
The pack contains all kinds of stickers that you can insert into iOS chat, like in the picture above. It includes images of the 'rocketcorn' company mascot, references to K15t's company culture, and famous phrases in Swabian (the dialect of German spoken in the wider Stuttgart region).
Look out for the K15t iMessage on the Apple App store in the near future.
Inspector Sketch
Daria, Jens and Tobias built Inspector Sketch, an add-on for Atlassian JIRA. This utility allows Sketch Measure mockups to be integrated into JIRA tickets, letting UX specialists share designs with developers within their project management system.
This integration eliminates the need for mockups to be sent via separate channels: keeping communication and collaboration quick, tidy, accurate, and effective.
The winner – indescribably good
Now, on to the big prize: we want to congratulate Simon and Paul for their victory at Hacketse VIII, and for getting their hands on the coveted winner's trophy!
They won the vote for their awesome add-on that adds eye-catching new functionality to the Confluence 6.0 page editor. Now, we would love to tell you all about their project, but unfortunately we can't say much more right now. We think it's so good that we're keeping it under wraps as we work on it further.
We'll release more details about the winning project as the development cycle progresses, so watch this blog for news as it becomes available!
See you next time
We'll be hosting our next Hacketse in Spring 2017 – and this one was so great that we're already beginning to count down the days.
If you want to experience it with us, take a look at the opportunities on our careers page. See you next time!
