Recap of UpKeep Innovation 4 Hope Hackathon

Objectives

On Friday, April 24, UpKeep held our first Innovations 4 Hope (I4H) Hackathon! The overarching goal of I4H is to identify million dollar ideas and create concrete plans for execution that can provide value to our customers during this current crisis and in the resulting aftermath.

Many of our customers are on the frontlines right now, and we’re uniquely positioned to help them out in so many different ways. Here are some of the themes that we addressed in this year's I4H:

1. Helping customers and their employees stay safe and healthy in a post-C19 world.

2. Helping customers be more productive and efficient in a post-C19 world.

Why Now?

With stressors surrounding us and everyone around the world, it’s time to have fun AND provide help to our customers! Innovation workshops are known to be fun and exciting. We can all use some of that right now.

Participants

The event had three types of engagement profiles:

1. Participants: Individuals willing to spend their entire day working on validating an idea in a team context. No technical skills necessary, just creativity! Participants also had to present their ideas with a live presentation!

2. Mentors: Individuals willing to provide guidance and feedback to participants throughout the eight-hour intensive to ensure they’re on the right track and avoiding hurdles along the way.

3. Judges: Individuals willing to evaluate the participating ideas according to a predefined rubric. Judges were expected to be impartial, ask good questions, and be very decisive.

Prizes

The judges selected one winning team per each category. All members of the winning groups received a $50 gift card to Amazon!

Congrats and Thank You's

Congratulations to our winning teams, Team 2 and Team 3! Our people's choice award also went to Team 2!

And, a HUGE thank you to all of the participants, mentors, judges, and attendees for joining our inaugural I4H!

Words from Ismail, SVP of Product & Engineering

"I was ecstatic to see the entire company come together to brainstorm ideas to help our customers in this crazy time. For some, this was their very first hackathon ever! I'm super stoked that it was a fun time for everyone AND we've come up with some pretty amazing ideas for our customers as well. I couldn't have wished for anything more! The ideas generated have a great potential in impacting our customers in many critical ways. From the way they stay safe and healthy at work, to being more productive and efficient at what they do. I'm very bullish on these ideas and I will push to get at least one of them through to our customers."