Meeting The Challenge
In ECS’ latest hackathon, participants used open-source data to address the challenges of this new abnormal and create innovative workforce solutions aimed at shaping the future of work. Teams competed across two brackets: one for ECS employees and a graduate bracket for students interested in developing enterprise solutions. Before submitting their final projects, each team had the opportunity to work with ECS coaches to guide and shape their ideas.
ECS employees Ben Duffin and Rick Torzynski discuss their winning proposal!
Winners of our student bracket from Purdue University celebrate their victory.
Pictured (L to R): Anisha Desai, Snigdha Rai, Mayank Jha, Kshama Sharma, Usama Ather, Prerak Patel, and Sakshee Agarwal
Fierce Competition
Judges whittled down the field to three finalists in each bracket. Teams were measured on project scalability, technical solutions, difficulty, and transportability, as well as overall value in addressing the future of work. Solutions ranged from a dashboard that helps companies improve the mental health of their workforce to a telecommuting savings calculator that allows users to estimate the optimal telework schedule based upon information specific to their market. After being selected, the finalists presented their projects live via a web conference to ECS leadership, industry experts, and academics. The field was extremely competitive, but in the end, only two teams could be named winners.
ECS would like to congratulate
TEAM OLYMPUS
WHAT THE HACK!
for winning our inaugural hackathon!
Rick Torzynski
Senior Drupal Developer, ECS
TEAM OLYMPUS
Snigdha Rai
MS in Business Analytics and Information Management, Purdue University
WHAT THE HACK!
“Events like this hackathon, and the Pitch Day we hosted earlier this year, are key elements of our ‘purpose’ as an organization,” said Giles Kesteloot, chief strategy officer at ECS. “We are committed to building engaging employee experiences, inspiring excellence in technology innovation, and supporting the creativity and ingenuity of our talented employees. These cultural events demonstrate ECS’ continued investment in what we value most: our people.”
“We wanted to create a competition where anyone who wants to be a part of this community—be them ECS employees, post-grads, undergraduates—has the opportunity, mentorship, and support to grow their talents,” said Aaron Burciaga, ECS vice president of data and artificial intelligence. “It’s one thing to be the change and another to lead it. Events like this help bring more people into the fold.”
Another hackathon is just around the corner.
If you are interested in participating, head over to our LinkedIn and give us a follow. We’ll be announcing the date and topic of our next hackathon soon! If you’d like to join ECS and contribute to our culture of innovation, head to our Careers page and apply today! With positions across cybersecurity, cloud, data and AI, and digital transformation, we just might have the right opportunity for you.
