A few weeks ago, a new edition of Equinox took place , the hack-day organized internally at the CDO unit of Telefónica. A meeting in which the company’s programmers compete for 24 hours to win one of the many prizes in the contest.
This edition has been very special since it has been the first after two years without being held due to COVID-19.
But… What is a hack-day? What is Equinox?
A hack-day is a programming contest where several people come together to launch an idea, a prototype or a small project in a certain time.
In our case, our hack-day at Telefónica Digital is Equinox, it receives this name since we organize it twice a year, approximately coinciding with the spring and autumn equinoxes .
Equinox duration is one day. 24 hours in a row where groups of people with very different profiles (software developers, testers , product managers , graphic designers…) get together to start shaping those ideas or projects that have to be built in record time. The only rule is that something functional has to be presented, a presentation or an idea is not useful, it has to be something that works in real life.
Along the way we find ourselves with 24 hours of a lot of software and programming, of sharing moments with colleagues with whom you usually don’t work and, despite the lack of hours of sleep, ending up with the satisfaction of doing something that works in record time.
What projects have we seen this Equinox?
This year Equinox has been a record since nothing more and nothing less than 20 different projects have been presented. After two years of “drought” the team was very excited and many colleagues have been encouraged to participate with their projects.
In these 20 projects presented we can find almost everything. We have seen mini-games based on tests of the “Squid Game” where our CDO Chema Alonso was in charge of selecting the participating adventurers.
We have also seen other projects related to the company’s products in the Home, such as a project to make Living Apps (Movistar’s home and television applications) with stories created from various artificial intelligences or another project to see detailed and real-time weather maps on our Movistar Home device.
Although, this year the star category of projects have been those related to the new lines of work presented at our Telefónica Metaverse Day related to Web3 and Metaverse issues. During this event we have seen how many of our colleagues have taken their first steps creating experiences and applications in the Metaverse: from an immersive paddle game to recreating some of the Squid Game tests in the metaverse.
Make your projects come true
The important thing about Equinox and a hack-day is not the prizes or the competition, it is the atmosphere that is breathed, having an idea for which it is difficult to take time and see how in just 24 hours it is possible to have a first version or prototype .
That is why it is so important to us that something functional be presented. The difficult thing is not to have ideas, the difficult thing is to carry them forward, to solve the problems that arise along the way and to “deliver “ those ideas.
If you are reading this and consider yourself a person with ideas, but you think you don’t have time, remember that you are only 24 hours away from being able to build an MVP or prototype. Get together with several people with different profiles and shape that idea for 24 hours, you will be surprised at the result!
