Smart Office Summit & Hackathon 2019
The Salto KS team was invited by Signify (formerly known as Philips Lighting) to attend their Smart Office Business Summit and Hackathon which took place last month in Eindhoven.
The goal of the 3-day Business Summit and Hackathon was to unite key industry leaders together in order to collaborate, rethink, and aim for smarter offices. According to Remco Lansbergen, Sr. Director Strategic Alliances at Signify, “changes in the way we work in combination with the exponential growth in building technologies are forcing a transformation of the Office space”. The event therefore united key players across several industries who all value technology and whose mission concerns smarter and better offices.
“Networking with other developers was excellent. It’s good to see that most companies are also working with hardware, have similar struggles, and it's always better to work with other people”.
- Süha Boncukçu, PHP Developer at Salto KS
This optimization of office spaces was divided into two branches: The Business Summit, made up of business and marketing representatives, and The Hackathon, which comprised of developers, designers, and engineers of the respective companies at the event. The teams, however, were made up of a combination of both: Resulting in a unique and dynamic platform for collaboration.
Salto KS was represented by Rick, Irem, Alexander, Medi, and Anya for the Business Summit and by Cem S, Kateryna, Kalin, and Süha for the Hackathon.
Each team was required to propose and develop their original incentive in order to improve offices. This was then executed by incorporating their own expertise. After, the teams created appealing (joint) value propositions based on API and Cloud to Cloud integrations supporting the office of the future.
The results were exciting and inspirational. Each team came up with distinctive ideas and approaches. For most teams, however, saving time and energy was the best way to increase the efficiency of workspaces. This was reflected in the outcomes which impressively combined the APIs and products of the participating companies.
"It was a great experience teaming up with other industry leaders to come up with innovative ideas to solve challenges in the day-to-day office. It was not only an excellent networking event, but also a nice competition that drove us to think hard and collaborate fast, and roll up our sleeves!"
- Irem Tucaltan, Marketing Manager at Salto KS
On the 3rd and final day, the teams presented their respective projects and the finished product of an intense but rewarding Hackathon.
Our Back-end Developer, Kateryna Tokar, was on one of the event’s winning teams! Kateryna and her team were awarded 3rd place for their idea and product which was aimed at saving 15 minutes of one’s daily workday. Her team implemented various APIs to create a mobile application which would allow for certain automated functions that would save time and energy, thereby increasing overall productivity and efficiency in a workday. This would save time for tasks that are generally manual or require time such as waiting for an elevator, unlocking a door etc.
According to Kateryna, it was fascinating to see what other companies provide for a smart office. She said of the experience, “It was one where we could discover the capacities of our own API and was therefore an extremely good learning experience”
The platform offered by Signify at the Interact Summit and Hackathon was both insightful and rewarding! The Salto KS team was given the opportunity to network and rethink optimizing the workspace which while challenging, is a necessary and inspiring experience.
Thank you Signify for having us and for the stunning photographs! We are looking forward to the next Summit & Hackathon!
If you are interested in Hackathons like the one above, yet lack the experience, sign up for this Python Programming course by Course Duck to learn!