Trimble MAPS Hackathon 2019

Recently at Trimble MAPS - 131 engineers, testers, product managers, and GIS engineers took part in our annual Hackathon. Over 25 teams across our four international offices went to work for two full days. Whether experimenting with image recognition software, building real time data analytics using the public cloud, applying machine learning to real world problems, or innovating on our various existing products, every team came away with a very real accomplishment. In some cases it was building a pragmatic tool or feature that will be deployed in the next few weeks or months. In other cases, a quantum leap in knowledge, or some cool efficiency to our internal processing pipelines.

Every great Hackathon needs a winner. With 22% of the vote, a team of four engineers and a development manager - Stephen Darlington, Sai Kiran Rathan, Matt Osborne, Arijit Basu, and Vini Nair - won top prize. Their extension of our web services licensing system will allow for instant self service access to trial accounts. We are eager to move it to production shortly! The voting was competitive overall. Eight different teams received over 6% of the vote. This speaks to the breadth of great ideas, implementations, and presentations. I expect several other hacks to mature and impact our products within a few weeks or a few months.

Going ahead, our Hackathon will be a core part of our product development process and engineering culture. It is just another way that every individual, regardless of role or title or department, directly and quickly has the opportunity to impact our products. The ability to do this is, and has been for many years, at the core of what makes Trimble MAPS a cool place to work.