Tips for Creating a Successful Hack Week — Spotify

Hack Week has become something of Spotify lore.Darling discover every week Playlists started as an idea for Hack Week. Exclude selected playlists from taste profilesNow, Spotify employees from different departments around the world are looking forward to the annual week when they put their regular jobs aside to collaborate on ideas that combine passion, creativity and skill. But turning Hack Week into a massive event that thousands of Spotify employees attend each year is a feat in itself.

according to Sara goose beads and Nancy VeachSpotify Project Manager for the R&D community, Hack Week started as a “hot potato”.o” in the early days of the company. “Each year had the same structure—her kickoff event, a week of hacking, a trade show, her local People’s Choice Awards—but there was no repeatable format from a project management perspective,” she says. speaks. As Spotify matured, its team turned her Hack Week into a dedicated internal website, the Skill Exchange portal (which itself is Hack Week project), developed visual identities, and internal communication campaigns to generate excitement and spread knowledge. “What’s great about the intentional scaling and effort behind the program is that Hack Week has created a space to exist year-round, rather than just an engineering event that happens in some form or another every year,” Nanci said. says. Hack Week has expanded to include his non-R&D employees and now has a “long legacy across the company.”

The benefits of Hack Week are that it provides an opportunity to collaborate outside the day-to-day team, gives employees the flexibility to improve the product, and gives them a way to expand beyond their comfort zone. Nanci and Sarah provided her five tips for teams and companies looking to host their own Hack Week.

1. Create a dedicated program administration and identity. While our core event has remained largely unchanged over the years, having a process driven by a schedule and set of principles has improved communication, reduced barriers to participation, and encouraged diverse participation. made it easier for people to participate. group of participants. For example, we have developed a hack he hub where employees can find hack ideas, instructions on how to join the team, and examples of good hacks. We also had a visual identity dedicated to Hack Week that helped inspire and attract our non-R&D employees.
   
2. Be inclusive. It’s not only about who gets involved, but how you open up to them. We made it possible for employees around the world to participate in Hack Week. dispersion first principleThis year we have hackers representing most global offices. We also found a way to make sure Hack Week wasn’t just for engineers. Members from all walks of life are now participating in his Hack Week. Encourage this by spotlighting non-traditional hacks and roles such as user researchers, product designers, and music team members to help them find available opportunities. Encouragingly, those who attended Hack Week were found to be more than 50% more likely to attend again.
   
   
3. Make your theme innovative and exciting. This year’s theme is ‘The Future Is…’ and builds on big picture ideas inspired by recommendations from Spotify’s leaders. While it’s a good idea to tie your Hack Week theme to your company’s core identity and priorities, it’s also important to make the theme broad enough to allow creative interpretation. Powerful themes make people believe they are setting their own mission. “We want to set the stage for boundary-pushing hacks,” said Nancy and Sarah.
   
4. Get out of your comfort zone. Hack Week is short and many projects are left unfinished. Goal setting during Hack Week can take many forms, but it doesn’t always include completing the product. Hackers are encouraged to embrace the playfulness of Spotify and take advantage of the week to step out of their mundane roles. I also encourage you to connect and collaborate with individuals outside your immediate area. This makes Hack Week not only a meaningful professional experience, but also an interpersonal tool.
   
5. Don’t be afraid to bring in an outside perspective. This also applies to participants and coordinator. Hack Week works with Spotify’s dedicated Hack Week team Say It Good Studiois the branding and communications studio that created and built Spotify’s Hack Week hub. “Internally, we treat Hack Week like an external campaign, tracking things like click-through rates,” she explains Sarah. “Having an external partner helps avoid bias, maintain good communication, and make the process more accessible to everyone in the organization.”

Over the years, we’ve brought inspirational figures to Hack Week to help our teams get into hacking. A prominent artist who participated in an in-house campaign challenged hackers to “make space” ahead of Hack Week 2021 and to “make the planet cooler” for his Hack Week in 2022.

As with any good project, there is always room for improvement. “One of the challenges we still face is the difficulty of actually tracking hacks from Hack Week,” he explains Nanci. “To address this, in 2022 he began methodically tracking Hack Week projects and now skill exchange As a library to closely monitor a project as it continues to develop. ”

I’ll leave it up to the hackers to decide what the future holds for Hack Week on Spotify.