2017 CMGt Hackathon
September 19-21, 2017 | One Tech Center – 223 Perimeter Center Pkwy NE, 2nd Floor, Atlanta, GA 30346
How do mongooses, unicorns, and the legendary Kraken sea monster relate to developing technology with speed and quality? These creatures inspired team names for the second annual CMGt Hackathon on September 19-21, 2017! 42 CMGt employees and contractors powered up their innovation and creativity to deliver breakthrough solutions for CMG.
A dedicated team of CMGt volunteers began planning for the Hackathon three months in advance. Tasks included contacting potential sponsors, scouting for event locations, developing the agenda and recruiting Hackathon team members. In the end, 20 sponsors contributed a significant amount of money and helped make this event possible!
The overall Hackathon theme was “Engagement, Loyalty, and Efficiency.” Seven teams of CMGt hackers were challenged to dramatically increase audience engagement and loyalty and drive our 2020 Strategy: make our business more efficient, cut costs and eliminate redundancies.
Bala Sundaramoorthy, Executive Director of Consumer Systems for CMGt, developed the blueprint for the Hackathon theme. Bala said, “The evolving digital marketplace continues to challenge our existing business model and core platforms. As we look ahead to 2017, our primary focus is to further engage our loyal customers. This will ultimately lead to higher revenue for CMG.”
OPENING NIGHT CELEBRATION (Ice-Breaker)
The Hackathon is an opportunity for CMGt and our Partners to travel from various locations, work together towards a common goal, and strengthen partnerships along the way. One of the ways we facilitate this – is by offering several structured and unstructured opportunities for individuals at all levels of the participating organizations to get to know one another and talk about common interests – professional or otherwise. On opening night, we host an ice-breaker event to get the team’s to know one another and begin building momentum and energy for the onsite kickoff.
ONSITE KICKOFF
The CMGt Hackathon is an engaging event for CMGt employees, leadership, and our sponsoring partners alike. Our event opener is when the teams learn about the theme for the Hackathon.
In 2017, CMGt Hackathon teams were challenged to dramatically increase audience engagement and loyalty and drive our 2020 Strategy: make our business more efficient, cut costs and eliminate redundancies. They only had 27 hours to brainstorm ideas, research and develop final concepts, build a demo and prepare an informative 15-minute presentation for a panel of three judges. The theme for the Second Annual Hackathon was “Engagement, Loyalty, and Efficiency.”
TEAMS GET TO WORK
Teams are assigned a conference room and begin. All work takes place on-site at the CMGt’s operational HQ, One-Tech Center.
DECOMPRESS
While our teams work with passion and courage towards introducing another set of innovation initiatives, we also take the opportunity to decompress, network, and learn more about our partners.
TEAM PRESENTATIONS & DEMOS
All seven Hackathon teams collaborated like champions and brought their best ideas forward. After careful consideration, the judges selected three solutions that best conveyed the concepts of engagement, loyalty, and efficiency.
Judges for the event included:
- Ed Wagner, Director of Architecture at Cox Enterprises, Inc.
- Chris Taylor, Senior Director of National Content Desk & Audience Development at Cox Media Group
- Subra Viswanathan, Senior Director of Shared Services at Cox Media Group Technology
AWARDS
The CMGt Hackathon is an engaging event for CMGt employees, leadership, and our sponsoring partners alike. Our event opener is when the teams learn about the theme for the Hackathon. In 2017, CMGt Hackathon teams were challenged to dramatically increase audience engagement and loyalty and drive our 2020 Strategy: make our business more efficient, cut costs and eliminate redundancies. They only had 27 hours to brainstorm ideas, research and develop final concepts, build a demo and prepare an informative 15-minute presentation for a panel of three judges. The theme for the Second Annual Hackathon was “Engagement, Loyalty, and Efficiency.”
First Place Winner: House of Codes
Innovation: Created EZEmbed, a solution that allows digital producers to quickly add lead video to the Méthode story page and enables CMG to keep all the ad revenue.
2017
Second Place Winner: Green Arrow
Innovation: Built COX ON TIME, where consumers provide timely and relevant live streaming video content directly from their own mobile devices – a brand of citizen journalism.
People’s Choice Winner: Kraken
Innovation: Developed a streamlined process to deliver new websites faster using a centralized catalog of custom HTML elements. This technology toolset may be used across all business units and with any content management system.
OTHER PARTICIPATING TEAMS
CLOSING NIGHT CELEBRATION (Wrap Party)
Team members worked long-hours, partners had opportunities to make new connections and strengthen old ones, and CMG has a portfolio of new ideas ready to be further explored and brought to market. The event closes with a Wrap-Party.
THANKS TO OUR SPONSORS
Key CMG partners helped sponsor the event. They covered costs including prizes, food, social events, t-shirts, banners, and more. “Thanks to our sponsor’s generosity, we were able to do the event at a minimal cost to CMG,” said Mark.
“I couldn’t be more pleased with the event. We had great leadership from our planning team. We had great involvement from our vendor sponsors, and we had great participation from our employees. In addition to all this, most if not all, of these ideas will be implemented to help support our business,” concluded Mark. “This event was a pilot for us to work out the kinks. We are looking forward to hosting this event again next year and perhaps expanding it outside of CMGt to involve people from other Cox teams.”
Platinum Sponsors
Gold Sponsors
Silver Sponsors
Bronze Sponsors
