By Manasi Purohit
Fidelity’s Women in Technology Special Interest Group organized their annual 2-day global hackathon event called ‘WIT-A-THON’ in October. The event was meant for associates from different areas of work – technology, business, operations, data analytics etc. to come together to implement their ideas on certain themes. The themes for this year were Hybrid Working Environment and Driving Digital Transformation. The event provided the associates to think out of the box, network with people who they normally don’t work with, break-away from their day-to-day work and focus on gaining new skills.
I got the opportunity of being one of the coordinators of the event, and I just enjoyed the whole experience of bringing teams together on implementing the ideas, organizing various stages of the event – from the kick-off and ideation to final judging. There were over 100 ideas that got submitted and 23 teams who participated in the hackathon across India, US, Ireland and China. There was a wide variety of the ideas like inclusive language tools, carbon footprint reducing tool, micro-break for associates, Fidelity album for associates etc.
It was wonderful to see the energy and passion with which the ideas were presented and implemented. It was equally great to see the leaders of the organization coming together from different regions to support the participants and provide valuable feedback on the ideas so that those ideas could be taken forward to the next level. The event provided me an opportunity to connect with associates from different locations and work backgrounds and helped sharpen my organization skills to plan an event of such magnitude.
