Third Annual iHeartRadio Hack Day!
By: David Levine; Manager, Digital Analytics
iHeartRadio recently enjoyed an energy-filled Hack Day, an annual event where teams compete for the elite Grand Prize: the opportunity to attend the iHeartRadio Summer Pool Party in Miami! Hosted at the iHeartRadio Theater, 25 teams worked for over 24 straight hours to help create a creative product for iHeartRadio, concluding with a group presentation to show off what each developed and crowning a winner. Consisting of teams from product, engineering, design, customer care and data, each group showcased captivating social integrations, new audio streams and fun applications, among other ideas.
But it wasn’t all hard work — teams danced to the DJ talents of their peers and were even surprised by an early morning visit from the Elvis Duran in the Morning show!
While holding a hackathon might not be a new thing, how iHeartRadio approaches the event is. iHeartRadio users actually enjoy products that had their origins in Hack Days - like iHeartRadio Family. For iHeartRadio, empowering employees to grow and experiment, while also investing in seeing these ideas come to fruition, is key to its culture.
This year’s Hack Day winners included a team from Web and Design. They created a new way for users to have even more control over their listening experience. With its origin sparked at Hack Day, there is the possibility that our users will be utilizing this tool one day in the near future.
After participating in four Hack Days over the course of my career, this one was especially important because I played an active role in planning and executing the event. One of the honors of leading the event was being able to personally witness the talent, creativity and spirit of our staff. The demos are always a great source of inspiration for those who have the privilege of witnessing them, but observing the work that goes into each demo was just as inspiring. In the future, I hope the event continues to innovate to match the incredible staff that we have!
