Hack Days at Purolator

An important part of Digital Lab's mission is to motivate the innovation culture at Purolator.  One of the ways we do that is by hosting Hack Days!

What is a Hack Day?

Hack Day is a day away from your regular responsibilities with the goal of hacking out a technical solution to a problem of your choosing.

The hack can be: a CAD design, a new document, a piece of code, a working website, a new mobile app, a prototype of a new sensor, whatever -- something constructive and creative that solves a problem and flexes your innovation muscles.

At the end of the day, demo your output (success or failure) to a group of your peers in a 3 minute presentation. We all clap and celebrate your learning.

The format of the day (all times EDT):

• 9am - Introductory call with everyone participating.
• 9:30am - 3:00pm - Hack away on your thing
• 3:00pm - 4:30pm - 3 minute demo!

We chat on a Teams channel to organize the day.

Is this a Hackathon?  No. Hackathons tend to be organized around a single goal, span a few days, and be competitive (some group wins a prize).  Hack Days are more self-directed, and the prize is professional development / meeting new people.

Who participates?

Many roles at Purolator participate in the Hack Days: software developers, UI designers, architects, engineers, testers, analytics / data science folk, co-op's, and their managers.

We target 40 participants, and generally get 30+ people hacking!  We would love to max out the demo slots in the future.

I'm in! When's the next one?

The next Hack Day is May 5th, 2022.

Previous hack days ran in September 2021 and December 2021.

If you're interested in participating reach out to Dariusz Grabka or Christine Witlox on Teams, and we'll hook you up.