As a company dedicated to delivering innovative solutions to emergency services, the developers at Bliksund were invited to a two-day hackathon to foster creativity, team spirit, and innovation across the various countries, solutions and offices.
Setting the stage for innovation
Hackathons have become a cornerstone of innovation within the tech community, offering a unique blend of creativity and collaboration. With developers spread across Norway, Denmark, the Netherlands, and Vietnam, it was especially important to inspire creativity while also merging cultures and building a unified team.
A team of 33 developers was divided into 12 teams and given 1.5 days to generate innovative ideas. According to the jury, these ideas needed to have a certain wow factor, address a relevant problem, improve efficiency and internal processes, and, most importantly, increase customer value.
Teams across borders
The success of a hackathon relies on fostering collaboration among teams that do not usually work together, especially when they are spread across various locations. Bliksund's Hackathon embraced this challenge by using technology and communication tools to bridge the physical distance between teams. Stian Eide, the Technical Group Manager for the company's video solution, IncidentShare, said: 
"It has been fun to see how the teams from various backgrounds and nationalities have worked collectively to turn their innovative ideas into tangible projects. This cross-border teamwork not only led to a successful hackathon but also strengthened the team spirit,"
Stian Eide, Technical Group Manager
In an environment where all voices are heard and every contribution is valued, Bliksund's hackathon has been more than a competition:
"The main goal when we wanted to arrange a Hackathon was to give our developers the opportunity to work on something different, have fun, and learn new solutions and technology. Seeing the final presentations, I am so impressed by what we have accomplished in just two days and am sure that we have some new ideas on how to develop our products further as well,"
Maren Elise Rønneseth Technical Group Manager and project lead for the hackathon
A jury of three had 12 projects to evaluate, and the two winners of the hackathon were the projects Object recognition in video streams and CRS GRID module. All projects impressed the jury with their innovative and clever suggestions. As Martin, one of three juries expressed it: 
"Both winning teams have created solutions which have the potential to give our customers great value in the future. The first team created a proof of concept for integrating our Crash Recovery system into our GRID product, and the second team used AI to generate text from drone video, which for example can be used for car number plate detection."
Martin Alexander Kasseth, Business Development Director at Bliksund
