Innovation Day #5
Inspired by the innovation at companies like Atlassian, Fedex and Twitter, Web Essentials kicked off our Fifth Innovation Day. Innovation Days have not only grown in popularity, but have become important for us to thrive in the current fast-paced marketplace.
Teams put together ideas with S.M.A.R.T. goals for 12 innovative projects to be delivered in 30 hours. Projects involved interesting topics such as:
- Automation - to prevent human error in the deployment chain
- TYPO3 Neos - Our Neos Base Box received important new features
- Arduino - Exploring ways to incorporate the Internet of Things
- Front-End comparisons - Automate comparing two websites for upgrades.
- Customer Service improvements - Ways to improve the service our customers receive
- Hosting Management System - To keep better track of our hosting and domain subscriptions
- TYPO3 Upgrades - Is it possible to automate a TYPO3 Core Upgrade using Jenkins?
- Employee List - Rendering staff information from LDAP using TYPO3 Flow
- Unit Testing with the TYPO3 Flow Blog example
- One-Click installation of a Neos setup - Using Flow and Docker
- WEGenerator - Set up a new TYPO3 CMS using TYPO3.Kickstart
- And onsite reporters to document the whole experience. This was innovative too!
This Innovation Day was characterized by a continued pursuit of automation within all departments in the company, from HR and Sales to Production.
The #innovation Day is started at @w3essentials. Going to work on the project #automation with @ansible#vagrant#gitlab#teampass and #jira
— Leap SOK (@leapsok72) February 12, 2015
Although we regularly work on innovative web products for our clients, our teams don't always have the time to create fun products for themselves or creatively improve the Web Essentials working environment. So we created Innovation Day as a space for our staff to explore practical ideas and have fun doing so. It's also a time when we can see unique Cambodian creativity applied to the technologies we use.
TYPO3 6.2 Upgrade made easy! Reduced to 1 step using an #Ansible Script executed by #Jenkins#WEInnovationDays
— Web Essentials (@w3essentials) February 13, 2015
During the day, there were lots of snacks and meals to share the progress of our projects with one another. Web Essentials’ kitchen crew worked overtime to fuel the energy for innovation with hearty meals, like this wonderful Khmer curry. In the evening, some teams were determined to win the prize and worked late into the night!
At the end of 30 hours, the Innovation Day concluded with a 5-minute presentation from each team and a vote for the best projects. We used criteria such as usefulness, quality of the concept and technical achievement.
My project EmployeeList (using Flow and LDAP) won the third place on #WEInnovationDayspic.twitter.com/0Q1QUbM7XK
— Borey HAS (@hborey) February 13, 2015
There were prizes only for the top three teams, but in the end, there were many winners. The teams, the company and our clients all benefited from the Innovation Day. We are looking forward to seeing what other awesome products our staff come up with in the next innovation day.
Best #WEInnovationdays#w3essentials so far IMHO. Best quote ''Even though we won''t win, this will be great for the company!''
— jon bowers (@jonbowers100) February 13, 2015