The problem:
The Chief Technology Office at Lloyds Banking Group had an idea brewing that they wanted to host their very first engineering and technology hackathon. An event where diverse agile teams of individuals, who had never worked together before, would come together for a one-day event where they would battle it out for the glory of it, and a few prizes. But mostly for the kudos.

The client had booked a venue but had no idea as to how to pull it all together, and that's where we stepped in to help.

The solution:
Inspired by NASA mission badges, we came up with the concept of a rocket blasting off from a laptop computer, well, why not? We envisaged the engineers, UX & UI designers, and the rest of the eight-person agile teams as what we came to call 'code-o-noughts'.

Once we'd nailed down the core idea and badge design (engineers love a laptop sticker), we then rolled out a complete suite of bespoke graphics to dress up the venue, create some animations and presentation deck templates, design the event brochure, create all of the way-finding signage, create goody bags, design the graphics for the on-stage big screen, design the T-shirts and come up with a sequence of countdown films to build up excitement and anticipation about the event. The whole enchilada.

The plan was to also include trade stalls at the event, populated by industry tech partners that all visitors could interact with and learn from. Lastly, we wanted to build into the event a series of 'Lightning talks', all given by LBG and Sapient employees covering special interest subjects all related to innovation and technology.

Opening up the whole event to the 'code curious', as we called them - individuals from the business who wanted to find out more about what it takes to become an engineer - was also key to the success of the event.

The result:
This first hackathon was held at Code Node in London way back in 2018. It was an absolutely brilliant day powered by donuts, pizza, fizzy drinks, and lots of coffee. At the end of it all we gave out 400+ goodie bags, and our client was delighted.

It went so well that we subsequently went on to create nine more hackathon events for them over the following years in Manchester, Edinburgh, and Bristol, finally returning to London in November of 2023 to complete the tour with Reboot X and its all-new branding.