I love Denmark. The landscape, the design, the sailing. Adam and I decided to go there to explore the IT ecosystem. This is why we applied to the TECHBBQ event with our startup, Advisero.

It was a very good event. There were a few thousand people and we had a chance to chat with representatives of LEGO and other great companies! The best part of it was the matchmaking system where you can have 10-15 meetings per day in which you had the chance to talk with them for around 20 minutes. We met some really great people!

We had plenty of discussions with all types of personnel from the IT world. We see that there is a lack of good tech teams in Denmark and Danish people are very open to working with us.

What was very inspiring to me was Copenhagen as a city. I have been there a few times already but I always discover something new. Also, people were so open and friendly. My observation from previous trips to Norway was that it takes more time to interact and build trust, yet in Copenhagen, there were so many like-minded people with great ideas who were willing to connect and share some thoughts.

Currently, we are planning to organize our own event in Copenhagen with the FintechLab. If you are interested in joining, please send me an email (damian.winkowski@leocode.com) and you will receive further information about the event.

London – God save the Queen

Our trip to London started on Monday at a crowded Luton airport. We had to wait for more than one hour before entering the country – getting into the UK is a challenge, especially on Mondays! After that, it was a rollercoaster. The city never sleeps!

We had around 5-6 meetings every day so it was very intensive. We were jumping from place to place ending in “Google Campus” or “some Pub” in London. What I really like about this place is the pace of life. On one hand, it’s a bit scary to live in such a rush, but from a business point of view it’s perfect because you have a quick discussion here, a brief chat there, a quick decision is made and suddenly, you’re standing at the start of your project!

We met some old friends and had a lot of interesting discussions about digitalization and, of course, Brexit. You bet, it’s a hot topic there. Even for us, doing business with UK companies it’s still a big question mark – what’s going to change? How will it influence the cooperation between the UK and Polish tech companies? We will have to wait and see.

After three days we were quite tired but nevertheless really excited. Packed with new know-how and new friendships we came back to Poland.

Stockholm – the Scandinavian vibe

This time it was different. We weren’t just visiting – we had our own event called “The Blockchain and Cybersecurity Breakfast”.

It’s an interesting concept. We’ve done similar events in the past and it was quite successful. The idea is that you have a relevant topic, you invite people who are interested in it and finally, it makes a lot of sense to everyone.

We partnered with Roedl & Partners (a law firm) and the event took place at their office. We gathered 15 people and had an interesting discussion about the use of blockchain, and related questions. During the break, we had great food and some much-needed coffee so people could mingle and network.

I’ve had some very positive feedback from the event and many people were asking for more events just like it, as well as follow-ups in the form of one-to-one calls.

Sweden is a great place to be and there are already plenty of companies working with Polish tech teams. Some open their own offices, others cooperate with external teams in the form of outsourcing/nearshoring. Everyone can find their sweet spot when collaborating in this way.

So what next?

We will continue our journey, travel back to the Nordics and explore those beautiful countries.

Next stop: SLUSH in Helsinki!

Artykuł LEOCODE on TOUR – business and visiting at once pochodzi z serwisu LEOCODE.

We’ve all heard of digital innovation. We read reports, see stats and measure trends. Yet, it doesn’t seem to be accessible to everyone. Many business owners think that it’s a domain of big players with deep pockets and it takes a lot of time. I decided to investigate whether innovation can be delivered in a short period of time with a valuable and meaningful outcome.

The problem – What should I fix?

If you ask a company “do you have any problems?”, they will usually give you one of two common replies: “yes, everyone has”, or “no, we don’t”. Companies typically don’t want to share their weaknesses. However, if you change the question to “are you open to innovation?” or “are there any challenges you would love to address?”, they suddenly start talking and sharing their issues. We decided to run an experiment and invite several companies to give us their challenges, recruit creative teams and solve their problem within 24 hours.

Let’s start with real challenges

It started with many phone calls. I asked a dozen companies for their issues regarding business or digitalization and I promised to help them with creative teams. I had some very positive feedback. Finally, someone wasn’t trying to sell them anything but rather inviting them to the hackathon experiment where we face real challenges and try to deliver real solutions. After some time, I managed to invite 5 companies: ING TECH Poland, Luxon LED, Polpharma, Advisero and AIM and Miasto Katowice. You can see some of their challenges here (PL ONLY).

We had to:

• build mobile apps for events
• redesign an app for patients and doctors
• find a new IoT application for smart LED lamps in the industry sector
• fix the city information and make it publicly accessible

Hunting time – How to find creative people

In the hackathon we were interested in the ideas and not purely the code. We knew that we shouldn’t only invite programmers, but also designers and marketers – so-called “open heads”, to have intensive design planning processes before teams start looking for solutions. We invited many community members like Gruba.IT or MeetJS Katowice to reach engaged people who were willing to spend the whole weekend solving someone’s challenges and competing against other teams. It worked! We recruited interesting people with good business and tech background. Surprisingly, people gathered in extremely mixed teams and didn’t’ spend the whole day inside the room. They went outside, asked potential users about their problems (such as quizzing citizens of Katowice on their issues with accessing information). Based on real data and understanding users’ perspectives, teams were able to build something that not only was a good product, but also matched expectations of potential customers.

The event – Be ready for everything

The weekend arrived. We prepared everything on Friday before and, starting from a very empty place (Rondo Sztuki), we managed to build the whole infrastructure (tables, electricity, WiFI, catering, etc). The next day, Saturday, the first teams signed up around 8.30 am with every team having its own table. In the beginning, there was an opening ceremony in which I welcomed guests, sponsors, and attendees. After that, we had a design thinking workshop. Around midday, teams started working for what would be the next 24 hours. They had a lunch and a dinner break, and most of them stayed through the night in Rondo Sztuki. No sleep at all!
The next day, the teams started finalizing their work and got prepared for their final pitch in front of the challenge sponsors. We had 16 teams and a jury that had a very tough decision to make. Around 4pm on Sunday we had our winners. Tired but happy, everyone went home (some even as far as 300km from Katowice)

The outcome – Happy companies or institutions

That was the first edition of HACKONE. I asked some representatives of Sponsors to share their feedback and it was quite positive. They didn’t expect that they will receive so much output from teams. Moreover, in some cases, they realize that they have a different problem, they came with. Plus I know that teams were invited to continue the project in the nearest future.

Innovation 24H – It simply works

Before I started organizing the hackathon event, I had doubts. Will we recruit the right people? Will they really solve problems? Will I meet everyone’s expectations? How could I make sure they will remember it as a very intensive but productive weekend?

But we did it! I was very surprised how engaged people were – they asked plenty of questions, they conducted interviews with users and they effectively shared the workload amongst team members. They were extremely focused and motivated to deliver a valuable result.

For me personally, the biggest surprise was that within 24 hours you can build an almost ready-to-launch project that, commercially, can take a few days or even weeks. The intense time pressure and the added weight of the competition makes people think deeply about the most important things and really prioritize their actions.

What next?

Although it was very intensive, we have decided to run more events. Currently, we are planning events in Warsaw (Warszawa) and Gdańsk so if you are interested in becoming a partner/sponsor of such an event, please contact me via damian.winkowski@leocode.com

You can also read the IoT Challenge winner’s story HERE.

Artykuł Innovation 24H – Can We Save Weeks Of Work? pochodzi z serwisu LEOCODE.