Our Hackathon Reimagined: It's the Okta Hackauth0n!
Okta Hackathons have always been a critical part of our technology culture, as there is no better way to foster innovation, creativity, excitement, and experimentation. We often use the phrase “never stop innovating” because it's a core value that helps drive Okta product excellence.
This year, our hackathon was expanded to be a week-long event, giving everyone, including our newest Auth0 colleagues, the opportunity to create, collaborate, and “hack” to build something new and innovative. Now in its 8th year, Okta has a rich history of integrating the top-performing hack projects into the Okta Identity Cloud product, as well as our platform infrastructure.
With our largest cadre of participants to date, and in an effort to be adaptive, inclusive, and imaginative, we implemented some key new elements to the mix. This resulted in the largest hackathon in company history!
- We had an all-company logo design contest celebrating the theme Fusion: merging separate and distinct parts into a unique whole. This was our visual celebration of joining forces with Auth0!
- For the first time, we opened up our hackathon beyond the technology teams and invited our partner teams, Professional Services, Security, and Solutions Engineers, to join in the competition. This move served to drive home the message that technical creativity is accessible to all.
- We partnered with our Employee team to offer a non-technical culture track, giving everyone in the company an opportunity to make their voices heard—across functions, geographies and roles.
- We featured 5 technical tracks for teams to hack:
- Product features
- Improves infrastructure reliability
- Supercharges code builds and deployment
- Business tools and Data solutions
- Increases velocity and efficiency
Finally, following 4 days of hard hacking, we held an all-company celebration called “Hacktane”. Hacktane was the culmination of all the amazing creativity and efforts of our Okta hackers.
Our CEO and co-founder, Todd McKinnon, kicked off Hacktane, followed by an exploration of Topia. This virtual platform allowed every attendee to view all of the demos created during the week—this included over 100 hack teams! Next we held a demo showcase for the top hacks in each category. While judges determined the rankings, we were treated to a performance from 4-time Grammy nominee, Jewel, and a live voting session! We were thrilled that it was an Auth0 team, participating in the Okta Hackathon for the first time, who took home the grand prize.
This year’s Okta Hackathon was truly a company-wide effort, in which everyone who participated—in roles big and small alike—were the real winners.
When we come together in this way, to collaborate, innovate, and cheer each other on, we feel we are truly at our best. And while doing so, we insist on having fun along the way. The benefits of this bi-annual event go way beyond product innovation, they help us to embody another one of Okta’s core values: Empowering our people! Hack on Oktanauts!
Interested in becoming an Oktanaut, showcasing your coding chops, and pushing boundaries with software? We’re hiring! Check out our Careers page to see our current list of open positions.
