At Multiverse, our tech organisation usually lives by the roadmap. It ensures we are focused on the right problems and aligned on business outcomes. But we also know that innovation needs room to breathe.
That’s why, at the start of last quarter, we decided to put the roadmap "on ice" for one week. We paused our standard tickets for our bi-annual Hackathon, inviting everyone across the Tech org, including Engineers, Product Managers, Designers, Security, Data Privacy, and IT to come together and build something new and innovative.
The theme? "The Future is..."
To get into the right headspace, we left our usual desks and set up shop at a dedicated space external to our Paddington office. Tool-wise, we used Backstage, our internal developer portal, in addition to the SkillExchange plugin to crowdsource ideas.
The result? 25 distinct pitches
On the Thursday before the event, idea owners pitched to the group, rallying teams around their vision. We then kicked off Monday with our VP of Engineering, Helen(opens new window) who set the goals for the week. But we didn't just want to code; we wanted to learn. We invited guest speakers from Tessl(opens new window) to discuss evaluating AI agents, and Cursor(opens new window) to share best practices on leveraging AI for product and engineering workflows.
With teams formed and skills matched, the middle of the week was dedicated to deep work. The energy was electric. Teams mixed seniority and discipline; mid-level developers leading discussions and Product Managers getting hands-on with the code.
We saw a massive surge in AI adoption and Developer Experience tooling, balanced with a strong focus on directly improving the experience for our customers and learners, here are some examples:
- Learner experience: Many projects focused on improving the learner experience, such as linking learning directly to a learner’s project problems, personalising content for greater relevance, and designing gamified journeys that reward progress to drive daily engagement.
- AI agents and knowledge capture: One team designed a multi-agent system to automate support ticket research. Another team built bots to reduce repetitive Slack questions. Two groups tackled the challenge of retaining "tribal knowledge" by using Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG), unifying various scattered sources and transforming every GitHub PR and Linear Ticket into queryable institutional knowledge, not only improving developer experience but accelerating onboarding time for new joiners.
- DevEx wins: Teams built tools to automate code changes across multiple repositories, and smart test-selectors that identify exactly which tests to run based on codebase changes.
Thursday was the finale. Every single team presented a strict, three-minute pitch to show what they built in just three days.
Our Founder and CEO, Euan Blair, joined senior leaders from our Tech and Customer Success organisations to judge the projects across three specific categories:
- Most Impactful: How significantly does this improve the experience for customers, learners, or employees?
- Most Innovative: Does this push boundaries? Does it use AI in a novel way?
- Most Likely to Ship: How feasible is this? Can we realistically implement it?
We also had a People's Choice Award, voted on live by all hackathon attendees.
The shining light of the week though, in addition to the seriously impressive work in just a couple of days, was the collaboration and team culture we saw. Seeing people who might not usually work together, the diversity of opinions, and watching mid-level devs step up to lead complex projects was the real win.
“What stood out most was the speed to prototype, curiosity, collaboration, and care our teams brought to every idea. Seeing everyone learn from each other, explore new possibilities, and have fun together reminded me why moments like this are so special!”
- Helen, VP of Engineering
We aren't letting these ideas gather dust. We have already reviewed these to decide how best to productionise them and officially add them to our roadmap.
Does this sound like the kind of engineering culture you want to be part of? We are actively hiring in Tech, see live roles here(opens new window).
