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Verizon to hold hack day — for the whole company

Instead of a suggestion box, Verizon will engage its employees in an all-company hack day.

Anyone who has worked in a corporate culture for any period of times knows the drill.

Every so often, sometimes with predictable regularity, the management calls that type of meeting. It’s a meeting that brings all-hands or select-few together to work on an issue. Part brainstorming, part therapy sessions, these meetings usually come up with plenty of ideas and things to fix. It’s then up to management to decide what to pursue, if anything, and what to quietly brush under the rug.

Usually what follows in the worst organizations is getting employees’ hopes up that they have been heard, followed by a big fizzle with no communication, a corporate shake up that would have happened anyway, or a combination of both. That “transform” workshop you were invited to inspires your anxiety-ridden co-workers to warn: “Don’t transform us out of our jobs.”

Instead of putting out the proverbial suggestion box, Verizon announced it is holding an all-company hack day where everyone in the company will meet up in small teams and produce ideas. A panel of judges will decide which ideas to execute. “We’ll figure out how many of those ideas we can execute in a really quick process,” said Matt Ellis, Verizon’s CFO, in a video (see below).

June 26 is the big day, and they’re telling the world about it.

Verizon is using the language of the hackathon —a gathering of developers holed up in a room trying to solve the world’s, or just the company’s, problems — using code and technology, where ometimes all-nighters and pizza are involved.

“This is an opportunity for us to have a creative, giant brainstorming session across the whole company,” said Ellis.

ABOUT AUTHOR

Susan Rambo
Susan Rambo
Susan Rambo covers 5G for RCR Wireless News. Prior to RCR Wireless, she was executive editor on EE Times, Embedded.com, EDN.com, Planet Analog and EBNOnline. She served also EE Times’ editor in chief and the managing editor for Embedded Systems Programing magazine, a popular how-to design magazine for embedded systems programmers. Her BA in fine art from UCLA is augmented with a copyediting certificate and design coursework from UC Berkeley and UCSC Extensions, respectively. After straddling the line between art and science for years, science may be winning. She is an amateur astronomer who lugs her telescope to outreach events at local schools. She loves to hear about the life cycle of stars and semiconductors alike. She is based in the San Francisco Bay Area. Follow her on Twitter @susanm_rambo.