The Spark Behind the Hackathon

“Ultimately it was an opportunity to get the full team together. We all work across different areas within the team. We have modellers, the Enact team, some developing new products, and others on the Digital Services side. We rarely collaborate together under one banner, and the hackathon was a perfect opportunity for this.

Given the varied nature of our projects, we have a range of skill sets within the team. The goal of the hackathon was twofold: to expose the team to new developer skills where they could learn from one another, and to build a deeper understanding of LLMs, which will be crucial in our day-to-day roles moving forwards.

I think what I loved most about it though was that we all just had fun with it. We had pizzas and drinks at the end of the day, and we all came away feeling energised and motivated. It’s important to me that people who want to build a development career for themselves know that they can do that at LCP, and the hackathon really supported that.

Feels Like Team Spirit

We split everyone into teams and set the brief in advance, so they all came in knowing exactly what they were going to do with their time. The teams had six hours to build a fully functioning LLM-based application, with a show-and-tell at the end.

I’ve run hackathons before and have found that people can sometimes doubt their own capabilities to produce something functional in what is actually a short amount of time. Mixing up the teams meant there was a range of experiences and skill sets that people could learn from, but also play to their strengths. This worked really well on the day. The team got exposure to new coding techniques and quickly learned skills they wouldn’t have done in their day jobs.

I was so impressed by everyone’s enthusiasm. They were very ambitious with their ideas, embraced their curiosity, and were excited about the day. Everyone built something they were truly proud of. This kind of infectious excitement is the environment we want to keep cultivating within the team.

What's Next?

One of the outcomes from the day is that the teams want to take forward one of the ideas. The tool demoed during the hackathon could automatically scrape and summarise news articles to help the team stay on top of energy policies and updates within the market.

Having some focused time, as a team, away from the day-to-day to just experiment, work with new people and think more broadly was invaluable. The day’s success is testament to our culture of curiosity and innovation. The hackathon was a powerful reminder that innovation flourishes when curiosity and teamwork are at the forefront. It reinforced the sense of community amongst the team and that LCP is a place where you can “develop”, have a good time, enjoy the work you’re doing and collaborate with great people.

I’m excited for us to continue building a place where we can nurture different types of careers across the business, and I’d encourage others to consider how curiosity can be fostered within their departments and to take the plunge into trying something new as a team!”