# BBC Hack Week

DevFeed: [BBC Hack Week](<https://devfeed.tech/articles/bbc-hack-week-19168.md>)

Original publisher: [Read original article](<https://medium.com/bbc-product-technology/bbc-hack-week-fb7d0816e11f?source=rss----ccd524e1760a---4>)

Author: David Buckhurst

Published: 2022-02-10T21:20:33Z

Content type: opinion

Language: en

Sources: [BBC](<https://devfeed.tech/sources/bbc.md>)

Topics: [AdventureX 2025](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/adventurex2025.md>), [Software Engineering](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/software-engineering.md>), [Development](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/development.md>), [DevOps](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/devops.md>)

Tags: [bbc](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/bbc.md>), [collaboration](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/collaboration.md>), [feature](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/feature.md>), [hackathon](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/hackathon.md>), [hackathons](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/hackathons.md>), [hacking](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/hacking.md>), [ideation](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/ideation.md>), [innovation](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/innovation.md>), [prototype](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/prototype.md>), [software-development](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/software-development.md>), [team](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/team.md>)

## AI overview

The article discusses the BBC's annual end-of-year hack week, explaining how hackathons support ideation, innovation, collaboration, and rapid prototype development. It also shares practical guidance for organizing large hackathon events, including allowing teams to self-organize and defining goals in advance.

## Source excerpt

Hackathons, innovation days, codefests -- whatever you call them -- have been a feature of the tech industry for the last 20 years, and one of the most powerful ideation tools at our disposal. The premise is simple, given a theme or problem space, the hackathon participants must self-organise into teams to explore ideas, write some code, and deliver a working prototype or demo in a ridiculously short period of time. In my time at the BBC I've taken part in many different flavours of hack -- from large multi-department events, collaborations with other organisations, 24-hour hacks, week long hacks ... no two are ever the same. It's also been my privilege to organise many of these events -- in particular our annual end-of-year hack week. The tradition of the end-of-year hack predates my 9 years at the BBC. It's origins are back in our pre-devops days, where our operations team managed our live systems for us, and the run up to Christmas was accompanied by a strict change freeze that brought all development to a crawl. Using this downtime for hacks and ideation was a great change of pace and a chance to connect with colleagues. The days of strict change freezes are long gone, but the end-of-year hack has just grown and grown over the years, and has firmly established itself as a fixture of software engineering at the BBC. Our most recent hack was the biggest ever, a week-long event in the middle of December, bringing together all our development teams. Everyone was invited to participate; Omicron had just cast a new shadow of uncertainty, and forced us all back into Zoom again. A week focused on innovation and collaboration was very much the distraction we needed. If you ever have the good fortune to organise an event of this size (we had 68 teams and nearly enough participants to smash the 500-person Zoom limit), there are some things we've learnt over the years to make these events the success... Allow teams to self-organise Resist the urge to over-manage the hack. Teams ten