In early May, our development team took a week off from their normal priorities to work on their passion projects. This specific week is called “Hack Week.” It allows our developers to play with new technology and try different projects that are a bit outside of the box. It inspires creativity and creates cross collaborative teams that may have never happened in the first place.
Some major features that are seen in BombBomb’s tech stack now were actually originally Hack Week projects that were too good to not push into production. One of those being Re/Actions!
WARNING: Most of these projects will not become a part of the BombBomb Suite. That being said, the project that receives the most votes will have a very good shot at being added to the product roadmap. In the voting form at the bottom of this page you can submit your vote and tell us why you believe this particular product could change your business. This feedback will be given directly to our product team to help them make a decision on future product needs.
Many of our employees claimed that 2019’s Hack Week was the best one they’ve ever witnessed. This was my third Hack Week, and I’d have to agree with them.
I was ASTONISHED with all of the amazing new ideas that came to life in just one weeks time.
Something new to this year’s presentations was the integration of product designers. While normally developers would just partake in Hack Week, product designers were also brought into the mix to elevate the look and feel of these software ideas.
At the end of the presentations, two teams received a trophy for the “most fun” and the “best overall” projects. But there’s still one more award to be won – and we need your help in determining who should be given the final trophy.
Check out each of the projects in the post below. At the bottom of the page, you will find a form that will allow you to vote for your favorite. The project with the most votes by 8am Friday, May 24th, will be given the Community Trophy!
We hope you enjoy.
Hack Week Project One: Gather – Nathan Pope & Jeremy Lentz
Quick Take: An instant messaging program that allows you to communicate with coworkers and clients.
Gather works similarly to Slack or Google Hangout. It allows you to communicate with various channels, contact groups and lists through instant messaging. Each of your contact lists can be added into a relevant “room” or messaging channel. You can sign in through various social networks and email providers but for this demo, Nathan used Google!
In his presentation, Nathan created a video and uploaded it quickly to the messaging platform. The videos were able to be watched natively inside the room, and they showcased a thumbnail (something you don’t normally see inside Slack!)
Check out Nathan’s presentation below.
To test out Gather yourself – click here!
** Please note that only Google Chrome and Mobile Chrome can access the Gather prototype.
Hack Week Project Two: Can You Read Me Now – Tom Harrington
Quick Take: This project automatically adds subtitles or transcriptions to your videos.
Transcriptions are a feature that so many of our customers have asked for. And we get it – there’s a good reason for this feature request. Maybe you work in an industry that’s heavily regulated and you need to be compliant. Or maybe you need to communicate with people who can’t hear as well as you. We even understand that sometimes your recipients aren’t in a good place where they can watch the video.
Tom’s project automatically transcribes your videos with ease. Check out the video below to learn more and see a live demo!
Hack Week Project Three: Helm – Aaron Burk & Zech Williams
Quick Take: A large scale distributed email data engine
Helm compiles all of the relevant email tracking information so that our customers can get really granular about who they should be sending to, and at what time. It breaks down day by day how many open, clicks, and plays all of your emails receive. It even breaks down what times people are opening emails, as well as what time they are clicking on the call-to-action in these specific emails. If you send emails to specific groups and you want to get granular on when the people in these groups open your emails – Helm can give you that information too.
With this information – Helm is able to recommend specifically when to send an email to a particular person that you have a history with. So what if the suggested email time is 6:46pm and you’re already off work and at home with your family? No problem. Helm gives you the option to schedule that send for the suggested time – increasing your chances for email success.
Take a look at Zech and Aaron’s work on Helm in the video below!
Hack Week Project Four: Enhance – Sven Johnson – Most Fun
Quick Take: Automatically improve the audio in all of your BombBomb videos.
Outside of work, Sven is a musician. He has 15 years of audio experience under his belt. Because of this he understands how important sound quality is in your videos. He actually shows an example of this in his demo video when he shows the same video two different ways. In one video, the imagery is blurry, in the second video, the sound is muffled.
Guess which video was much easier to retain? Video one!
Sven offers a solution for people who are often filming BomBbomb videos on the go and do not have access to fancy audio enhancers. His project was a hit with the BomBbomb employees which helped him win in the “Most Fun” category. Check out his solution in the video below.
Hack Week Project Five: Project Triton- Lisa Shipley, Brenna Flinton, Chris Bachicha, Ryan Hill, Matt Pedersen, and Travis Anderson.
Quick Take: Project Triton is an improvement to the current team experience.
In the last year or so team accounts have become a major initiative for BombBomb. We even released a team dashboard that allows team admins to view details on all of their users.
Because of this, Ryan and team decided to create a reimagined experience for BombBomb Team Admins that was accessible on both a mobile device and desktop. The new experience is beautifully formatted and loads instantly with both online and offline access. It offers direct notifications to team admins with roll up stats to let them know how their teams content is performing.
Check out this new and exciting team experience in the demo below!
Hack Week Project Six: Project Outlook – Joe Wintergerst
Quick Take: A process that will create a faster and more reliable Outlook release.
Joe is our resident Outlook Expert. For his project, he created a new process that will internally help our CS team and Product Owners through the aches and pains of a product update or release.
The suggested process creates a faster, more reliable release.
Check out Joe’s demo below!
Hack Week Project Seven: Ignite – Amelia Winstead, Brenna Flinton, and Emilie Thoreson
Quick Take: An Improvement to our current contacts page
Amelia decided to source her project from our very own customer care team. And all of them agreed that the best hack week project they could think of would be an improvement to our current contacts page.
Her final project was a new experience for users that utilize the contact page inside BombBomb. This includes a new look that is easier to read, sort, add news lists, and even add and delete fields. The contact cards also received an updated look.
There are so many improvements to this page that it’s hard to list them all. Check out Amelia’s demo in the video below.
Hack Week Project Eight: Project Ocean – Shane Cowherd, Nate Nieto.
Quick Take: An improvement to the entire mobile keyboard experience as well as enhanced tracking.
I personally found Shane’s presentation the most entertaining. Try to watch this video without chanting “project ocean” at the end, I dare you.
This presentation shows off a couple projects that Shane is suggesting should be added to our current BombBomb applications. The first project is an upgrade to the current iOS screen recorder. The upgrade allows you to record your screen from your actual iOS keyboard. It also allows you to send your video with an animated GIF directly inside your primary email application – whatever that may be.
The next feature was an upgrade to Android keyboard experience that allows the BombBomb Powerwheel to follow you through all of your applications on your mobile device.
See all of Shane’s feature suggestions in the video attached.
Hack Week Project Nine: Project Fahrenheit – Ava Gretzinger, Daniel Zrust, and Charles Gibson.
Quick Take: Fahrenheit allows you to keep track of all of your engagements in one place, and respond to them from there as well.
Note: Daniel and Charles were unfortunately out sick during the Hack Week presentations. The two of them worked with Product Designer, Ava, on a project called “Fahrenheit.” Ava explains this project in the video above at the end of Shane’s presentation. Fahrenheit is essentially a heat map of all your videos and what’s happened with them through various mediums – meaning the number of likes, comments, and shares they’ve received. Fahrenheit allows you to keep track of all of your engagements in one place, and respond to them from there as well.
Hack Week Project Ten: Project C4 – BombBomb Everywhere – Jeremy Kelly, Thomas Pendergrass, Ava Gretzinger, Rob Ballou – Best Overall
Quick Take: A new ability that will allow you to integrate BombBomb more deeply within the tools you already use – without us having to build an integration to do so.
And to round our Hack Week presentations we’re going to share the winner of our “Best Overall Award.” BombBomb Everywhere is a project that allows us to focus on one of our core competencies and scale it. That competency is “We Work Where You Work.”
We want to work inside the software you already use. And in many cases we do – for example, Gmail, Outlook, iOS, and Android. But we understand that there are smaller software programs that you use that you’d like to send videos within as well. And for us to do that – we’d normally have to spend months building an integration… until now. (well maybe – let’s hope this project becomes real – but we can’t make any immediate promises :))
“BombBomb Everywhere” will allow you to send BombBomb legitimately anywhere you can right click. Once you right click you will be able to send a video and track your sends inside the applications you use daily.
This project also works to fix a pain point we’ve heard about our screen recorder. We understand that most people don’t like to download the screen recorder software to use it themselves. Now screen recorder is available without the installation!
Finally – Jeremy addresses another product pain point – the inability to customize your video landing pages. Guess what – with this possible product upgrade – you can! We’ll give you the opportunity to control the header above your video, and even add a call-to-action beneath each video you send! You can even add your logo to the landing page as well.
Watch the “BombBomb Everywhere” demonstration below.
