No Code, Hack Mode
Our first in-person No Code Lab event since the pandemic took off, with our very first No Code Hack! The hack saw five teams of non-techies come together with tech partners, to build their very own MVP, fighting for the chance to be crowned the No Code Lab Hack winner of 2022. From method acting to elephant appearances, the hack saw it all.
Ready, Steady, Hack
The hack was kicked off by our co-founders Zandra Moore and Georgia Halston, who welcomed everyone to the event, introduced our teams and tech partners and went through the agenda for the day. Georgia let the teams know how they could bribe the judges with food or convos about star trek and swimming.
Our teams got started at 9:00 am with their tech partners to brainstorm and start designing their solutions. They were asked to build an MVP that could be used within their organisation, to help or solve a problem.
Candlelighters X Panintelligence
Candlelighters are an amazing charity, that bring light and hope to every family affected by childhood cancer across Yorkshire.
“I didn’t realise how amazing the solution we could build from a no-code platform could be.”
– Candlelighters
Their tech partner Panintelligence is a three-in-one single solution, combining BI with intuitive reporting and predictive analytics. Their solution displays actionable information in real-time, in an easily digestible visual format with the ability to drill to the underlying data.
“The benefit to using this solution is that its open to everybody, with general coding it takes a lot more practice and a lot more strategic thinking, but with no code anybody can do it and it gets everyone involved.”
– Panintelligence
Candlelighters wanted to create a solution that captured the comments and feedback that they receive from the families they support, which is vital for their charity. The solution would allow them to retrieve and store the information in one dedicated place, meaning everyone within the charity would have visibility to quickly capture, analyse and action the data to provide a better service to their families. Paninteliigence guided the team to build and design their concept, adding user profiles and embedded videos.
Panintelligence X Accessed Memory
Panintelligence submitted a team compromising of their non-techie sales team, who had never used no code before. The team came up with some great names for their solution including DeskPacito, but they thought it might have required them to sing.
“With no code we’ve learnt its ease and use. If we can anyone can.”
– Panintelligence
Accessed Memory, their tech partner are two friendly, local, and somewhat opinionated data scientists specialising in the most current algorithms. Accessed Memory were deep diving into Bubble only a week before the hack, getting ready to help the pi team.
“You can create an MVP really quickly, be really cheap and helps validate an idea before you actually sit down and learn a new language, it’s a lot more accessible.”
– Accessed Memory
The non techie pi team and Accessed Memory created ‘PiDaaS’, a table booking management system, to help encourage team members into returning to work after the pandemic. Their existing excel spreadsheet system wasn’t working, whereas this new solution gives employees the ability and freedom to book their chosen desks and check in for meetings online. Their MVP combined the desk boking system with an event calendar, that detailed marketing and social activities that employees could join, whilst also adding a wellness survey feature. The feature allows Panintelligence to track how their employees are feeling and make any necessary improvements to their organisation, whilst keeping a keen eye on monitoring covid symptoms and cases. The non-techie team wanted to take some pi platform key features, by being white labelled, embedding into other platforms and going straight to market strategy.
The future of PiDaaS will see the platform being used in a wider market, to encourage other businesses to provide a positive workplace culture, adapt the event section to boost the Leeds tech ecosystem and develop pi employees’ engagement aspect with partnership programmes, and employee rewards schemes.
Tendable X No Code Ninja
Tendable is a healthtech company bringing people together to better understand and improve quality through technology.
“I came here not really knowing what to expect.”
“No Code does seem to be that you can turn things around really quickly, and that’s quite an eye opener. We work with a Dev team at Tendable, but we never really appreciated what they do and how much work is involved.”
– Tendable
Our very own no code ninja joined us for the day, who’s mission it to launch better web apps, faster. Richard Eaton can design and build projects in weeks, not months, using no code development tools (usually Bubble.io).
As Tendable has a healthcare background they built their solution around a huge problem that the NHS and medical theatres are facing. One of the huge issues that the NHS is facing is wasted capacity, especially with theatre slots, with currently 6 million people on waiting lists for operations in the UK. Tendable found there were endless reasons to why operations are cancelled, with each slot costing £10k. The team wanted to create efficiency within the theatre rota, to ensure all time slots are at full capacity to help reduce this loss.
No Code Ninja used his ninja skills to develop the Tendable ‘Bump App’, that manages theatre rotas. The App sends push notifications to patients to confirm their slot and make sure they have followed the correct procedure to be able to have their surgery. Theatre and cleaning staff, and anyone else that is invested in the rota, has access to real-time information on the surgery time, type, and patient. If for whatever reason anyone cancels the appointment, the app automatically “bumps up” the next patient. The App can be used by executives to see how many hours and the amount of slots they’ve saved.
Throughout the day Tendable reached out to their colleagues to get their feedback on what they had built to improve it even further, even though they ignored the feedback on their solutions name and went with it anyway.
BJSS X BJSS
BJSS are a technology and engineering consultancy for business, that delivers complex, innovative technology, engineering and industry solutions that millions of people use every day. BJSS submitted a finance team to work alongside their tech team which used Microsoft Power Apps to build their website.
The team wanted to create a solution, which would help BJSS be more involved within the community. BJSS built a product where the company can encourage employees to take part in charity work, in or out of work hours. The website featured a dashboard, where team members could find various charities, events, or volunteering work, and easily add them to their timesheet.
“I’m surprised at how we’ve been able to use the application, to get it up and going. It’s easy and we’ve been able to do it ourselves. With a finance background, I never thought I would be able to come to an event like this.”
– BJSS
Clarion X Toca
At Clarion, they are a team of experienced, talented, and committed lawyers who want to get you to where you want to be. The team consisted of highly intelligent lawyers who held no experience within no code and were very excited to be out the office for a day. The Clarion team had no idea what to expect from the hack, and initially thought we were hacking the Government.
“No Code is a lot easier than we thought it would be, we’ve managed to put something together in a limited amount of time.”
– Clarion
Their tech partner Toca are a no-code enterprise development platform that allows organisations to rapidly build digital veneers on top of existing systems and processes. With drag-and-drop functionality at its core, Toca accelerates the speed of development of digital transformation projects by 20x.
“The biggest benefit is speed. What we have demonstrated today is the speed of bringing things to life. Realistically we’ve built something fairly complex within six hours, and the next couple of hours will be polishing it. It’s also the agility, being able to come up with ideas and change it around quickly.”
“The pandemic has shown that things change so quickly with a business and everyday life, there is a need for solutions to be delivered really quickly and no code is the perfect tool to do that.”
– Toca
Clarion and Toca built a CRS tracker for solicitors and firms across Leeds, to log how much charity and corporate social responsibility work they are doing. The Toca team created features for the Clarion CRS app, so users have their own user profile to log donations and activities. Users can see exactly how much they’ve raised, the time they’ve spent fundraising and gain an insight into who they are competing against, with their leader board feature. The solution links to Clarions marketing material, where users can drive more donations and show their support to charities.
Hacking the Hack
The No Code Lab team couldn’t miss out on the action and decided to hack the hack. Using Panintelligence’s platform and their expertise, we created a solution that analysed all the social media output from the day, looking into which posts were the most successful from engagement and impressions and which of our followers had the most followers on their platforms.
The Final Countdown
The evening saw us network the night away, with our teams and tech partners presenting their newly produced MPV’s. Our judges Jordan Appleson (Founder and CEO at Hark), Jem Henderson (Community and Content Manager at Digital Catapult) and William Schaffer (Investment Director at Mercia Asset Management PLC), were given the hard task of crowning our winner. The feedback from the judges around the interesting concepts and MVPs our teams and tech partners built was amazing.
All the teams and tech partners were eager to win the No Code Lab Hack title, but due to their great acting and star appearance of their mascot Champ the Elephant alongside their fantastically built platform, Candlelighters X Panintelligence were crowned our ‘Overall Winner!’ The judges said they could see this solution being built upon and used in the future.
The solution that Candlelighters produced, got them thinking of how they could develop it to be compatible with mobile devices, for easy and quick access for their staff. We can’t wait to see how they use this fantastic MVP!!
There was no doubt that the method acting of Tendables very own Theatre Manager at Emmerdale Hospital, had won over our judges as well. Tendable X No Code Ninja were crowned our ‘Tech for Good’ winner, with our judges saying, “The solution solves and directs a huge problem within the healthcare sector.” Their solution not only helps save money; it also relieves pressure from the waiting list of surgeries so that patients can be seen quicker.
We want to say a huge thanks to everyone involved and those who joined us for the No Code Lab Hack 2022. The teams and tech partners demonstrated the true power of no code that the technology enables and facilitates the creation and isn’t a barrier to entry, with all the amazing MVP’s that were built by our non tech teams. Since the event was a great success, we can’t wait to get started on the No Code Lab Super Hack! If you’d like to get involved, get in touch.
