Its “The Winjit MobiThon Night”

We all have heard about the Indian Premier League, English Premier League, Big Bash League, Indian Badminton League, Indian Football League and every other league in the sports world. Locally it was the Winjit Cricket League (WCL) which was the word of mouth until yesterday in Winjit.

With a mind set to inculcate a “Technology Thinking” at the grass root level and to give a simulant kick to the brains of fellow Winjitians, we started the Winjit Technology League (WTL) that transformed the equations at Winjit. This innovative concept in itself attracted a huge crowd of participant’s.

WTL was initiated to bring the concepts of sports into our day to day work life. It brought a sense of healthy competition, highest level performance and collaborative achievement into the software development.

As a stepping stone into the WTL Championship, the first event organized was “MobiThon”. Inspired from the famous Hackathon, this competition required Winjitians from diverse streams to come together as a group and develop an innovative solution. Winjitians from Development, Quality, Design, International Sales, Business Analysis, and Marketing came together to create a mobile application overnight. Colleagues who would had interacted formally in office hours were now slogging out on ideas and application to win the MobiThon Championship.

A simple theme, “Think Wild” wherein all the freedom in respect to technology, the idea and the thinking was awarded.

Within just 12 hours, just 720 minutes, Winjitians came out with staggering ideas and incredible mobile applications overcoming all the time and resource constraints.

Thinking through on the MobiThon and the performances of the team members, I asked myself why did the teams come together so well, what drove them to sit the entire night and develop something innovative, why were they able to identify the problems and find solutions, why was there no cribbing about time constraints and all other typical concerns we have when we start a project.

Below are a few answers I could think of, and your comments are welcome.

1. Unconventional Idea :The MobiThon concept itself was very new and exciting for all
2. Freedom of Thought: The ideas were theirs. There was a feeling of owner ship about the idea and excitement that they are solving a problem.
3. Motivation: Whatever they did, how simple their idea was, it was valued and was important. They were supported and motivated by the directors and senior leadership themselves.
4. No Supervision: Everyone felt they were the specialists in what they did. No expert comments and no reviews were involved.
5. Freedom of Expression: They had the freedom to execute their thoughts. A freedom to take decisions, which itself is a great motivating factor.
6. Given Time Frame: The teams knew their deadlines. They knew what they had to do and by when. They were working unsupervised.
7. On Your Own: In case of development time problem, they knew they were the ones who had to solve the problems. No one was going to come and solve the problems for them.
8. Team Spirit: Everyone was driven by the thought to contributing to the team. We had development and sales team members doing testing and hard core developers doing the final presentations.
9. No Fear of Failure: They knew, even if they fail, it would not be a waste of time. They will still take back the pride of participating in a MobiThon.
10. Role of Recognition: Finally, more than the Winner rewards, it was the recognition in the work place that brought the best of everyone.

In a nutshell MobiThon received an overwhelming response and was a great triumph in bringing together all the witty Winjitians to devise some brilliant mobile apps.

MobiThon