Jeff Wong

Looks like some of the seeds are starting to sprout in the office. Hackathon was a success!

Hackathon is probably one of my favorite events at AddThis. I worked on a couple of projects with a variety of folks last thursday/friday. Surprisingly, we won first place for our Telepresence Robot, and third place for an indoor garden.

Using an old Roomba vacuum, a laptop, and some scraps, we were able to build a fully functional telepresence robot. One of our engineers from NYC was controlling it for our presentation. And the best part was that we weaponized it with a USB nerf gun. Huge high five to Sol, Dan, Josh, Aditya and Foo.

Here’s a photo of Sol giving the preso.

Here’s a video of the robot in action. You can watch a longer video of the Robot moving around here.

A close up of the robot.

Here’s the interface I hacked together that controlled the robot.

Here’s a photo of the pillar I created. I just used a couple scraps of foam core and hot glued them together with some ribs. It’s a pretty ridged setup.

The other hackathon project that won 3rd place was a simple garden. It’s just a variety of herbs, flowers and bonsai plants. Big high five to Josh, Ror, Elizabeth and Dullah for pulling this off.

A close up photo of some of the plants.

Here’s the starter nursery. We’ll have something to show in a few weeks.

Spider plants, donated by Annie’s mother plant. These cuttings will take root in a few weeks and will be planted into pots.

Bonsai!

Fern garden! Woo too!

So we got a ton accomplished in a short amount of time. I’m honored to be part of such a talented team.

Click here to see some of my previous projects for hackathon.

Whiteboards are a huge part of how we collaborate. In addition to whiteboard walls and modular whiteboard panels, we also have columns coated in a clear whiteboard paint. They’re actually pretty useful, and the pen holders at the bottom work well.

Lots of stuff starting to come in the office. Little by little, it’s getting there. The rest of our way finding signage will installed next week.

It’s strange designing way finding signage again… It’s been a while. It’s nice to use some old skill sets. Strange how it all comes nicely together with time. I’m pretty excited about how all the office is shaping up. We’re getting there.

Here are the new cushions for the benches in our café area. Love the pattern (and it matches some of our other furniture).

Now all we need are some fun pillows in there. 🙂