The Announcement of the PromoStandards Hackathon, the First of its Kind, Caused Excitement to Ripple Across the Industry.
“From the moment the event was announced, we knew we could win this thing!” Jason Reinhardt, Brikl’s CCO, reflects. “Not only do we have the most talented engineering team in the industry, but we also deal with the event’s problem statements daily.”
The event showcased the potential of technology and its ability to transform the daily operations of companies plagued by legacy systems: chaotic order management and processing, systems that don’t talk to one another, slow APIs, and poor catalog management.
As the PPAI noted, “The PromoStandards Technology Summit highlights an industry mission, shared by PPAI, to solve technological challenges in the promo industry. Streamlining processes with versatile and efficient business service platforms is a constant goal for promo companies, especially as their lists of clients and orders grow. More than ever, digital transformation is needed”.
These industry pain points are Brikl’s reasons for existing. And we couldn’t be more excited to show how our best-in-class engineering team and developers could help provide working solutions to these seemingly insurmountable real-world challenges.
The Process
The hackathon’s winning entry was expected to have the most technologically sound solution and the most creative presentation. So, first off, we assembled a cross-functional team:
- Phoomparin Mano, VP of Engineering
- Peerarust Siriamphan, Backend Engineering Manager
- Suz Pathmanathan, VP of Marketing
- Chad Sparrow, VP of Product
- Jason Reinhardt, Chief Commercial Officer
- And Lisa Hubbard, VP of Sales and Marketing at The Vernon Company.
After some discussion and brainstorming, we saw that our solution would act as a universal plug, helping integrate websites and platforms with PromoStandards while speeding up the API to search and synchronize data.
“We decided on the team name ‘The Adaptors’ as a reference to this universal plug concept with a retro theme to fit,” Suz comments. “I then started working with Chad on a comedy intro video, in the style of a pharmaceutical ad, that could play before the presentation kicked off. It was so fun!”
The team’s willingness and ability to go the extra mile went down to code level. Check out this behind-the-scenes video that showcases the commitment, energy, and dedication it took to create the winning entry to PromoStandards’ first-ever annual hackathon.
