When a remote team meets in real life: 8 inspiring projects from HeyOrca’s Montréal hackathon

What exactly does a remote team do when they get together in real life? 

Well, our agenda includes a whole lot of exploring, eating, and game-playing. And, of course, a little bit of work, too.

The HeyOrca Pod recently spent a week a week in Montréal for our bi-annual IRL (in real life) event. 

In between tasting all the local eats and cheering on the home team at an NHL game, we conducted a team-wide hackathon event.  

In groups, we worked on self-directed projects to support HeyOrca’s commitment to community-building and collaboration. And we’re here to tell you all about the projects that made this event such a success. 

We hope this overview of our hackathon projects serves as inspiration for your team-building sessions and gives you a better idea of what the future of HeyOrca could look like. As always, we would love your feedback and input. (Seriously, if you want to see us implement any of these projects, please send us an email to let us know!)  

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What are hackathon projects? 

Good question! HeyOrca’s goals are simple: help social media managers build communities and empower teams with highly collaborative social media management tools. The Pod was encouraged to work on any project that supported one or both of these goals. It could be a technical project for a new HeyOrca feature, an out-of-the-box marketing campaign, or a customer delight initiative to show our appreciation for our community. 

Here’s how we structured the hackathon:

1. Attend an opening session led by me, HeyOrca CEO Joe Teo. 👋
2. Pitch your idea for a hackathon project, if you have one.
3. Assemble in groups to strategize and bring the project to life.
4. Present your project to the team at the end of the week. 
5. Celebrate the Pod with a just-for-fun awards ceremony.

Now that you’re up to speed, let’s take a look at 8 of the 13 projects that we dreamed up in Montréal.

8 inspiring projects from HeyOrca’s Montréal hackathon

Here are some of the projects from our IRL event, in no particular order. If any of these projects make you think, “I could really use this,” be sure to let us know!   

1. Sentiment analysis tool for social media comments 

As social media managers, we know it’s our job to build communities. That’s a challenge in its own right. But it becomes even more tricky when you have to prove the power of social media communities to clients or team members who may not understand just how powerful communities really are. 

One way to prove that your social media community is engaged is to dive into the comments section. With that in mind, John, Matthew, Alex, Steph, and Lysle set out to make it easier for social media managers to evaluate social media comments. 

The result? A built-in sentiment analysis tool that conveys the tone of individual comments and provides an overall summary of the tone across all comments.

Does this sound like something you and your team might use to better understand your community members’ values and attitudes? 

2. Montréal customer outreach 

Our customer care and account management teams are always finding ways to connect with and delight our customers – and this project is no exception! Kat, Noelle, Zach, Liana, and Andrew took the meaning of IRL to heart by meeting up with one of our long-time customers in real life. 

They paid a visit to the customer’s Montréal-based agency to offer in-person support, good conversation, and delicious treats! 

3. HeyOrca integration marketplace 

Okay, picture this: all your social media software integrations – like Slack, Gmail, and ClickUp – all in one place. 

For their project, Dorian, Himanshu, and Naresh set out to conceptualize an integration marketplace that would make it easier for social media managers to access their favourite apps. The marketplace would also facilitate partnerships with software developers by allowing them to publish their integrations.  

We’re curious – would an integration marketplace boost your efficiency as a social media manager? 

4. Social media inspiration feed 

Raise your hand if you’ve ever been totally stumped about what to post.

Even the most creative (and chronically online) social media managers need a little inspiration now and then. That’s exactly what this project aims to deliver – relevant social media content inspo. 

We had a whole bunch of orcas working on this project: Mark, Adnan, Chad, Matheus, Christine, and Nabeel.

Their inspiration feed would help social media managers develop ideas and identify trends by pulling brand-relevant content examples from various sources. It could end up looking something like this. 

5. Shareable link for HeyOrca’s mobile app

Do you do most of your work on your desktop or on your phone? If your workplace is anything like ours, you have teammates in both camps.

For their hackathon project, Jonathan, Shiplu, Mahdi, and Jack wanted to make it easier for HeyOrca mobile app users and desktop users to collaborate. So they spent the week refining HeyOrca’s shareable link, which is the URL that makes it easy to share your entire content calendar or specific posts with your stakeholders.

This update would make it possible to send the link between desktop and mobile, enabling stakeholders to access the link on their preferred device. 

6. 2024 community wrap report 

For her hackathon project, Jesse set out to celebrate our community, highlight their accomplishments, and boost their spirits. 

Taking inspo from Spotify Wrapped, Jesse conceptualized a year-end report that would highlight the achievements each HeyOrca user experienced in 2024. The report would cover relevant accomplishments, including community growth metrics, the year’s top-performing posts, the number of posts published, and fave community comments.

Here’s a sneak peek of what this report could look like.

8. Community Discord 

Current (and future) HeyOrca Stans may be interested in this project! If you’re not familiar with it, the HeyOrca Stans is a community for our most engaged customers. Stans join the community to connect with other professionals in the social media marketing space, discover collaboration opportunities, and get early access to the newest HeyOrca features. (If you’re a HeyOrca customer who’s interested in joining, reach out to our community manager, Alyssa for more info!) 

Currently, Slack serves as our main hub for the Stans community. For their hackathon project, Jonathan and Gowtham asked themselves, “Is there a better platform to host the Stans community?” 

They proposed Discord might be a better fit. Discord offers a relaxed environment, unlimited message history, advanced voice and video chat tools, and in-depth customization for user roles. The platform also has sophisticated bots, which may help community moderation and engagement.

What’s your preference: Slack or Discord? 

8. IRL customer meet-up 

You already know that building communities is our favourite thing to do at HeyOrca. But what would it look like if we brought our social media community to the real world?

That’s the question Alyssa, Jessica, and Liana set out to answer. They laid out a plan for a fun-filled customer meet-up, complete with interactive social media workshops and out-of-the-box networking opportunities.

Fun fact: This team’s focus on community-building earned them the HeyOrca Hackathon Community Champion Award, pictured below.

If you were to attend a HeyOrca customer meet-up, where would you like it to be held? And what activities would you love for us to include?

Summary 

Alright, that’s a wrap! We hope you enjoyed learning about the hackathon projects from our Montréal IRL. If you have any suggestions for future projects or HeyOrca tools, please get in touch. Until next time, you can find us in our Facebook Community!