ShipIt Days are Cerner Engineering’s 24-hour hackathons where associates are empowered to brainstorm, plan, build, and present a project of their choice. This quarterly event is something associates enjoy by taking a break from their normal routine and focusing on a problem that they seek to achieve within a short time period (one day). The enjoyment of these projects often come from just working on something different, working with other colleagues, and applying their passions to an area they have been desiring to solve.

ShipIt Day, Cerner Engineering’s 24-hour hackathon, provides associates an environment to be creative, work on new projects, and network with other associates. This event is one of the many things that sit at the core of our Engineering Culture at Cerner, and is rapidly growing- now being hosted globally in Romania, Sweden, India, and the UK. In October, our team had the chance to participate in the seventeenth ShipIt Day at Kansas City’s Innovations Campus and managed to take home the Golden Keyboard trophy as the first place team!

Finishing our 16th occurrence of the series, our quarterly ShipIt Day hackathon invites the makers and innovators to come out and share new ways to think about our daily work here at Cerner. Whether it’s experimenting with new features or improving our developer workflows, ShipIt Day gives our engineers a chance to try and learn new things. This ShipIt day in particular had some exciting projects that melded hardware and software.

It is winter time in Kansas City, which also included our fourteenth edition of ShipIt, our routine hackathon competition we host at Cerner Engineering. Although the snowy weather may have kept participants between the warm walls of our Innovations Campus, the winter storm did not disturb the initiative and enthusiasm of the fourteen participating teams. Check out the video below to hear from ShipIt Day participants and supporters as to why ShipIt Day has become an engineering-wide program that supports Cerner’s development culture.

What does it take to be awarded the ShipIt Day Golden Keyboard? ShipIt Day XIII concluded last week after an intense 24-hours of brainstorming, building, and presenting. Various projects were completed by Cerner associates across twelve diverse organizations. ShipIt Day XIII’s projects were some of the most technically advanced this competition has ever seen. Awarding the Golden Keyboard is no easy job for our judges. Back in 2014, the trophy was created to provide the winning team with a memento that was unique and grew with the competition.

This month we held our quarterly hackathon event- called ShipIt Day. We would like to thank all the participants for making ShipIt Day XII a huge success. With 75 participants, we had associates representing 13 different organizations across Cerner. These associates were given 24-hours to meet the requirements of this hackathon which included making something that was innovative, usable, and value-adding. As the clock ticked down, our associates worked in their teams to complete a project while taking some time to enjoy the fun activities happening throughout ShipIt day.

On March 8th and 9th, 17 teams of Cerner associates competed for the Golden Keyboard during our 11th ShipIt Day. During this 24-hour hackathon, associates were challenged to create something innovative, usable, and value-adding. This was the fourth ShipIt held at our new Innovations Campus, leveraging the wonderful collaborative spaces available. With Shipit XI, we expanded upon a time-honored tradition of this event, the traveling trophy Golden Keyboard.

On December 14th and 15th, 18 teams of Cerner associates competed for the Golden Trophy during our tenth ShipIt Day. Being this was our tenth, it was fun to reflect back on how this event started and how much it has grown. It has been great to see ShipIt Days start from small hackathons organically run by individual teams to now an engineering-wide quarterly event that brings together engineers from disparate organizations, allowing for a better cross-pollination of ideas and team members.

There is no better way to end summer than with ShipIt Day! We kicked off our ninth ShipIt Day on August 10th, with more than 75 Cerner associates signed up. Nineteen different teams worked for 24 hours straight to complete their projects. For those unfamiliar with the event, ShipIt Day is a 24 hour hackathon for internal associates to create something innovative, usable, and value-adding. This was the second ShipIt held at our new Innovations Campus.

ShipIt Day VIII was held on April 20 and 21st. Seventeen teams made up of internal associates had just 24 hours to create something innovative, usable, and value-adding. This quarter’s ShipIt Day was held at our new Innovations Campus in the Link Conference Center. We were excited to get to utilize the space for this event. Another awesome addition to this quarter’s ShipIt Day was our new game rooms.

Cerner’s 7th ShipIt Day took place on December 8th and 9th. ShipIt is a 24-hour hackathon with the goal of building something awesome, usable, and value-adding within a single day. The event was hosted at our DevCenter in the Realization Campus, a large open space that hosts our DevAcademy (to learn more about our DevAcademy, check out this earlier post). We had 18 teams made up of associates from different Cerner organizations.

Another ShipIt Day was held on September 8th-9th at the Realization Campus at Cerner. ShipIt is a 24-hour hackathon with the goal of building something awesome, usable, and value-adding within a single day. This fall marked our sixth ShipIt, which has has grown significantly since our first event. The event kicked off in the morning at the auditorium of our Realization campus. At this point, teams were already formed, instructions were given, and shirts were handed out.

ShipIt Day is an all day, all night hackathon with the goal of building something awesome, usable, and value-adding within the given 24 hours. This Spring marked our fifth ShipIt Day, with participation and reach growing with each event. We kicked off the event at 10 AM on Thursday, when teams broke out and got to work and stopped only for food and caffeine. Many stayed until a few hours after dinner arrived, several stayed all night and took naps in their workspace, and a few worked through the whole night.

At the end of March, some of our teams held their first 24-hour hackathon, titled ShipIt: Millennium+ Services FedEx Day. We had 41 participants, in 15 teams working on 15 unique projects. The idea was inspired by several teams spending a few hours every so often to work on different projects. After reading about Atlassian’s hack days, we decided to hold one. The event was initially announced early in February, to give teams time to work this into their project plans.