HeyOrca explores what’s possible with AI at our first virtual hackathon

At HeyOrca, we’ve been putting a lot of energy into encouraging innovation and exploration as a way to help our team members grow.

Our CEO, Joe, believes AI has already transformed our daily lives, but its real potential lies in reshaping how we work. With that in mind, we dedicated two and a half days to our first-ever virtual hackathon: AI Days.

The focus wasn’t on polished projects, but on learning together, embracing failure as part of progress, and testing the limits of what AI can do.

Investing in growth is core to who we are, whether through growth budget, our unlimited book budget program, or internal internships. Our “Grow and Tell” culture means celebrating every stage of learning, even when things don’t go as planned.

AI Days gave us the chance to experiment, be bold, and strengthen connections as a team. I can’t wait to take you through the journey of how it all went!

Inside AI Days: the experience

Here’s a look at how our AI Days went, from the planning and preparation to the team’s learning, fun, and everything in between.

The Planning

After the excitement of deciding what AI Days would be, the next big question was how to actually make it happen.

When Joe approached me with the idea, I was equally excited and intimidated. I’ve only been working in tech for four years, and I had never planned (or even participated in) a hackathon before. Luckily, we took the same approach to planning as we did to learning: prioritize fun and connection, see what works, and improve next time.

We chose Gather.town as our virtual office for the event, which offered a free trial and a built-in office template that made setup quick and easy. I added a few custom logos, and once the team started decorating their desks, it really felt like our own space was coming together. We even gave out a “Best Desk” award at the end of the hackathon.

One of the team’s favourite features was the go-kart racing track, where one of our developers, John, swept all three leaderboards! Of course, the free version of Gather.town wasn’t perfect. It could get slightly laggy, and since we couldn’t record sessions, we switched to Zoom for keynotes, guest speakers, and project presentations.

To add extra fun and incentive, we also created some special awards with the help of our social committee:

• The Rocketship Emoji Award: For the team or project that jumped into AI headfirst and made fast, impressive progress.
  
  
• Flip Flop Award: For the team or project that “flipped” a flop into a win by learning, adapting, and growing along the way.
  
  
• Making Waves Award: For the team or project that was most inspiring to others.

Stay tuned for some of our winners further down.

The Highlights

We were lucky to have so many highlights, however the first was a presentation by Mark, one of our Engineering Managers, who geeks out on AI regularly.

He led a session on how to create the best prompts and make AI your bestie. This gave the team tips, tricks, and a solid foundation to dive into the tools and trends for their own projects. It also gave everyone a chance to ask questions and explore how AI could connect to their own work or to HeyOrca itself.

Joe also invited two guest speakers from our community who brought fresh insight and inspiration:

• Peter from Mysa showcased his current AI project using vibe coding.
• Dups, Chief Impossible Officer (CIO) at Supermetrics and Venture Partner at OpenOcean, presented a more technical session for our developers.
  

We wanted to make sure we had speakers who could connect with both the business and product side of the pod.

The next highlights worth mentioning were a wellness break to help the team reset and a virtual scavenger hunt with riddles and hidden objects in Gather.town. (PS: Jonathan won the scavenger hunt!)

But the biggest highlight was definitely the project presentations. Each team shared their exploration journey, and we celebrated not just the wins, but also the failures because those moments showed growth and boldness. 

Curious about what was built?

In total, our team created 22 projects - ranging from Jesse’s Pricing Calculator, to Adnan’s AI Tech Support Agent, to a Deal Calculator from our Sales team. Beyond the projects themselves, what really stood out were the learning journeys, where even the flops became celebrated moments of growth.

And remember those fun awards above? Here are some of our winners! 

• The Rocketship Emoji Award: Mathew with his project “AI Gateway” 
• Flip Flop Award: Natalie with her project “I was lost, you can look, but you won’t like it: Flop after flop”

The Learning

Focusing on learning and exploration was the main goal of AI Days. The team was able to pause their day-to-day work and dive into how AI can assist with their routines.

Here’s what a few of our teammates had to say:

• Amélie (Software Developer):
  "AI can be a lot more useful and robust than I first expected. Most of my history with it involved poor-quality code or missed objectives, but that was just using a tab on the GPT site. Once we got Cursor and I learned how to give it the context and direction it needed, it’s been speeding up my work substantially. Same thing with learning how to prompt properly—courtesy of Mark. Iterating with the agent made my project much more presentable than it otherwise would have been."
  
  
• Natalie (Marketing):
  "The biggest lesson I learned during AI Days was that there are as many limitations with AI as there are possibilities. AI is often described as a magical box that can produce anything you want, but that’s not always the case! You still have to work within set limitations, and it was very eye-opening to see that."
  
  
• Christine (Designer):
  "One of the biggest lessons I’ve learned is to think outside the box with AI. There are endless possibilities, and creativity is key."
  

From a planning perspective, AI Days also taught us a lot about collaboration. With varying levels of comfort and knowledge of AI, many team members felt more at ease sticking to their own projects or immediate teams. Looking ahead to future virtual hackathons, we’ll plan for a longer duration to maximize building and collaboration time and create more opportunities for cross-project teamwork.

Our post-event survey confirmed these reflections. The event received an average rating of 4.25/5, and 88% of respondents said they left feeling more confident using AI.

Together, these results show that while AI can feel intimidating at first, real growth happens when we experiment, share, and even fail forward, exactly what AI Days was designed to encourage.

Beyond AI Days: What Does AI and Virtual Hackathons Look Like for Our Orcas?

Now that we’ve wrapped up AI Days, what does AI look like for our Orcas moving forward? 

Continuing the learning journey is a big part of how we’re using AI in everyday life at HeyOrca. We encourage our team to explore new tools and resources, as well as share their own passion projects.

Recently, we saw the impact of AI Days in action. Both our business and technical teams experimented with vibe coding to prototype hackathon projects at our IRL team retreat, while our marketing team collaborated on a webinar to share what they built and the lessons they learned with our community. (link to webinar)

Here’s how some of our Orcas are thinking differently about AI:

• Gowtham (Software Developer):
  "That experience has definitely shaped the way I view AI now. It encouraged me to dive deeper into AI/ML—not just from a high-level perspective, but also at the technical and practical layers: understanding services, algorithms, and how to apply them to real business problems. Following AI Days, I committed to strengthening my skills and have since completed both the AWS AI Practitioner and AWS Certified Machine Learning Engineer – Associate certifications."
  
  
• Jesse (Marketing):
  "AI isn't going anywhere! We’re seeing more and more site traffic coming directly from ChatGPT every month, and a growing number of free trial users are mentioning it as the reason they decided to try HeyOrca. For marketers, that’s a clear signal: it’s worth paying attention to how your peers, and also, your audience, are using AI."
  

When we asked the team what themes they’d like to explore in our next virtual hackathon, ideas ranged from tackling items in our product backlog to discovering new ways to bring delight to our customers, community, and app.

With AI as a partner, our focus is on empowering people, not replacing them. At HeyOrca, AI helps teams move faster, improve workflows, and automate repetitive tasks - freeing everyone to focus on the work that matters most. It also opens up opportunities for collaboration and creativity, making it easier to brainstorm, experiment, and turn ideas into action. By creating space to fail forward, explore boldly, and share knowledge, we’re building a culture where growth and innovation happen every day.

Conclusion

We envisioned AI Days as an opportunity for our team to learn, explore, and connect in a whole new way and I truly believe we achieved that! In our survey, 100% of participants said they felt more connected after the event. Team members were open and vulnerable about their learning journeys, including their flops - while supporting and celebrating each other along the way.

AI Days was just the beginning. Our Orcas left inspired, energized, and ready to experiment, innovate, and push the boundaries of what’s possible with AI.

AI Days reinforced what we know at HeyOrca: when we create space to explore, share, and experiment, growth happens - both for our team and for the products we build. We can’t wait to see where curiosity, collaboration, and a little bit of boldness will take us next. Stay tuned for the next hackathon!

Interested in learning more about how AI can help you? Check out these resources for social media managers:

Blog: Creative AI prompts for social media managers

Blog: 14 easy ways to use artificial intelligence in social media (and when to avoid it) as a social media agency or freelancer

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