Beyond The Code

Maulik Sailor (00:11)

Hello and welcome. I'm Maulik Sailor founder and CEO of Notchup. And today I'm joined with an interesting guest and we're going to talk about something very interesting, know, an alternative way for you to get some of your top innovations publicized, you know, some of your problems solved and also attract some of the best talent out there in the market. So it's very interesting topic and the guest today, have Archie Webb.

who's an agile coach and delivery lead as a consulting company called Mindera, I got that pronunciation right. Recently, they hosted Hackerton for one of the very well-known online and offline retailer here in the UK. We're going to talk all about that. Welcome Archie. How are you doing, man?

Archie Webb (00:54)

Thanks for having me.

Yeah, all good, yeah, all good. Yeah, thanks for having me. Yeah, yeah. How you doing?

Maulik Sailor (00:59)

Cool, good to

see you, man. I think we connected at that AI event and it was really interesting to know about your experiences and the work that you are doing. Why don't you start with your background for our audience to build some context around that.

Archie Webb (01:15)

Yeah, sure. yeah, sure. So yeah, my background, I started in project management. Yeah, so traditional kind of project management at start of my career for Glatzosmith Klein, which is a pharmaceutical and Virgin Trains. And then I moved to a FinTech called Icon Solutions. And then that's where I kind of got my first exposure into kind of product, kind of software development and those sort of things. So I spent four to five years.

in the fintech. So was kind of doing various kind of agile coaching, kind of header delivery, scrum master roles in there. And then like you mentioned, I recently well not recently but moved to Mandira. I moved to Mandira four and a bit years ago now. I moved in in kind of like an agile coaching delivery lead role at the moment. So yeah, I've been supporting kind of various of their retail clients since being there but also also been helped out.

with my dearer building out their new kind of agile offering as well that they've got for the market, which kind of various things around kind of, kind of transformations, holding maturity assessments, also kind of holding kind of hackathons like this, this talk that it's going to be around holding squad resets and that sort of stuff for clients and those sorts of things. So helping them internally kind of building out that agile offering as well. So yeah, that's kind of where I am at the moment.

on that journey from project management to kind of agility and those sort of things. And then, yeah, that's me kind of career wise and then outside of work kind of really enjoy running. Yeah, like playing golf and sometimes watching West Ham play football so every so often. So yeah, that's kind of what I do kind of personally and that's where I am from a career point of view.

Maulik Sailor (02:49)

Cool

man, wonderful, right? And I believe Mindera consult with a lot of clients here in the UK and you're having with one of these clients like we're going to talk about. Plus, would you mind sharing some info about the client? Only the public info, not anything confidential.

Archie Webb (03:08)

What's that? Sorry. Say that again.

Maulik Sailor (03:10)

You want to say something about your client, like who is the client, the space they operate and the challenges in those spaces, like in their market segment that they operate without going too much confidential.

Archie Webb (03:21)

Yeah, sure. Yeah. So they're a kind of a supermarket. Yeah, supermarket retailer in the UK. One of the one of the biggest. So yeah, they sell kind of groceries and those sort of things. But they also have kind of a department store and that sort of stuff. So yeah, there's many retailers, like you said, that mind era support. But yeah, that's kind of the context of of the client that we're helping for.

on this occasion. So yeah, it's a British retailer in the UK.

Maulik Sailor (03:50)

Yeah,

cool. Now corporate hackathons. Yes, it's well known concept. A lot of companies tend to do, but I've not seen a lot of companies in the UK execute a lot of hackathons, right? So why don't we first define what is a hackathon from your point of view?

Archie Webb (04:07)

Yeah, good question. Yeah, good question. So I see it as a hackathon is a good way. So if you've got a problem statement or some sort of vision that you're trying to solve, a hackathon is a way of getting a group of people, whether it's five people, 10 people, 100 plus people, for example, to look into that problem that you're trying to solve and come up solutions or kind of mini prototypes to that problem statement that you're trying to

Maulik Sailor (04:10)

Thank

Archie Webb (04:36)

trying to solve. So yeah, like I said, it's all around getting a group of people trying to solve and build or hack a solution, whether it's a prototype or something else to a certain problem statement. Yeah.

Maulik Sailor (04:48)

That's

good. Why did your client wanted to host one? What was the thought process, the reasoning behind doing one?

Archie Webb (04:59)

Yeah, it's a question.

Yeah, good question. I think it's kind of, AR is quite new for everyone, right? Still, it's fairly new. And they didn't know how to kind of kickstart that journey, for example. So that was kind of the reason for to hold a hackathon to try and kind of springboard and kind of kick something into the right direction and those sort of things. So that's kind of where they were coming from to start off with. But the other main reason is they wanted to...

Obviously, see AI and think many people see and the client that we're working for sees kind AI as a how, right? A solution. So they went to kind of explore how they could use AI to solve certain customer problems that they had and they wanted to build products for to solve that problem. So they went to see how AI as a how could be a solution for that. And also they went into not just from a customer

problem solving point of view, but they also wanted to see how they could solve, kind of improve developer experience or make teams more efficient and those sort of things. So that was kind of the two main reasons, the kind of solving custom problems, but also how do we improve developer experience and make our teams more quicker and efficient going forward. So those are the two main problems. They didn't know what ideas that they wanted to pursue, for example. So they didn't know

whether AI could solve a certain idea, for example, or they didn't know what sort of customer problems could be solved by AI, for example. So they went to use this hackathon as a way of doing that. And they also didn't know how could AI solve certain problems and whether there's an actual benefit for solving that customer problem or using AI.

as a solution to solve that customer problem. So they wanted to use a hackathon as a quick way to learn and kind of that whole classic fail fast to see if there's any actual feasibility in any of the quick ideas that they were trying to prototype and get feedback on very quickly as part of this event. So those are kind of the three main reasons why they wanted to hold a hackathon in the first place.

Maulik Sailor (06:55)

Hmm.

Cool. And what was that initiated by MindData as a consultant to the company or somebody internal to the client basically came up with the idea of hosting the hackathon? What was the thought process going on there?

Archie Webb (07:22)

in terms of asking Mindera to help with them with that and that sort of stuff.

Maulik Sailor (07:26)

Or basically

who suggested, right? Like let's say I imagine a corporate innovation department or head of innovation thinking about, I don't know what to do next. know, this AI is buzzing along. How do we adopt that in our business? Maybe we brainstorm. Or maybe somebody suggested, hey, you know what? Why don't we just ask everybody and host an hackathon?

What was the thought process? I'm guessing here, but it be good to know from your point of view what actually happened before reaching to that decision.

Archie Webb (07:56)

Yeah, that's a question. So I think it's all it's been it was driven from kind of engineering and product and delivery from the retail client perspective, right? So it was like the leads of that they saw where the industry is going in terms of AI, they didn't want to kind of get left behind. So they have a pot of money, for example, that they want to invest.

into solving customer problems with AI or upskilling in AI and that sort of stuff. So it actually was driven from many people, not just the leadership, but there's the whole making this happen all come from the leadership, making sure there was budget, time and space for it. So it was driven from the leadership downwards because obviously they've noticed where the market trend is. then, that's obviously engaged with some of the partners, obviously Mindere in this occasion. Yeah.

into helping with that. that funny enough, that was part of the offerings. So we I mentioned earlier, in the introductions that we offer an accelerator offering as part of our agile service at Mindera. So as part of that is we help kind of set up and organize hackathons for our clients. So that's why we got engaged from our client because they they knew we offered it as that service and they wanted our support with kind of the kind of

Maulik Sailor (09:00)

Mm. Mm.

Archie Webb (09:15)

organisation and set up of that hackathon, helping kind of provide kind of advice in terms of setting up the environments and those sort of things. So that's kind of where it came from, from the leadership, from the client side, but also from the offering that we provide to clients, our existing clients.

Maulik Sailor (09:30)

Okay, cool and you know getting organizing at hackathon is all about like you know getting enough minds in the room together and like you know setting them free as you say you know without really thinking about your your internal operating environments or anything else you know that's the whole point you want as many wild ideas to come through as possible so

What's your blueprint there? How did you build, set up the hackathon? What was the process look like to get people in and actually execute one?

Archie Webb (10:00)

Yeah, good question. Yeah, so I think like, we, we did it kind of fairly quickly. So it was kind of we're engaged, kind of March time, April time, and they were like, right, we want to hold one in June in the summer and that sort of stuff. So we actually only had kind of like eight weeks to, to actually to set it up. So in terms of like, good practice, or what we followed in terms of the lead up of organizing an Agathon is, first of all, we kind of had a kickoff. And as part of that kickoff week,

we made sure we had like a working group or an organization group who was helping organize that. So was kind of formed. And what we'd do, we'd have a kind of weekly check-in meeting once a week where we'd kind of set our goals and next steps and actions of what we wanted to achieve that. So yeah, that was kind of the first week was kind of all around kickoff, making sure we had kind of a cross-functional working group.

who had all the skill sets that we needed to kind of make sure the event was a success, for example. So we had that. The second week was all around, I mentioned before how important it is, defining the problem statement. we wanted to go, we didn't want to have, we want to have a hackathon around AI because of AI, right? We needed to have a clear kind of problem statement from a company point of view. And also we needed to understand that we were resolving

customer problems. We're trying to direct the hackathon around a customer problem rather than just using AI for AI. So the second week was all around defining that problem statement. So one of our clients who set up this hackathon had we wanted to, it was all around improving customer experience.

using a hack for me as a springboard to foster a minute of ideas, solve customer problems, encourage better collaboration and understand the art of the possible. So that was kind of their statement. And like we said before, they wanted to use AI to kind of improve customer experience and improve team productivity. So that was kind of their problem statement that they reached during that time. And then, kind of in those following weeks,

we were setting up the foundation. of, we were kind of setting up the hackathon event meeting invites, a bit of housekeeping and those sort of things. And then we, week four, we had ideation and ideation sessions. So this was really important. So this is where we started to come up with ideas, which would potentially solve that problem statement that we defined in week two. So we had our own AI assessment framework.

which assessed various different things around, was there enough data? Does it resolve the customer problem? How quick would it be to potentially build that solution, for example, to solve that customer problem? So we had our own assessment framework that we used to come up with a list of validated kind of ideas that we could take into the hack on event. yeah, I think that was quite important to kind of go through that kind of triaging process as a group.

with people participating, that sort of stuff, just to validate whether those ideas were worthwhile and stuff. and then from there, we kind of did, we formed the team. So, we kind of sent out various kind of sign up links and that sort of stuff. And what we did is we formed the teams against the ideas that come out of the ideation session. So there was a pool of like 70 ideas that come out of ideation. I think we decided and whittled them down to seven ideas.

in total. what we did, we formed teams against those seven ideas, which would go into that hackathon event, for example. So we just made sure each of the teams had cross-functional sales. So we made sure they had a front-end developer, back-end developer, UX, UI developer, a designer if needed, and those sort of things. So what we did, we kind of did a bit of kind of support and that sort of stuff in terms of kind of allocating.

teams to certain ideas just to make sure they had all the skill sets. We did that. Like we said, we did some kind of tech setup just to make sure we could hit the ground running. So we made sure we set up kind of environments and repos and repositories for the teams leading up to the event. They used the client use Vertex AI in the end. So they connected to that. So we did that in

leading up to the event just to make sure it was a smooth and it didn't waste half a day for teams setting that up up on their own, for example. So we did a bit of tech stuff up. and then yeah, there was a few kind of pre kind of preparation activities that we did. did some watch parties where we got on a call with everyone participating to watch certain videos around AI to do a kind of a certain kind of up skill when everyone had a baseline.

of skill sets going into the event and that sort of stuff. And then pretty much, we were pretty much there to hold the event. We had three days of hacking, a half a day of demos and presentations on the last day. And then, yeah, after that, there was a load of post kind of wash up event activities where I met yourself, where we kind of spoke at conferences about it. We kind of stored repositories, materials for future hackathons going forward.

close down the environments that we use, so we weren't getting charged for that hackathon, for the environments that we set up and that sort of stuff. So yeah, kind of that was the journey that we went on to kind of leading up to the event.

Maulik Sailor (15:05)

So basically what I'm hearing is that you can't just call it hackathon, right? I mean, you've got to do a lot of homework, right? You've got to prep your environment. You've got to communicate out to your teams. You've got to build, provide them with some working guidelines and so on. But I've also seen sometimes companies kind of go completely wild. Like this I was saying mainly from

companies that develop some kind of SDKs or APIs, and they say, okay, here is our SDK or API and build whatever you want, right? Completely open-ended, right? And you never know. Sometimes something could come out of it, sometimes nothing will come out of it. All the things that come out is probably not relevant to you, but it gives you a lot more insight on how your platform or APIs could be used in the real world scenarios and so on. So I think what we are saying here is that there are always

Archie Webb (15:36)

Yeah.

Maulik Sailor (15:54)

different ways of doing it. Either you narrow the whole hackathon down to a particular topic that you want people to collaborate with, or you want to keep it completely open-ended where people may come up with any sorts of solutions and ideas. I do want to ask you a question around that. Sometimes when you run this hackathon and the ideas and the solutions you get, in my opinion, there are kind of three baskets to that.

Archie Webb (16:06)

Yeah.

Maulik Sailor (16:18)

The middle basket is like, okay, you know what? Good, interesting, know, believable. know, yes, I can see that happening, whatever, right? And then you have the two other sides of the basket. One, a disaster this is. You know, that's a total crap. know, why would even somebody think about all that, right? And you have the other side. Well, damn, you know, we never thought about this. That's an interesting idea. It's amazing. It's so creative, you know.

Archie Webb (16:33)

Thank you.

Maulik Sailor (16:45)

is out of this world right? Mind blown basically right? Would you mind sharing any of those ideas? know ideas that fall in those section buckets that you saw maybe at this hackathon or some other place? You know if you don't mind sharing provided that they are not confidential.

Archie Webb (17:00)

Yeah

Yeah, I think there's I think I think you're totally right I think the reason why on this example that we're talking about here in terms of build Organizing this hundred plus person AI hackathon. I think the reason why we had to be a little bit more Not huge amounts of effort, but a little bit more organized in the planning like you said I think it's because because of the scale of the hackathon because it was quite big

Maulik Sailor (17:14)

Hmm. Hmm.

Archie Webb (17:27)

so I think that there was more confidence and comfortability, just being a bit more on top of the organization leading up to bed. Cause there was so many people involved, but I think you are right. There's pros and cons for each. can, like you said, just chuck everything up in the air, let people self organize on the day and go for it. And that that's actually fine as well. So I don't think there's, there's any wrong either option, but I think that's just worth explaining why they went down more of the organization, making sure.

there are ideas, triage, problem statements, because it was so big. But I think you can do both. And both have kind of valid reasons. And like you said, it's interesting when you just throw up something in the idea and see what happens. In terms of ideas, I think, yeah, there was huge amounts of quite mind blowing kind of ideas that come out of it, like the inspiration, it's amazing what happens when you get a group of people

with no slack, no distractions, fully focused on three days of building a prototype and that sort of stuff. So some of the ideas were really cool in terms of there was ones around SEO improvements. there was kind of how could we describe a product more better on the website, for example, which would generate more visits from Google, for example.

So there was a product that was built part of the prototype around where people could say, I'm looking to get a description for this product ID. They put their product ID from the website they were doing and then it would generate a description for them that would hit all the points from an SEO effector. So that was a really cool idea. had a, product that they had was around recipes, which would help customers

plan for their week in terms of what meals they would and then auto generate that to a basket and those sort of things. So there was some really cool ideas that come out of that. So they were the good things. I'm trying to think of bad ones. Yeah, I'm trying to think if there's any bad ones that have come out of it. To be honest, I haven't seen any bad ideas. think, yeah, on the whole, especially part of the event that we're talking about now that they were all kind of very, very like valid ideas and

Maulik Sailor (19:27)

Yeah.

Archie Webb (19:44)

good kind of prototypes that were built really.

Maulik Sailor (19:47)

Yeah, that's pretty good. Talking of bad ideas, I generally think sometimes the bad ideas are actually really good. Some of the startups as well, a lot of startups actually, the ideas were rejected by many, times. And people didn't believe in that. But eventually, they ended up becoming quite a big success. So I think sometimes even the bad ideas are pretty good. You just need to basically think it through. What can you do with that?

Archie Webb (20:00)

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Maulik Sailor (20:12)

Never mind, let's move on. Let's say if I were a company with a big tech operations here in the UK or wherever, it doesn't matter. If I want to host a hackathon, let's say, what tips would you give? How would I go about doing that to get the best out of it?

Archie Webb (20:12)

Yeah.

Yeah, good question. I think I mentioned before, think, I do feel like there needs to be a purpose and a why for holding that hackathon, right? So I think it's very important to be clear on why you're holding that event, what problems you're trying to solve. And that kind of gives a good kind of guide rails and visions of some of the ideas that come out of the hackathon and what you're trying to achieve from from the hackathon, right? So I think that's always

Maulik Sailor (20:39)

Mm.

Archie Webb (20:57)

good thing to have. You're not just having a hackathon for a hackathon, right? There needs to be a reason behind it. So I think that's a really good thing to start with. So I think that's really important. think it's, I've seen a lot of hackathons where you've only had one day to hack and kind of engineers and teams kind of just get into it and then they've got to stop, right? So I would always recommend having at least a bare minimum of kind of two days, full two days hacking and then a half a day.

of demo presentations. Ideally, if you can, it'd be nice to have three days hacking, but I think at a minimum, you need at least two days of hacking and building prototypes as part of that hackathon. So I'd recommend that. I think I thought it was quite useful, especially because AI was quite new, but I suppose in general hackathons as well, I think it's quite good to have some sort of ideation leading up to the event. think it doesn't have to have a

a significant amount of time behind it, you could probably get away with holding a two hour mini workshop, whether you did one, two, four and all, or a different kind of ideation sort of technique, for example. But I think it's always useful to just a mini workshop coming up with ideas that can potentially be kind of built upon or prototyped as part of the hackathon that potentially could solve that problem statement. So I think the ideation part is quite important.

Maulik Sailor (21:52)

Mm. Mm.

Archie Webb (22:16)

other things that are important that needed? Good question. think cross-functional skills, I mentioned that quite a few times. So I think it's important to people participating in the event to try and share the skill sets around. So everyone has the relevant skill sets are needed to build a prototype, right? So you kind of want a front end developer, backend developer, like I said previously, I think it's very important to

have that cross-functional skill set in each of the teams. You don't want one skill set loaded in a different team and another skill set loaded in another team. So I think it's important to share that balance for the teams in the event. And I said earlier, I think it was quite useful having that as part of the event team that were organizing it as well. So it was quite useful having a variations of different skill sets and disciplines providing their viewpoint leading up to the event. I encourage that.

other things I think were useful. there was kind of, did the, the setup of environments and repose connecting to Vertex AI AI. You don't have to do that. That's not a mantra, but it just made it, more valuable and allowed the teams to actually focus on building the prototype straight away rather than spending half a day as part of the hackathon setting up their environments and those sorts of things. So that's a nice to have, but it just made the value of hacking straight away.

more important. generally you need kind of someone in that, whoever's organizing it, you need someone that's kind of good at kind of being organized, proactive and communicating out and that sort of stuff, making sure things are getting done. So I think that was quite important, having that kind of weekly check in, someone making sure the goals and actions that you're trying to achieve leading up to the event, organizing it or getting done.

but also keeping people participating in the event informed of what's going on. This is how it's going to run. This is when the demos are and that sort of stuff. I think you need like a natural person, that one person kind of going out there and kind of being proactive and leading it from start to finishing and making sure everyone's informed and get things done and those sort of things leading up to event. I think that was important. And I think this is the last point I was going to make, which...

is important to consider is I think a lot of people and companies have hackathons, generate great ideas, but actually don't follow up on those ideas after the actual event, if that makes sense. I think it's, yeah.

Maulik Sailor (24:40)

Yeah, I've seen that over and over. You

spend so much time and energy and then something good comes out and then you never follow it through. You say, yeah, that was a nice event. Let's go back to our day-to-day priorities.

Archie Webb (24:54)

Yeah, exactly. Yeah, exactly. So it's kind of you need to make sure as part of the post wash up all activities after the event, you need to make sure that you're making those ideas that come out of the hackathon that look like they could bring value to the company and also our customers, right? That you try and make those a reality. So you need to make sure there's funding, right? You need to make sure there's dedicated teams or the headspace to pursue those ideas. So just don't have a hackathon and

Maulik Sailor (24:59)

Mm.

Archie Webb (25:23)

hackathon event and let it drop, you need to make sure you're putting stuff in place afterwards to make sure they become a reality, right? And you make sure you build the ones that provided the most promise during the event. So yeah, make sure that the ideas become a reality. That's definitely a priority as well.

Maulik Sailor (25:40)

That's wonderful.

In hindsight, mean, insight is always a good thing, right? mean, having done quite a few hackathons, what would you recommend? Like, let's say somebody wanting to host one, what are the positive outcomes that you can get out from these hackathons?

Archie Webb (25:58)

I think I mentioned earlier, like for this example, we're talking around the 100 plus person hackathon that we set up. To be honest, it generated a pool of 70 ideas, product ideas that we could go out and build that would solve various customer problems, if that makes sense. So I think in terms of a hackathon, it really generates a huge amount of different ideas that you could actually pursue that could solve customer problems or

Maulik Sailor (26:04)

Mm.

Mm.

Mm.

Archie Webb (26:26)

you could offer new products to your customers and the industry to kind of get that kind of niche and set yourself above the rest of the market. So I think it's a really good idea to come up with ideas and products, ideas to build. I think it's a good space to improve morale and happiness of your workplace and the people that work in your workplace, for example. So the feedback that we got was really positive from the events.

people actually really enjoy getting away from their day-to-day event and spending time with different people and spending focused time on solving a problem and building a solution. So that actually improved kind of rapport and morale within the workplace and that sort of stuff. had at the demos, at the final day demos we had, we had kind of lunch and drinks afterwards. So it was kind of, we made it as a big kind of event and those sort of things. yeah, I think

we saw it improve kind of morale, people enjoyed it, people want to do another one next year and that sort of stuff. I think that's another thing. I think it's a good way, what are the positive things, why you should hold a hackathon? I think it's a good way for, if you're a stakeholder who own budgets, I think it's a good way to get the most out of your budgets in a quick fashion. So if you're trying to resolve a quick problem.

or you're trying to resolve a problem and you want all the focus and want quick results to see potentially ideas that could solve that problem. I think it's a really good, fast and quick way to get a lot of people's minds focusing on a problem. we saw that, I think, stakeholders that provided budget for the event got a lot of value out of it and very satisfied of how far their money went in business terms, if that makes sense. So I think...

Yeah, I think that was good. And I think, yeah, if you're trying to achieve or solve a problem quickly, it's a good way to kind of, kind of get traction on that straight away. So I think that was that was good. Other reasons improve skill sets is another way of enhancing increasing skill sets of people working within the organization, for example. So there was, for example, there was a quality engineer.

that did front end development as part of the event. And he now wants to pursue a career in front end development. So that's kind of encouraged people to try different things within the event to increase their skill sets. As part of the event, people now have a better understanding of how AI works and that sort of stuff. So hack off on events is actually a good way to train up your staff in certain areas if there's a particular area that you want to go in. I would say that's, yeah.

some of the main key things really while you hold one.

Maulik Sailor (29:04)

Yeah. we, you know, on NotchUp, there is like a feature. We actually built a Hackathon feature on our platform. For precisely this reason, some of the reasons you are talking about, companies want to engage with that talent pool and all. But the reason why we built was slightly different. And like, you know, we normally recommend our clients to use Hackathon as a way to filter out future talents, right?

So let's say you, you know, that are something you want to develop in near future. You're exactly not sure how to do it or what to do it. You know, why don't you set up as an hackathon on the platform and let the community. So we got like, you know, close to 150,000 talent on the platform. So let them solve it, right? And if you, if let's somebody comes up with an interesting solution, you may not necessarily want to implement that in your business, but at least you know that

people are interested in what you are doing. And some people are actually pretty good in coming up with solutions. And those are the people that you may actually want to hire in your organization. So we build that as a way to attract better talent and filter them out for jobs. So like an alternative way to recruit rather than going through the whole posting a job, asking them to do tasks and all. And most good engineers actually don't want to do any testing.

Archie Webb (30:15)

and

Yeah.

Maulik Sailor (30:19)

This is like an idling situation. You want to hire the best engineers, but the best engineers don't want to do any testing. So how would you know that they are best? So that's an alternative way we thought. You can actually engage with them and get them interested in what you are doing. yeah, man, I mean, that's pretty good. And I normally recommend doing hackathons to big companies as well. Normally it's done.

startup weekend, startup founders doing hackathon events, trying to find a team and come up with a POC to fundraise and whatever. But I think there's definitely a room for bigger companies to do that. And especially here in the UK, I don't really see many companies doing it regularly. And I'm a big advocate of that for them to do it more. And hopefully, listening to your podcast this episode, I'm pretty sure that a lot of our audience will find

a few more reasons on why they should convince their stakeholders or senior management to do one. So just mindful of our time, Arshi. think I'll start wrapping up this episode. But before we end, there are a few questions that we tend to ask all of our guests. mean, they're generic questions, so nothing too scary.

Archie Webb (31:13)

Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Maulik Sailor (31:32)

But I would like to ask you that as well, right? And there are a little bit of personal questions, right? So the first one is fairly easy, right? I mean, who do you think has impacted you most in your life or career, right? I mean, who is one person, again, or dead, you know, it does not need to be just a person alive right now.

Archie Webb (31:50)

Yeah, think from like a career perspective, think I've had like, as my career has gone on, there's been influence from people. So I started off my career at GSK and there was a manager there who I had or a lead there I had and he kind of, yeah, was spent, me a lot of time and gave me kind of feedback of where I can improve and also gave me positive feedback and I left.

kind of that organization feeling more confident about actually I could kind of fulfill my aspirations in my career. So I think that was kind of a key person so early on in my career to have someone who spent the time with me and gave me the confidence to go forward. So I think that was quite useful. think, yeah, like in my family, I've had my kind of father and uncle who have kind of up their own organization. So I think it's kind of, I find it quite inspiring.

when people go out and set up their own organizations, for example, and start building out their own companies, think that's kind of very, there's element of risk taken there, right? Moving away from your kind of normal corporate job and going away and building your own organization. I kind of admire a lot of people that kind of take that risk to do that. So I think that's, there's been various people who have done that in my career, who are in my life and those sort of things, which is good.

I think in terms of where I am in terms of kind of delivery and being an agile coach, there was someone who I met in icon when I started off moving from project management more into that. had someone who was very experienced in that kind of industry, in that kind of role and skill set. And he was my mentor and kind of told me all the kind of foundations of what I needed to know in terms of doing the role and that sort of stuff. So that person there was very influential.

in that. So yeah, I think there's various people it kind of staggered from my start of my career in the middle and kind of where we are at the moment. There's always different people that kind of inspired me but yeah, it's a difference of kind of people from career, family, but yeah, many people obviously that set up their own business as well that kind of really inspires me to kind of push further as well.

Maulik Sailor (33:58)

Sure man, great insight, right? I hope you also eventually take the plunge and start your own thing, you know? And it's scary, you know, I did mine, you know, about 15 years ago, and I think it was like, looking back, I think I, maybe it was a stupidity. I did it because I wanted to do it without really thinking through on how I'm going to do it and what I'm going to do it. But you know what?

Archie Webb (34:20)

Yeah.

Maulik Sailor (34:24)

It has been ups and downs, and life has turned out to be alright. Not too bad, not too great, but it has been alright. Who is one person, again, living or dead, that you would like to meet?

Archie Webb (34:27)

Okay

Good, good, good.

Yeah, think he's, yeah, yeah. Who would I like to meet? think from a, as a kid, I was very much into WWE, you know, the wrestling and that sort of stuff. So yeah, my favorite was Dwayne Johnson, The Rock. So I think he was, when I was growing up, it was either Stone Cold Steve Austin or The Rock. And I kind of favored The Rock. yeah, he's kind of my childhood.

Maulik Sailor (34:39)

in your life.

Yeah.

Archie Webb (35:03)

So I've never met him, but we'd like to meet him at some point. That'd be pretty cool.

Maulik Sailor (35:08)

Yeah, that's pretty good, man. Actually, he's also an inspiring guy, right? I mean, from from his childhood to becoming a WWE entertainer and becoming the like, you know, the actor now, you know, he's one of the highest paid actor actually in Hollywood, right? So very, very inspiring journey that he had as well. Kuhn.

Archie Webb (35:12)

Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah.

Maulik Sailor (35:28)

I wish you luck, good luck for you to be able to meet him, hopefully soon. Maybe when he's coming for the premieres here in London, maybe you can just go and queue up and try to meet him. At least you might get an autograph.

Archie Webb (35:38)

haha

Yeah, I think it's like you said, at the end the day, I don't really get into like, I don't really get like starstruck, if that makes sense for fame for famous people. But like what I do admire, like you said, on the journey they've gone on, like it requires probably a lot of very much discipline, right, of being focused on what they're trying to achieve, being disciplined every day, probably getting up very early in the mornings and that sort of stuff.

being disciplined with their lifestyle and yeah I think it's more that like you said it's seeing where the rocks gone in terms of wrestling and then in his acting career and that sort of stuff he must have been very disciplined and worked hard to achieve kind of where he's got to right which I I might have said.

Maulik Sailor (36:22)

Yeah, totally, totally.

Who would have imagined, you know, when whenever he was doing that WWE that, you know, this guy will end up becoming highest paid actor in Hollywood, right? So, yeah, yeah, cool. Anyways, last one, you know, who do you think we should invite to this podcast?

Archie Webb (36:32)

Yeah, yeah, indeed. Yeah, indeed.

Yes, there's an engineer that I know, quality engineer called Mark Whitting, Whittingrium. Yeah, so he loves AI and that sort of stuff. And he recently published a book called Software Testing with Gentile AI. So yeah, it's I think his book around was like how he uses gen AI with personal projects and that sort of stuff around how he expands, automates.

and helps testing with LLMs. yeah, he's very like enthusiastic about AI and that sort of stuff, especially from a quality testing perspective. So yeah, I recommend kind of reaching out to him and see whether you can get him on the podcast. That'd be pretty cool.

Maulik Sailor (37:22)

okay. Hopefully I'll make the reach out and hopefully we'll get him on one of the episode. So cool, man. Cool. I think that's about it today. I think we are good on time. So why don't we wrap up today? You know, it's been great having you here as one of our guests for the podcast. Loved hearing your story about setting up this hackathon as one of the largest retailer here in the UK. You know, your tips about

setting up the event and following up through the event was pretty useful. And, you know, please, please, please, I do recommend all the senior stakeholders who may be listening to this episode. You know, if you think that you want to supercharge innovation in your organizations, if you want to engage more with your talent community and also attract quality talents to your organization, I do recommend hosting a hackathon, right?

Thanks a lot Archie for joining us today. I'm all the very best for your career and hopefully you'll set up your own business fairly soon.

Archie Webb (38:14)

Thanks having me.

Lovely.

Never know,

you never know, you never know.

Maulik Sailor (38:22)

You never say never.

Archie Webb (38:24)

No, no, exactly. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, thanks for having me. Yeah, and lovely speaking to you.

Maulik Sailor (38:29)

Cool, thank you, Archie.

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