Make the Most Of Dev Downtime With Culture Projects
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Agency life comes with ups and downs in workflow. Sydney-based Agency, Holler, make the most of their downtime. They stay mindful of keeping staff empowered, and keep a list of side-projects that people can get involved with during the slower periods. It can be anything from updating software or tackling some more interesting side-projects like their latest undertaking; Sesame.
Diego Trigo, Executive Technical Director), Chris Berry (Front End Lead) and Sanjay Sharma (Back End Lead) at Holler are leading Sesame with the aim to revolutionise the sign-in experience for those entering their Sydney HQ. We caught up with Diego and Chris to get the lowdown.
“Open Sesame”
Named after Ali Baba’s famous phrase, Sesame is a facial recognition product which was conceptualised to relieve pressure from their Office Manager, whose responsibility it was to open the door for all staff and clients.
“We had this idea” Diego starts “What if we create a database of faces and when people arrive at our door, we read their faces automatically and identify if they are either a Holler employee or a user in our database.”
With the concept in mind, the team started working on a prototype.
They created the API using AWS API Gateway with a serverless AWS Lambda making calls to AWS Rekognition.
“On top of that, we will have a RaspberryPI orchestrating it all, capturing images from users and sending to the API above, that triggers the intercom to open the door.”
“The possibilities are endless” Chris adds, “Things that are done by an Office Manager can be done by a messaging system and automatic detection of their face. Once their picture is uploaded and detected coming into the building the person they’re meeting can be notified that they’ve arrived.”
The benefits beyond results
These type of projects can encourage innovative thinking, something candidates should dedicate time to, as a side result, Holler believes it can provide inspiration for client work in the future.
If you listen to serial entrepreneurs, they will often say that their ideas simply come from finding solutions to problems they have in their everyday life.
Next time you have a gripe at work and a little bit of downtime, ask yourself:
What is the problem here?
How could this be improved?
What would it take to create that improvement?
Give it a go as a side project and find some fresh creative inspiration.
