Cayan LLC, a technology company headquartered in Boston, held its third annual Hackathon in March 2016. Company insiders anticipated the three-day event, like its predecessors, would unleash an array of engineering creativity as teams competed for awards and recognition.
"In years past, the Hackathon has led to important advances in our technology," said Henry Helgeson, Chief Executive Officer and co-founder of Cayan. "Hackathons put the power back into the hands of our talented technology team."
Dominic Lachowicz, Senior Vice President of Engineering at Cayan, added, "This three-day adventure for our developers gives them a chance to get together, think creatively and throw some wacky ideas at the wall. Part of our core belief is that code is our currency; it's embedded in everything we do and directly impacts our success."
Throughout the event, Cayan's engineers coded, built and hacked to develop prototypical solutions at an accelerated pace. Contestants presented their solutions in a showcase held at the end of the Hackathon, at which time company representatives cast their votes for the most innovative project.
Cayan pointed out that previous Hackathons have brought significant contributions to Cayan, particularly for its signature Genius platform, a scalable, configurable processing solution designed to adapt to the ever-changing payments environment.
"We've taken numerous projects from idea to proof of concept, including developing a universal API that supports any type of card reader, which has been a boon to our partners and vendors," Lachowicz said. "Enhancements to our Genius platform, such as the Store and Forward feature, were initially developed at the Hackathon."
Lachowicz further noted a Genius product that runs video on top of a Verifone POS was created in a span of two days as developers created screen savers and pull displays that can show up on idle screens and at various intervals throughout a payment transaction. "Genius allows us to deploy leading edge solutions across the entire merchant spectrum, from leading retailers to mom-and-pops, and bring polish and high-end features at a price point that makes sense," he said.
Helgeson called the Hackathon an example of Cayan's culture of creativity, innovation and talent. Up to 40 teams in company offices from Boston and Belfast competed on the company's stage for new ways to move Cayan and industry forward.
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