Earlier this month, OneOcean Group hosted its first ever Tech Week. The week-long event united employees in our technical departments across the organisation for several days of learning, team building, innovating and problem-solving. Employees in our global offices heard presentations from renowned speakers and participated in challenges designed to generate new ideas and ways of thinking.
Throughout the week, there were presentations from several exciting speakers, who joined us to share expertise on a range of topics. Day one started with Shawn Kanungo, noted keynote speaker and innovation strategist on the topic of disruption and innovation. His inspirational presentation set the tone for the rest of the week, encouraging participants to think outside the box and challenge themselves to consider new ways of working.
On each day, departments were split into groups where they took part in activities designed to facilitate learning, improve existing processes, and encourage team building. As one of the world’s largest suppliers of maritime navigation and compliance solutions, we continually monitor the industry to spot trends and develop innovative solutions to best serve our customers evolving needs. To help us better leverage the data we can access, the development department participated in a Hackathon, where they were challenged to come up with news ways to use and visually present existing information in meaningful ways.
At the same time, the Product and Content teams worked on developing helpful materials, to aid in onboarding new members to the OneOcean team. For many new employees joining us, it can take some time to become familiar with the maritime industry, and to understand who our customers are and the processes they rely on to power their operations. It is imperative to understand how our solutions work and how our customers use them in order to provide value. Members were split into groups, where they each worked on a presentation that clearly explained different modules of the OneOcean portfolio.
The Customer Service and Support teams focused on teambuilding with ice breaker games and a virtual escape room challenge. These teams have the important task of delivering an extraordinary customer experience, which is why their activities focused on honing their social skills and working on problem-solving.
Alex Lapointe, Chief Technology Officer at OneOcean described the goal of the activities saying, “The maritime industry is very fast-paced. Our customers encounter challenges that need solving daily; they need to be self-reliant and capable of finding solutions. The goal of this week was to encourage our employees to adopt the same mindset. Thinking outside of the box, working as part of a team and communicating clearly are all skills we need to serve our customers and continue to be leaders in our field.”
Each of the week’s presentations provided value in its own ways. While some focused more on advice and encouragement, others were more technical in nature, bringing news on the latest advancements in the world of technological development. The team heard from experts on a wide range of subjects including Jerry Remillard and Professor of Psychology Marie-France Marin, on coaching and team dynamics and Dave Brock and Rahat Yasir on C#9, .NET6 and AI platform architecture.
On the final day of the Tech Week, the Hackathon came to a close with the Technology teams presenting their ideas on leveraging data to all attendees and a panel including CEO Martin Taylor and CTO Alex Lapointe. The winning group showed how bridge crew could use augmented reality to access and view information needed for voyage planning and monitoring. The team proposed using hands-free technology and voice commands to call on a wide variety of maritime data and display it visually for the user. A fun and creative video, using Microsoft Hololens, brought the idea to life impressing the panel with the novelty and inventiveness of the idea and compelling delivery.