Stemettes Hackathon July 2022
On Monday 25th July, Limejump hosted an in-person hackathon at our head office in partnership with the brilliant charity Stemettes. Stemettes is a charity that supports young girls/non-binary individuals to get into STEM-based careers. Limejump partnered with Stemettes at the beginning of 2022, it was important for us to support an organisation that encourages young women/non-binary individuals to pursue a career in Tech where currently there is an imbalance.
We welcomed 55 inspiring young ‘Stemettes’ ranging from 5-16 years old, all of which came with one objective, to help Limejump on its mission to optimise a 100% renewable energy future.
The day kicked off with a whistle-stop tour of all things Limejump and a high-level insight into renewable energy and smart homes, delivered by our CEO and Stemettes role model Cat Newman. The theme of the Hackathon was renewable energy & smart homes, a purposely wide brief, inspiring the Stemettes to get creative and develop a tech product that will support a smart home or a renewable energy system. After a few ice breakers and rounding up into groups, the buddying Stemettes were ready to hack!
With bellies full of snacks and pizza, the Stemettes got down to hacking and developing their products/apps/websites that they believed would improve how we lived, in a greener way. With this being Stemette’s first in-person event since Covid, we were all thrilled to see so many young participants bonding, and how their passion matched that of our CEO.
After only a few hours of hacking, the teams, 17 in total, were ready to showcase their products to the Limejump Judging panel. The expert Limejump judges were Cat Newman (CEO), Fred Drewitt (CTO ) and Genna Boyle (Head of Business Development). The showcase was kicked off by the younger groups, between 5-8 years old, who delivered some wonderful creations, including a robotic cat that cleaned up after you. The showcase moved through the 17 groups, all of which had varying levels of coding ability, but that did not impact the creativity and forward-thinking products that the judges had to score and then award the winner, a very tough call. The groups had a fantastic range of ideas, from an app that turns your lights on and off to save electricity, one that allows you to send extra electricity to those who need it more (peer-to-peer energy) and tips on how to become greener in your everyday life. One app that the judges were very fond of reducing the amount of energy used in one household by telling the owner how much £/kWh they are spending in a day but also how much they’re wasting. The customers that saved the most energy would receive points to claim rewards. As highlighted by Julia, the facilitator of the day, everyone was a winner and all Limejumpers volunteering on the day were utterly blown away by what the budding Stemettes had come up with in just a few hours.
The event left many volunteers, including myself, feeling very inspired by the Stemettes’ hard work and dedication. Stemettes is an incredible charity that allows young people to be themselves and gives them the right tools and guidance to help them achieve their education and career aspirations. We hope that with more and more events like these taking place across the country it will create an equal future for everyone.
Other key outcomes of the day included learning from and collaborating with others, challenging themselves in an ‘alien’ environment in a new sector and, importantly, making new friends. The event highlighted a strong unity of teamwork and how when many ideas come together it helps create a great one. A massive thank you to the Stemettes for allowing us to host such an incredible event at Limejump HQ. And, last but not least, well done to every single young participant whose efforts were incredible and we’re excited to see you as a limejump employee in the future!
Our collaboration with Stemettes will continue for the foreseeable future, and proudly so. This year, in addition to this Hackathon, a few of our Limejump role models CEO – Cat Newman and Software Engineer – Alex Esche have been interviewed for the Stemettes online Zine, and we wrote a piece about Grid-Scale Batteries …and there is more content scheduled to go live in the coming months.
Careers at Limejump
Limejump is an award-winning energy-tech company, connecting renewable generators to in-house trading and data centres. Limejump is working hard towards the ultimate goal of delivering 100% renewable energy, supporting the UK’s ambition to reach net-zero by 2050 and giving generators transparent and competitive access to the market.