Last year at Impact, we hosted a Hackathon for our admins and devs to challenge themselves in a “race against the clock” to build with Coveo. After the resounding success and enthusiasm we saw from participants, we’re bringing it back for Coveo Impact 2019 – but this time, like the rest of Coveo Impact 2019, we’re leveling up. Join us for the Relevance Challenge on May 22 from 6 to 10 p.m. by downloading the Coveo Impact mobile app from the App Store or Play Store and adding it to your agenda builder.

We sat down with the host extraordinaire of this year’s event, Wim Nijmeijer to get all of the details.

Q: First of all, what is the Relevance Challenge? What can participants expect at the event?

Wim: It’s a combination of a networking, fun and education. We want to enable our clients to interact with and meet other clients, while also gaining a deeper understanding of Coveo. We’ve built a challenging series of problems to solve that are not just focused on one Coveo area, covering everything from indexing to analytics. That’s the beauty of it. Everyone has a different set of knowledge that they can share with their team to solve the challenge. Of course, our Coveo team will be there to help out.

One thing participants should not expect is to go in with their own team. We will be assigning teams, so our participants can make connections with other clients and share their knowledge. Everyone and anyone who wants to be there and get very “hands on” with their learning is welcome to join. We’ll have food and beverages available too!

Q: Wow, this sounds different than last year. Why are we changing it up?

Wim: Last year was our first “Hackathon” and it was essentially an experiment. It was very, very popular with our attendees, but we noticed that there was interest from the non-technical audience as well. One of the most exciting things about AI-powered search and recommendations is how much value it provides. It’s not a product just for developers with a high degree of technical knowledge. So we wanted this year’s challenge to reflect that. The focus is on networking and fun. Yes, it will be challenging and participants can expect to exhibit their expertise, but participants will also walk away having built connections with other Coveo clients. Oh, and the Coveo team will be there to facilitate in case anyone gets stuck.

Essentially, everyone who is involved with Coveo can participate in this year’s event, and the more diversity in roles, the better. We’re expecting between 60 to 90 people, split into teams of three or four.

Q: What advice do you have for challenge participants?

Wim: While you don’t need to prepare anything for the event, you do need to be ready for an exciting evening where you’ll hopefully learn something too. The winning team will receive the glory of winning as their prize, as well as the connections that they made during the challenge.

Ready to take on the Relevance Challenge? Make sure to register for Impact today before tickets sell out!