What do Deep Purple, Sex Pistols and The Killers have in common?
You might not realise it but they are all manufactured bands that went on to break the mould.
For the uninitiated, Deep Purple (alongside Black Sabbath and Led Zeppelin) are considered part of the “unholy trinity of British rock”.
Sex Pistols defined the London punk scene of the late 70s and early 80s and The Killers arguably resurrected the LA rock scene with just one album (maybe even just one song).
These bands were (are) all amazing, creative and groundbreaking. I say they’re ‘manufactured’, because unlike other bands which form and evolve naturally they deliberately came together with the specific vision and objective of creating something truly unique.
Of course, manufactured music should be familiar. From The Monkees to the Spice Girls, pop has a long history of architecting musical groups to exploit a particular trend or opportunity. But these bands were doing something different, and their legacy lives on as a result.
At Iress this week we’re doing something similar.
Engineering a new way forward
Our Global Hackathon is a festival of technological creativity where everyone at Iress comes together. Unlike other Hackathons — this is an inclusive event, with just as many non-engineering people as engineers participating. We come together to create truly different results driven by a single vision to make it easy to love financial services.
We encourage our people to come together in teams to first define a problem, and then engineer a solution to production and then pitch it. It needn’t be a code…it could be a different approach, a bold idea, an efficiency play, or anything that substantially improves an existing process.
And we’re not going to be happy with re-engineering an existing solution simply to take advantage of a trend (like a pop act might). Our aim is to produce something new, something that actually helps people and that pushes financial services forward and breaks the mould. As we’ve been exploring through our hit podcast Upfront, we see plenty of opportunities for financial services to be better. Fairer. More transparent and efficient.
And that’s what this year’s Hackathon is all about.
Striking a chord
Our Hackathon is also about having heaps of fun. For the first time in three years, we’ll also be getting together physically to share ideas and build — as well as plenty of pizza, snacks and good humour — in the race to complete a working idea in the 24 hour time limit.
I love the buzz of our Hackathon. It crystallises everything that’s great about Iress — innovation, teamwork, determination.
For the past few years, a group of Iress musicians have led the charts and recorded a supergroup anthem for the Hackathon. To date these have been cover songs, but this year it’s their own original song. Written and recorded all around the world, recorded and alive in this They’ve recorded all the parts, and created a music video too : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rGRB0laQMpA
So this Thursday and Friday, I’m thrilled to be getting the band back together, and I can’t wait to see what we come up with.
Feeling jealous? We’re always on the lookout for talent. So if you’ve got what it takes to join the band (figuratively speaking), check out where you might fit in here.
