Harker Summit February 2025: Gearing Up For Launch

At the start of February, everyone came together in the office for a mini conference called Harker Summit. This is when we take a day out from our regular work as an entire company to do workshops and sessions to make sure we’re all on the same page and convey any other important information to the team. This is particularly important with launch being so soon (start of April, mark your calendars!).

We held lots of really interesting sessions, including one covering OPEL (Operational Priorities Enabling Launch), a deep dive into how we should all be preparing for Harker's launch through five key pillars: marketing, customer support, legal, admin and data protection. These priorities encompass various critical considerations that will allow us to launch successfully and sustainably.

One of the key discussion points was IP (Intellectual Property) and how we can prevent accidentally disclosing confidential information, as well as plans for how we will be collecting user feedback on the first release of Harker. We also learnt about client communication and how we can best liaise with our customers, which a lot of the software development team found really beneficial as we are not normally involved in this side of the business. My favourite part of this session was the team activity where we looked at examples of client emails and had to point out what was wrong with them, such as the tone of voice used. This built on the Tone of Voice session we held at the last Harker Summit, which you can read all about here!

There were also several exciting guest speakers, including Andy Kent CEO & Founder at Angel Solutions, which is an EdTech software company based here in Liverpool Science Park. He gave us some extremely valuable insight into how start-ups grow and some of the things we can expect as we look past launch and into the future. One of the most valuable insights he shared was to do “just one more thing” at the end of each day. This means that when everyone has finished work, we all think of one more thing that takes five minutes to do and will make the next day just a bit easier. The team has already taken this on board and found that we’ve been more productive and have got those little tasks out the way!

Another brilliant guest speaker was Richard Leighton, who is the University of Liverpool’s Entrepreneur in Residence. He spoke about his experience working in the homelessness sector, including his unique pub-shelter model called "The Stingray", which repurposes derelict pubs across the UK and turns them into community facilities to support those at risk of homelessness. Richard also highlighted how Harker could have been helpful in some of the places he has worked, which was really relevant to us as it gave us insight into the real life impact Harker has the potential to bring.

Finally, we finished the day with a presentation of staff service badges, which are given when one of the team has worked at Harker for a certain number of years. They are in the shape of our company mascot, Vincent van Goat, and are given for one, three, five and ten years of continuous service. This time the recipients were Lauren and Noah for one year of service (both Casual Software Developers), Matthew (Graduate Software Developer) for one year, and Tom for three years (Graduate Software Developer). This was a really nice way to round off what was an informative and action packed day aligning the team in preparation for Harker's launch in the coming months!