May 9, 2024

POWER’s ‘Nitro Create’ Week Pairs Human Imagination With Intelligent Creation

Ever wonder what’s possible when mission, imagination and technology collide? Enter: POWER’s Nitro Create event. 

At POWER, we believe in a build vs. buy mentality — meaning the technology that fuels our growth is entirely built and managed by our own employees. 

When our 200+ Business Technology in-house creators — including developers, engineers, and designers — are given the time and space to collaborate together, the possibilities for POWER’s future are endless.

What Is Nitro Create?

One of the opportunities we give our employees to collaborate together is through Nitro Create, POWER’s longest running event in its 11th year, and the centerpiece of BT’s culture. 

It’s called “Nitro” Create after Nitro, POWER’s proprietary, state-of-the-art collaborative intelligence platform that enables seamless, real-time communication across 20+ operating territories and thousands of employees.

Twice a year, the week-long experience unites POWER technologists from around the globe to reconnect and innovate, clearing their plates of typical daily tasks to focus solely on building new technology advancements that move Nitro and POWER’s business forward. 

Human Imagination x Intelligent Creation 

This year’s theme reminds us that A.I. can be our greatest collaborator. By combining human ingenuity and need for impact with A.I.’s speed and span, we’re infinitely more powerful together than separately.

POWER’s BT employees were tasked to think critically about this concept: With what POWER is capable of today, imagine A.I. can do the piece that’s missing….what would you build?

Unlock Creativity with A.I. 

This year, we were thrilled to welcome award-winning artist, storyteller and tech strategist, Taryn Southern, as Nitro Create’s guest speaker.

Taryn’s keynote, titled “Unlock Creativity with A.I.,” delved into the limitless possibilities of human creativity when combined with artificial intelligence.

“It’s pretty remarkable the things that we can make with A.I., the ways that we can allow our imaginations to run wild,” said Taryn. “We can use A.I. to solve problems, to expand our expertise, to redefine our purpose. It can allow you to work around your own limitations and to create without fear. And the best part — getting there is simply a process of experimentation, play and discovery.”

While some view A.I. as a creative tool, the main news cycle narrative around the advancement skews quite negative. Taryn shared her thoughts on the matter: 

“A.I. is going to be a major disruptor in every single industry. Yet, if we buy into this negative storyline, or if we only aspire to use A.I. to make us faster and smarter and more efficient, I do think we’re missing the boat. We now have access to this incredible collaborative partner that makes really bringing any infinite possibility — any figment of our imagination — alive and possible. If we can use this technology individually and collectively to fuel our imaginations, I’m just so thrilled and excited to see how inspired and collaborative we might be, and more importantly, what’s possible.”

Find Your Creative Synthesis 

Taryn went on to explain that when you work with A.I., you’re really expanding your capabilities in three key areas: 

• expertise
• inspiration 
• motivation

When you combine these three elements together, you get the magic of what she calls “creative synthesis”. It’s those unplanned, emergent, unpredictable moments of illumination that bring forth the coolest ideas to iterate on much faster. 

For the People, By the People 

Nitro Create’s purpose is to enable the people of POWER, who Business Technology supports, to be better and more efficient at what they do. 

To double down on this, business stakeholders and c-suite leaders join project teams to shadow and inform the work with their specific business knowledge and needs.

Tech After Hours

And the fun doesn’t stop at 5pm. Each night of Nitro Create, BT employees spent time together outside of POWER’s HQ to form even better relationships with colleagues. 

Whether that’s mini-golfing, or having free to time to explore Philadelphia, creating a people-first culture is what makes POWER an award-winning place to work in tech.

A.I. even made its way into Nitro Create in the form of an interactive installation, built by POWER’s Motion Graphics and Photography Teams within the Brand department. BT employees posed for pictures, and stepped into a whole new virtual reality!

From Prototype to Deployment  

With A.I. as our ally, we’re paving the way for a faster, more efficient business today.

At the end of the week, teams presented their projects to the entire department. 

Select applications will continue into further development and eventually deploy into the business to help drive POWER’s success. 

Examples of how project teams used A.I. during Nitro Create include: 

• Identify potential issues with home exteriors using just a photo — what could be the future of home exterior assessments
• ID identification on first scan
• Review Pull Requests, which initiate code changes, and create new ones — reducing review cycles and delivering high quality code
• Managing kubernetes infrastructure, including intricacies of deployment challenges, analyzing logs, and suggesting nexts steps on debugging
• Call analyzer, performance optimizer, and sentiment analysis
• Book meeting rooms within HQ, using the Nitro assistant and filtering by day, time, size and equipment
• Streamline PTO requests and check PTO balance

With A.I. as our ally, we’re paving the way for a faster, more efficient business today.

Looking for a workplace that encourages collaborative creativity and A.I. exploration? Explore POWER’s open roles in our Business Technology department here.

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