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June 15, 2006

Yahoo Hack Day Today

Michael Arrington

48 comments »

Yahoo has had a a couple of regional “Hack Days”, which are day long events where engineers stop everything they are doing and just build stuff that they think is cool. The idea was first popularized by Jot last year, and a number of companies have picked up on the idea as a great way to stoke innovation and creativity in a semi-organized way. The goal? Take something from idea to prototype in 24 hours.

Today at noon, however, Yahoo got serious about Hack Days by making it Yahoo-wide. Every Yahoo engineer is invited to participate, and other employees are joining in as well. Anyone with an idea is encouraged to gather a team up and spend a day coding. Tomorrow (Friday) at noon, the hacking stops and everyone will get together to review what’s been built.

The effort is being led out of Bradley Horowitz’s product strategy group, with Chad Dickerson and Caterina Fake organizing the event.

I’ll be there to cover the event tomorrow, as will Jeremy Zawodny and John Markoff of the New York Times.

  • Sphere It

This entry was posted on Thursday, June 15th, 2006 at 2:49 pm and is filed under Company & Product Profiles. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

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Comments

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  1. Jeremy Zawodny

    June 15th, 2006 at 3:40 pm

    I’m probably not what you had in mind, but I’ll do my best to blog it tomorrow. :-)

  2. Tom

    June 15th, 2006 at 3:57 pm

    I would like to see some of these “prototypes” put into use. Whats the point of wasting all that time just to forget about it?

  3. Seth

    June 15th, 2006 at 3:58 pm

    My thoughts:

    1. Good idea. It’s worked for Google.
    2. The “Mashup or Shutup” slogan is sympomatic of society’s inconsiderate, if not rude attitude toward each other. Reminds me of the “Treat me like the princess I am” shirts. Who are you? Are you more important than me?
    3. One word - poser.

  4. Erwin

    June 15th, 2006 at 4:11 pm

    Marvellous!!

    http://ole365.blogspot.com

  5. Intergalactic Hussy

    June 15th, 2006 at 4:42 pm

    Actually “Mash-Up” refers to the biggest thing in music where they take 1, 2, 3 or more songs and make one incredibly annoying one. Why don’t they have a day like this in other fields? lol

  6. Jeremy Zawodny

    June 15th, 2006 at 5:29 pm

    Tom: Some of the old prototypes (from previous Hack Days) *are* working their way to the surface. This isn’t just an exercise to blow off steam–some very, very good product ideas come out of these events.

  7. Ben Strackany

    June 15th, 2006 at 7:18 pm

    Argh, didn’t know about this until 8pm tonight. Jeremy, you gotta give us a little notice next time so we can get started on time! :)

  8. lowload

    June 16th, 2006 at 2:13 am

    i think this is a brilliant idea, allot of new ideas can be put into a prototype in a day, showing the creativity, say only 1 idea shines through all of this, sureley thats a good thing?

    UK Dedicated Servers

  9. Keith

    June 16th, 2006 at 3:46 am

    I thought we are all supposed to hack Yahoo sites on Yahoo Hack Day…. :)

  10. Joel

    June 16th, 2006 at 7:46 am

    What a great idea. Now that it is Nation-wide maybe there will be some more intel supported software. C’mon!!!!

  11. Chris Heuer

    June 16th, 2006 at 9:09 am

    Chad rocks with this great idea. Really glad to see more companies embracing such innovations in mashing up people and ideas.

  12. Mike

    June 16th, 2006 at 1:43 pm

    I watching the presentation session steaming live over the corp. network right now. There’s some really great ideas so far. Too bad I can’t tell you any of them… :P

  13. Noah Winecoff

    June 16th, 2006 at 2:38 pm

    Great idea. Keep the creative juices fresh.

  14. Dave

    June 16th, 2006 at 10:12 pm

    Why just a day, maybe they should start every quarter with a “Hack Day” then one day every week have everyone conttribute their part to the best project concepts. Naw we would see more OS’s, better games P2P software that actually works, and were would we be then….oh thats right…we would be right where we are!

  15. Richard Crowley

    June 17th, 2006 at 7:57 am

    After the fact, the event was quite a success. It was my first experience with any “hack day”-like event, being a summer intern. From what I could see there were several (more than 10 of the 102 hacks) that could be integrated into products by next week. Then others could be their own products. There are some sharp hackers @ Yahoo.

  16. Chris Messina

    June 17th, 2006 at 9:58 am

    Of course, for non-Yahooers, there’s always Mash Pit (in fact, there’s one coming up on Tues in San Francisco!)

  17. Robin

    July 7th, 2006 at 12:03 am

    This is my first time haring of this. very interesting. when yahoo become a big company, the innovation becomes difficult. this might encouraging people to think innovation.

  18. henry

    July 22nd, 2006 at 6:21 am

    I want to know The Methods of emails & gmails Hacking ! ok?????

  19. sambaba

    August 21st, 2006 at 8:37 am

    Hello Friends in My Web New HAcking Software :) Plz Check ,Download And Enjoy :)…. Friends if u have more software than add my email and share the Data Thx this is my Email :) sam_davilzz@yahoo.com…. Thx

  20. Helen Price

    August 24th, 2006 at 2:02 am

    That’s a great motivation idea! I think I’ll try to do something like that with my guys.

  21. web hosting company

    September 23rd, 2006 at 7:19 am

    YOUR HACKERS & SpY RuLeS! both of you are promoting your sites which is not allowed here. We are here to discuss on the topic “Yahoo Hack Day Today” Please don’t try to hack or crack such topics.

  22. Vaja

    February 27th, 2007 at 11:03 pm

    Hello friends is there many who can hack yahoo please help my whos can hacking yahoo send my mail Geto@asia.com

  23. Bradley Clay

    March 5th, 2007 at 12:24 pm

    i need to learn to hack into not only yahoo.com but everything. i think i could become the greatest hack ever. i’ve done a little but i need to do more. i want to be come the best ever.

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