Changing lives with Yahoo! Hack Day

Posted June 14th, 2007 at 10:02 am by Chad Dickerson, Yahoo! Developer Network

Number of Comments 5 Comments / Filed in: Conferences/Events, Cool Stuff, Video

The Yahoo! Developer Network team has been busily preparing to host our first international Hack Day in London with the BBC this weekend — Open Hack Day Europe, with 500 hackers joining the festivities on the palatial (literally!) grounds of Alexandra Palace. We’ve got confirmed attendees from 18 countries, from Portugal to Liechtenstein (population: 33,987) to Romania.

For those unfamiliar with Yahoo! Hack Day, the “rules” are simple: Gather a bunch of developers in one place, build something in 24 hours, and demo your work in 2 minutes or less. Our first open Hack Day last September was a stunning success, capturing the hacker spirit I saw best expressed many months before, halfway around the world at Yahoo! Bangalore, at our first internal Hack Day there. Their posters were incredibly simple, but communicated the hacker ethic as purely as I’ve seen it — a Venn diagram with two interlocking circles labeled “dreamer” and “coder,” and at the intersection of the two, “hacker.”

I recently got an email from Mo Kakwan, one of the participants from our September event, with the subject “How Yahoo! Hack Day changed my life.” Anyone who was there will remember that Mo delivered what was probably the hit presentation of Hack Day, a demo that turned into a brilliant comic descent into the frenetic madness of trying to build something amazing in 24 hours. (You have to watch his presentation to get a sense of the magic of that moment — fortunately, someone shot video!) For Mo, Hack Day was a spark that made him start dreaming of bigger things. He wrote to me:

I was lucky enough to be part of Yahoo! Hack Day in Sunnyvale back in September. I did the presentation with Patrick Stewart talking. That was an amazing weekend for me. I had never stood before such a crowd and held a microphone. The idea behind my presentation at Hack Day was to be able to make a picture talk and then be able to send the talking picture to a friend as an e-card. When I realized my team was gone and all I had was a puppet picture I had no choice but to distract everyone with laughter.

I thought the idea was going to end there when I left that night and drove back home. Instead it kept me up late at night figuring out streaming audio. Pouring over PHP books and Flash. I found myself venturing off to web meetups after work in the city trying to understand web startup culture. I began reading blogs like Techcrunch feverishly. At the end of January I took the leap and left my job in pursuit of making the idea real. I enlisted the help of a friend and together we put the pieces together. Two months later we had the site up in closed testing with a few friends. Fast-forward to now and the site is live but no one knows about it yet as we have not announced anywhere public.

All this because of Hack Day! I wanted to tell you Thank you! Thank you so much for putting such an event together. When I was driving down to Yahoo! I had no idea that I’d end up doing a 2-minute presentation that would change my life. I don’t know how things are going to end up. I might be searching for a job again in 3 months if we don’t get funding *laugh*. All I know is that this is a wonderful adventure. I just wanted to thank you for setting up the catalyst. Yahoo! Hack Day changed my life!

Mo put together a short video (also below) about his Hack Day experience and how it led to his new venture, Blabberize. Be sure to check out the cameo appearances by our cofounders.

Mo’s email underscored for me the key element of Hack Day: Yahoo! may put the event together and provide the APIs, but it’s not about us. It’s about you, the dreamers/coders who get up on stage to put yourselves and your ideas out there in front of your peers. I’m sure we will repeat Mo’s inspiring story this weekend. Different country, different continent, and different people, but the hacker spirit lives on.

See you in London! Maybe it’s your life that will be changed this time.

Chad Dickerson
Head of Yahoo! Developer Network