ryan kennedy’s blog

Last Thursday/Friday was our latest internal Yahoo! Hack Day. Basically it’s a 24 hour period where any Yahoo! can hack up some neat prototype of their choosing. Some people work in groups, others (like me) fly solo. I participated in the last internal Hack Day (we do one a quarter) and had great fun. It’s like being back in college again: up till odd hours of the night, working against a last minute deadline, pumped up on pizza and caffeine. Unlike college, however, this time I get to pick the project (instead of the instructor).

This Hack Day was different, though. I had even more fun, built an even more kickass hack and…walked away with an award. Not just any award, mind you…I walked out with the “Technically Sweet” award. I’m not sure if I was being awarded for my personality and good looks or for the level to which my hack ruled, I really don’t care. The point is, some seriously heavy Yahoo!’s voted that I was one of 10 (out of more than 100) that was worthy of award. Don’t worry about this going to my head, it’s far too late for that now.

I’m hoping to be able to share some of the details of my hack soon, until then I’ll share some of hints for Hack Day (to compliment the ones JR put up):

• Get to the presentations early. Make sure your wireless works in the room and that your demo works over the wireless. Failure to double check this will lead to agony and suffering. Also, arriving early will ensure you a seat…one that isn’t on the floor. The demos last for hours, the last place you want to be is on a thinly carpeted slab of concrete.
• Practice your demo, at the very least run through it and make sure you can finish in 90 seconds. There’s a countdown timer and when it hits zero, the MC’s will do everything in their power to get you moving offstage. Seriously, you think the guys at the Oscars are bad? These guys don’t mess around (they play the company yodel when your time is up…loud).
• Make sure you can get the point of your hack across visually. If you have to depend on spoken words to explain what you’re doing, you’re screwed. You’ve just spent the last 24+ hours hacking away at code. You’re likely in a caffeine-induced state of semi-awakenness. Do you really think anything that comes out of your mouth is going to make sense?
• When someone says, “hey, we’re ordering pizza and watching ‘Hackers‘ in one of the conference rooms, who’s in?” you say “ME!” The movie is awful (it’s one of those “it’s funny because they’re trying desperately, in vain, not to be”…like watching Evil Dead) but you’ll meet up with a couple of cool guys, enjoy some pizza and have a good time.

If you’re really wondering how this whole Hack Day thing works, then I highly encourage you to sign up and come to the big Open Hack Day we’re having at Yahoo! It’s going to be a good time, the kind of thing you tell your kids about (unless your hack totally bombs).

This entry was posted on Monday, September 18th, 2006 at 10:16 pm and is filed under Yahoo!. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.