Yahoo! Flash (R) Blog

Good Will Hacking

It’s not your fault. It’s not your fault. It’s not your fault! It’s all ours, we swear. We started this thing, called a hack day, so that Yahoos could showcase their creative chops in a 24-hour long battle of code, written in multiple languages and on various platforms. Lots of the little projects showcased at hack days later became full-fledged products, and as time went on, more and more of us started participating. And then the whole thing just grew way too big for our shoes, and the next thing you know - we had to kick the doors off the hinges and open it to the public.

The first Open Hack Day, back in 2006, was a smashing success. Coders from all over the place converged on Yahoo! campus, for a day and a night full of code, music (Beck himself showed up to perform live for them!), pizza, beer, Red Bull, and conversation. Local TV stations had helicopters covering the event (okay, I am exaggerating, but they did send out correspondents), and the projects we saw come out of that Hack Day were simply mind-blowing. Wonderful prizes (a huge flat panel TV, among other things) were duly and deservedly awarded.

This year, we are going for an encore of what will hopefully become a long-standing tradition. And though we’ve seen quite a few Flash hacks in the last Hack Day, we always love to see more. So, if you believe you’ve got what it takes, and can take Friday, September the 12th off, get thee to http://www.hackday.org and apply at once (the event is invitation-only). Among all kinds of prizes, we are setting up a special “Best Flash Hack” prize, and who knows — you may be its lucky recipient! And though, just as last year, we are keeping the name of the artist who will perform for the lucky hackers on Friday night under wraps, let’s just say it’s going to be someone really cool!

To summarize:

What: Yahoo! Open Hack Day.
Where: Yahoo! Sunnyvale Campus.
When: September 12th, 8:00AM — September 13th, whenever, and don’t even think about sleeping that night.
How: By invitation only, apply at http://www.hackday.org

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