The Blogo’Shawn

Hats off to Yahoo! for putting forth a fantastic event for coders, Yahoo! Hack Day!! It far surpassed anything I was expecting and I truly admired the dedication and openness of the employees who worked so tirelessly to make this happen in short order. They made us feel very assisted and at ease. I believe I got a really good gander at the Yahoo! spirit and the kind of people drawn to work there. Not to mention, I realized just how many Yahooligans I already knew from previous tech soirees…many of them were in motion yesterday, assuring that the event was a success.

And might I say, this was anything but a sedate event. Of course, the day culminated with the star power of Beck whose concert just blew my socks off for sheer entertainment value.

I was roaring with delight between the Puppet versions of the band members mimicking their doppelgangers throughout the show (check out this vid clip shown during a break - hilarious!) and the frenetic gesticulations of the geekily-attired male go-go dancer. Beck really got us fired up - so much so that towards the end, moshing erupted. Think about that for a sec! How often do you witness moshing hackers on the Yahoo! grounds. I think not often!

More so, though, there was such a sense of camraderie and meeting of minds. I easily met scads of interesting and intelligent people, many of whom are undertaking startup projects like me. There was much talk about our endeavors and ideas in the context of Yahoo APIs and beyond. I even met a contingent of Chicagoans, some of whom I’d known only through their blogging and activities like Tech Social. Since Chicago is my home city, it was great seeing these folks face-to-face and representing!

Alas, I was not able to join in the hack contest itself due to work obligations today, but I am quite glad I got to participate yesterday in such a fine event and can only hope there will be more of these in the future…though I’m not sure how you could surpass what we just experienced! I also found some sessions quite informative as I am working up a map for one of my projects and needed some in-depth insight on the Maps API. I got my questions addressed and I also know who to turn too now at Yahoo! should I have further questions or requests…the Yahoo! Local team people on hand were quite approachable.

Truly an incredible event, Yahoo! I am bound to remember this one for a long time to come!