Hacking Developer Relations at Yahoo! Developer Network

Hacking developer relationsat Yahoo!

Chad Dickerson, Sr. Director, Yahoo! Developer Network

Evans Data Developer Relations Conference

March 12, 2007

http://developer.yahoo.com/

What’s coming up

About the Yahoo! Developer Network

What people said about Hack Day

Yahoo! Hack Day roots: innovation from the inside

Opening Hack Day to the world

Ingredients for success / what we learned

Key benefits and results


About the Yahoo! Developer Network

The central source for ISVs, partners, and developersto leverage the Yahoo! platform in their ownapplications

The Yahoo! platform consists of web services andSDKs that allow developers to build software andservices that leverage: Yahoo's platform excellence

highly-scalable infrastructure

leadership position in online social media


Yahoo! Developer Network REST-based web services

Answers, Local Search, Web Search, Shopping, Travel, Flickr,del.icio.us, Upcoming,

Desktop-based environments Messenger SDK

Yahoo! Widgets

RSS feeds Weather, Traffic, Finance, HotJobs

Many more: http://developer.yahoo.com/rss/

Presentation libraries Yahoo! User Interface Libraries (BSD-licensed)

Yahoo! Design Patterns

Developer Centers .NET, PHP, JavaScript, Flash, Python, Ruby

Applications Gallery: http://gallery.yahoo.com/

Hack Day at Yahoo!

The reviews: what people said


Definition of Hack

Hacking might be characterized as‘an appropriate application ofingenuity’. Whether the result is aquick-and-dirty patchwork job or acarefully crafted work of art, youhave to admire the cleverness thatwent into it.

Source: Eric Raymond, The Jargon File, http://www.catb.org/~esr/jargon/html/meaning-of-hack.html


Guy Kawasaki on Yahoo! Open Hack Day

Hack Day was well conceived andexecuted…No one appreciates goodmarketing more than I do, and othercompanies could learn a lot from thisevent because it garnered:

Press coverage including televisionreports (ABC, CBS).

Blog coverage. (It cost me $140 to go toHackDay because my kids and theirfriends played at a nearby Laser Questwhile I went to the event. But I did get afree t-shirt with the underwhelming HackDay logo.

Talent—perhaps some engineers to hire.

Products—perhaps some goodies toenhance Yahoo!’s products and services

Buzz—perhaps most important of all, theimplicit message that Yahoo! is cool andthat Google isn’t the only game in town.


Strong responseAs I set down these reflections I find my inner cynic--who isso rarely quieted--utterly without remark. Hack Day is oneof those things that just seemed right. . . It's been a longtime since I've had so much fun at a geek event as I did thisweekend at Hack Day --perhaps never.Lori P. Cleary, http://www.apifinder.com/APIFinder/Article/29278

Yahoo! Hack Day was so worth the trip. The weekend couldnot have gone any better. I still can't believe that the folksat Yahoo Developer Relations were able to pull this off. Ihonestly never expected the event to be this good, or thismuch fun.

Bottom line, I had a blast, Beck was awesome, I builtsomething useful with Yahoo stuff, and I have a muchhigher opinion of Yahoo and their technology than I didbefore the weekend started.Jonathan Nolen, http://www.jnolen.org/blog/2006/10/after_yahoo_hac.html

It was certainly one of the best developer events I’ve everattended.Ben Curren, http://www.jotthought.com/articles/2006/10/05/my-weekend-at-yahoo-hackday

Something special happened at Yahoo this week, and I wasvery lucky to be part of it.Mike Arrington, http://www.techcrunch.com/2006/10/01/all-women-team-takes-yahoo-hack-day-top-prize/Something

Hack Day at Yahoo!

Innovation from the inside


History of Hack Day at Yahoo!

• Began as an internal program tounleash engineering talent

• “Mashup or shutup” ethos

• 10+ successful internal events,including international events

• Hundred of prototypes built; somemake it into products

• Prizes aren’t significant -- in fact,awards are usually made up on thespot!

HACK DAY HISTORY

First Hack Day -December ‘05

Quarterly at SunnyvaleHQ

Bangalore, India

Taiwan

EU (UK, Germany,France)

Singapore

Australia

First Open Hack Day -September ‘06


Hack Day: the rules

Build something in 24 hours(NO POWERPOINTS!)

Present it to everyone at theend of the day in 90 seconds

No prior review of projects --anything goes!

That’s it.


Rob McCool on (internal) Hack Day

In others' hacks I see not products, not teams, notcommittees, but people. I can see my peers shine inevery way. Somebody's name is always on whateverthey did. And I can see what gets them excited. . . .small teams doing what they love and purely expressingthemselves in art, paying attention to the details..

Hack Day means I can build a team based on sharedinterests and common goals, and work with greatpeople I might not otherwise know.

Hack is a true bazaar, where products, ideas, andtweaks are not dictated from above but emerge frombelow and survive purely on their possibilities. Nocathedrals here. It's a wonderful bazaar of dreamersshowing their ideas made real.


Hack Day: Pure innovation

Yahoo! Hack Day…helped meremember why so many of us areexcited about what’s happening onthe web today. After you peel awayall of the extraneous layers, thecore of innovation is five or sixpeople building something theythink is cool.

Mike Arrington, Techcrunch

“Yahoo! Hack Day: Pure Innovation”

http://www.techcrunch.com/2006/06/18/yahoo-hack-day-pure-innovation/

Hack Day at Yahoo!

Why not open it up to the world?


Why did we want to do Open Hack Day?

• Build on success of internal hackdays

• Build more engaged communityaround Y! Developer Network

• Create excitement about Yahoo’sAPIs and developer platform bylaunching in a festival environment

• Leverage the capabilities and scaleof Yahoo! to deliver uniquelycompelling event

• We had been opening Yahoo! APIs -why not open Yahoo! itself?

• Show people how cool Yahoo! is byinviting them to Yahoo!


Beyond the conference booth

Highly-branded

Stand next to yourcompetitors

Compete for attention

Low engagement (“do youhave any t-shirts?”)

Inferior wi-fi

Photos:

http://flickr.com/photos/bunch/34436444/

http://flickr.com/photos/bunch/34436446/

http://flickr.com/photos/clarissa/149349777/


Why not leverage what you have?

Physical space / world-classfacilities

Personal relationships

Awesome wi-fi network

Thought leaders

Food

Entertainment

Open Hack Day

The key ingredients for success


Simple event structure Friday: talks by industry-

leading Yahoos

YUI libraries

Yahoo! Mail Web Service

Flickr API

PHP5

21 sessions in all

Evening: kickoff party withmusic (Beck), food, and beer

Hacking all night

Demos of hacks on Saturdayafternoon


New product announcements

Browser-Based Authentication (BBAuth)

http://developer.yahoo.com/auth/

Yahoo! Photos API

http://developer.yahoo.com/photos/

Yahoo! Mail Web Service (previewrelease)

.NET Developer Center

http://developer.yahoo.com/dotnet/

Upcoming.org PHP5 wrapper


Understated brandingIt’s hard to really pull something like thatoff without coming across as cheesy orcontrived, yet it seems that Yahoo! hiton all cylinders and made it work. Hatsoff to Yahoo! for building buzz in thetechnical community the right way. Kevin Briody,

http://seattleduck.com/?p=918


Beck: the hacker musician

For me it's more about giving themusic legs, giving people new waysto experience it. There are so manyways to integrate technology intomusic; I can't wait to see how theopportunities end up being put touse.

We did a remix project on a Web sitea few years back where we put up thetracks to a song and let people maketheir own versions. There wassomething really inspiring about thevariety and quality of the music thatpeople gave back.

Beck in Wired (September 2006)

“The Infinite Album”

http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/14.09/beck.html

Photo: http://flickr.com/photos/yodelanecdotal/256157471/

http://flickr.com/photos/maidelba/258334213/


Pre-event publicity Techcrunch

http://www.techcrunch.com/2006/08/25/announcing-yahoo-open-developer-hack-day/

Hackday.org

http://www.hackday.org/

Upcoming.org

http://upcoming.org/event/101629

Yahoo! bloggers

No press releases, no mailings,no traditional marketing


Unique invitation process

Open “request for invite” foronly 400 slots (no fee)

Simple criteria:

will you be building somethingusing at least one Yahoo! API?

would you contribute to theevent?

Geographic diversity -- not justthe usual Silicon Valley crowd


PR approach Yahoo's developers weren't cordoned off by

PR people to prevent frank and openconversations. Yahoo trusts their staff towork without chaperones at these events, adistinct difference in approach. One has aculture of transparency and openness, andthe other a culture of communicationfiltered by legal and marketing and publicitydepartments. Looking for analogies, it's anapproach to style and engagement thatreminds me of the big movie studios vs.independent/underground films; ofClearchannel vs. satellite radio; of the big,rapacious record labels vs. early Napster;attendees vs. participants; of Monkeesnostalgia vs. Beck.

Photography was welcomed -- over 4000 photoson Flickr!


Amazing wi-fi

The first thing worthy ofmention was the wifi; it wasunbelievably good. Yahoomanaged to provide accessfor three hundred of themost internet-addictedpeople on the planet withouta hiccup. . . The wholeweekend I had solid, fast netaccess everywhere I went.

Jonathan Nolen

http://www.jnolen.org/blog/2006/10/after_yahoo_hac.html


Developers helping developers

Photo: Scott Beale / Laughing Squid, http://flickr.com/photos/laughingsquid/256942465/

What I loved about the event - and Yahoo! - was theaccessibility and sense of fun. Even though I was ajudge, inspired by the Friday sessions I stayed up tillthe wee hours with the other programmers puttingtogether a simple photo/bookmark blogging toolusing the Flickr and del.icio.us API's. At one point -well after 2 AM - one of the Flickr developers walkeddown the hallway and stopped to answer questionsand help out the folks sitting next to me. OtherYahoo's did a late-night Red Bull run for the guesthackers. I couldn't help to think how amazing it wasfor Joe Coder to have that kind of access.

Gina Trapani, Lifehackerhttp://www.lifehacker.com/software/yahoo/special-report-yahoo-open-hack-day-06-204584.php


Competitors? OK!

The fact that Yahoo embraced engineers from startups and design shopsthroughout the ecosystem is indicative of the sort of coopetition that is goingon around the web these days. Big organizations like Yahoo, Google andAmazon are making significant pieces of their infrastructure available to thirdparties for development of new applications. As a result, those bigorganizations are able to inject their DNA broadly into applications throughoutthe web. And, by and large, both parties are benefitted by the relationship.

David Hornik, http://www.ventureblog.com/articles/indiv/2006/001258.html

Attendees also included staff from:

Microsoft, Google, eBay, AOL, Adobe


What our “competitors” said

This event was absolutely beyond any of my expectations. To any of youYahoo folk reading: Thanks for an incredible event.Jordan Sissel (Google employee)

http://www.semicomplete.com/blog/geekery/yahoo-hackday-06-part1.html

Many people and organizations have a hard time saying good things abouttheir competitors, but I have no problem in saying that Yahoo’s OpenHackDay06 was quite cool and life changing.Kristopher Tate (Zooomr, Flickr competitor)

http://blog.zooomr.com/2006/10/01/part-1-of-2-yahoos-hackday06-was-quite-cool/

I just wanted to make sure that I told Yahoo! congrats. Any time you see thislevel of enthusiasm, it was clearly a very cool event, and it sounds like theattendees had a really good time.

Matt Cutts (Google)

http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/kudos-on-open-hack-day/


Rapid-fire demos(never pre-screened, and NO POWERPOINTS)

Open Hack Day

Measurable results


Open Hack Day by the numbers

50+ demos

400 hackers

4000+ flickr photos

122 blog posts

1 national camera crew

4 local camera crews

20+ original articles

32 press attendees

50 broadcast hits

Getting your local TV news anchor toexclaim how much she wants a Hack Day t-shirt is in the camp of impressive crossovercoverage.

Delyn Simmons

http://delynsimons.blogspot.com/2006/10/developer-community-event-yahoo-hack.html


Other results

Traffic to developer.yahoo.com up 150% from July to September

sustained each month since OpenHack Day

New application IDs provisioned Substantial spike at Open Hack Day

September was biggest month ever

New employees hired (directly andindirectly)

Many new sample applications usingYahoo! platform

Useful feedback for GA release ofYahoo! Mail Web Service


In closingYahoo! is the s***. Seriously, where else can you getthe downlow on PHP from the guy who wrote it, sitnext to the person who started Flickr as you learnhow to hack the Flickr API, and get a tutorial on theYahoo UI platform library from the people whodesigned them and then rock out to a private Beckconcert, replete with a live puppet show? Punk. Rock.

This was a great idea from start to finish. Yahoo! getslots of smart engineers playing around with theirtools and services, possibly adds a few of them totheir payroll, and spreads tremendous good willamong the developer community. Attendingengineers and researchers, in turn, get treated to aseries of enlightening talks by the leading minds inthe industry, sees the internal workings of a cutting-edge company, and get to network with like-mindedpeople.

Brooke Maury

http://www.brookemaury.org/2006/09/30/yahoo-is-punk-rock/


Thank you / questions?

Contact:

[email protected]

Yahoo! Developer Network:http://developer.yahoo.com/

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Hacking Developer Relations at Yahoo! Developer Network