Hackers, Controlled Chaos and Innovation

When was the last time you associated a hacker with a badge of honor! And believed that a hacker can help your company innovate amidst controlled chaos for 24 hours. Look no further. Internet giant Yahoo! is hosting an overnight "hack-a-thon" for hackers, aka computer software experts next week, and it is "Free".

Yahoo! network developer director Chad Dickerson not only equates Hackers within his Yahoo Development Community with carrying a badge of honor, but also provides such attributes as "someone who really knows how to build things with computers, not destroy things."

In a story reported today by AFP writer Glenn Chapman, Yahoo! is hosting a 24-hour programming free-for-all as its first public "Hack Day" next week - perhaps taking a page out of the Google annual competition. Dickerson claims this as a natural extension of events that engineers inside the company routinely hold.

Why host an event like this?

"To inspire new twists on Yahoo services as well as reclaim "hacker" as a name for those adept at manipulating software in creative, not malicious, ways," said Yahoo network developer director Chad Dickerson.

Which brings us to our central point?

Are Innovative companies such as Yahoo! and Google looking for creative ways to become even more innovative? Or is this event just to create some noise and awareness in the software community?

About 500 Software developers (hackers) from the United States and Canada are expected to arrive, live in a tent for 24 hours at the Yahoo campus in Sunnyvale, California, on September 29 and hack away at the company's programs, which would be provided. They can work in teams, work solo, work in whatever style they wish and produce results within 24 hours.

Dickerson even claims that "We find that the most creative ideas come from hackers who have no previous idea of what to do. It is a surprise even to us what they build."

If Yahoo! is indeed successful in finding "new twists on Yahoo services" through a controlled chaos of an event such as this with all the hackers, it would certainly be a first in their long page of innovations.

Beyond the innovation that such an event can potentially bring, Dickerson also wants to portray an "openness" culture of his company and perhaps give the hackers the positive limelight that they crave for - at least for one day.

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