Facebook Shares The History Of ‘Hackathon’

Posted on May 24 2012 - 9:53am by Editorial Staff

We know Facebook as a social giant – the one with over 901 million users worldwide but if you have ever noticed the social giant’s culture, than you do get to know that there is one such thing that stayed with company since from the time it launches. I am talking about social giant’s “hackathon”. The company has shared a bit about the history of hackathon. Here are some interesting insights from an engineering lead at Facebook, Pedram Keyani:

In Facebook’s early days, a lot of ordinary nights were like hackathons—when someone decided they wanted to stay up all night to build a prototype, they just did it. But as Facebook grew, people started organizing hackathons as a way to collaborate with colleagues from different parts of the team to get their ideas working fast. I had heard a lot about hackathons before I came to Facebook, and about a month after I joined in 2007, I asked another engineer when the next hackathon would be. He just said, “Whenever someone wants to organize it.” I immediately went to my desk and emailed the company that I was going to hack the following night and, if anyone else wanted to join me, I would get food and drinks. The following night, we had a great hackathon that generated lots of innovative projects and ideas. Zuck came to my desk the next day and told me how awesome the hackathon had been, and from then on I’ve been spreading the word.

Once done with hackathon:

After each hackathon, we keep the momentum going by holding a prototype forum where everyone who built a project can present it to the company. Prototype forum usually happens a week after the hackathon, so it gives people a chance to fine-tune their projects and prepare them for live demos. Everyone gets the same amount of time at the forum—two minutes—to convince their peers that their idea should ship.

(Image Source: Facebook)

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