Yahoo! Publisher Network
“Most Money” Award: Yahoo! Hack Day Competition

We’re bursting with pride down here in Burbank to report that the Yahoo! Publisher Network Development and Product team entered Yahoo! Hack Day and won a trophy in the category “Most Money” for a hack titled… well, we can’t tell you, as this sort of thing is considered “top secret.”

Hack Day is kind of like that scene in the movie, “Apollo 13,” when NASA engineers have to remotely determine what’s wrong with the moon-bound space capsule and then, using only the materials on-board, figure out a way to solve the problem and get the astronauts home safe—except, thankfully, without the life and death part.

It’s a semi-regular competition in which Yahoo! developers crank out a hack that is: outside their usual sphere of work, valuable to the company, and can be taken from concept to working prototype in 24 hours. This last Hack Day started at Noon last Thursday and ended at Noon on the 16th.

Congrats go to the team of developers and supporters behind the winning hack: Josh Rangsikitpho, Aaron Stein, Sumit Chachra, Steve Spencer, Yu Shan Chuang, Dave Zito and Cody Simms.

Why should you care?

Two reasons: Though we can’t tell you the specifics right now, there’s a good chance that a version of this hack may become part of our offerings in the future, one that will enhance your site’s user experience, as well as its performance.

In addition, getting a group of hackers together in a room to work exclusively toward a single goal, under deadline pressure and without interruption, is a great way to spur innovation and creativity while developing comradeship. We highly recommend it.

To find out more about our Hack Day, visit these blogs:

• Chad Dickerson
• Dav Glass
• Jeremy Zawodny
• TechCrunch

 —The Team