Just because something is awesome, doesn’t mean it took terribly long to create. So once a quarter, Twitter has a 5-day hackweek to encourage people to get creative and work on just about anything they want. “The only real rule for hackweek is that it has to do with Twitter,” said Lindsay Schauer (@SchauerTime), their Internal Communications Manager.
Some of these ideas end up spawning new products and help make Twitter a better place to be. Twitter for Mac got started during a hackweek, as did the ability to download all your tweets ever sent!
“It’s really mind boggling every hackweek, as to the variety of really cool ideas and really interesting implementations that people have created in just 4-days,” stated Alex McCauley (@anm), an International Project Manager for Twitter. One of the programming interns mentioned he felt like he almost learned as much at one hack week, than an entire semester of school. These kind of open environments that enable new ideas are what make the culture at Twitter so awesome. The final day of hackweek, where every team presents their new inventions is said to bring out a ton of energy as everyone gathers to check out the latest projects.
Hackweek at Twitter
What kind of new functionality would you hope to see get hacked up at Twitter?
I love the concept.
Agreed with Sovanna, super concept which fosters major league creativity. Given the chance to let go and create, people become creative lol….on the flip people who are constrained by rules generally do a poor job thinking outside the box. Successful businesses are built on these free thinking type sessions. Good share Daniel!