Hack U: Inspiring Innovation
Before dashing off to lead a Hack U session at Georgia Tech, Rasmus Lerdorf received a special request from the Yahoo! Mobile team. They had just released their new SDK, allowing anyone to create and upload widgets to the Yahoo! Mobile Developer Platform. The team wanted Rasmus to inform Georgia Tech students about the new platform and encourage them to write their own mobile applications.
“I don’t own a cell phone,” quips Lerdorf, creator of the PHP programming language and an infrastructure architect at Yahoo!, “but I did pass along the request.”
Two students, Roger Pincombe and Juan C. Villa, took the message to heart. They went off and created a hack called DialPrice that helps consumers determine if they’re paying the best price for any given product. When shopping in a store, consumers can send a product’s UPC code to DialPrice, which will then tell them the average price for that item. Today, DialPrice is one of the most popular widgets on Yahoo!’s mobile platform.
This story speaks volumes about the success of Hack U, one of the major programs underway in Yahoo!’s Academic Relations organization. Computer science students fueled by fast food, ultra-caffeinated beverages, and alternative music, are free to let their imaginations run wild, tapping the Yahoo! library of APIs to create hacks that advance the Internet experience.
“A number of students have told me that Hack U is the coolest thing they’ve done in their entire university career,” says Lerdorf. “They’re blow away by the fact that Yahoo! engineers like myself actually come to their campus for an entire week. We’re there to give workshops and provide hands-on guidance for their hacks.”
Yahoo!, for its part, takes great pride in helping to inspire innovation. Through the Hack U program, the company is teaching new technology to students and encouraging them to lead the next generation of the web. In some cases, this is technology the students can’t learn anywhere else.
What exactly is Hack U? During the course of the year, tech gurus from Yahoo! fly out to a select number of top universities across the country, usually no more than five to eight schools a year. They teach a series of Hack workshops and host a high-energy, interactive 24-hour coding festival where young thinkers can develop their dream applications.
The winners from each school then faceoff at the Sunnyvale campus for the National University Hackdown. They also earn a shot at a summer internship at Yahoo!, and the chance to collaborate with some of the very best developers in the business.
“Hack U is about getting students excited about technology,” says Jamie Lockwood, Academic Relations Program Manager at Yahoo!. “University students are becoming increasingly entrepreneurial and are looking to invent the next big thing. Hack U can serve as a catalyst for this kind of creativity.”
One great example is Andy Ying at the University of Illinois. His hack, called FlightTracker, provides the latest data for any commercial flight within the United States. The application can trace a plane’s progress in near real-time. Satellite imagery even allows the user to interact with the plane and experience what a passenger might see outside his or her window.
The Hack U program has grown tremendously in stature over the last year. When the program first started in 2006, schools submitted perhaps five or six hacks each. But at the most recent event at Georgia Tech, 21 hacks were completed.
“In the beginning, we had to convince schools to let us come out and hold our event on campus,” says Lerdorf, who has stayed up all night on multiple occasions helping students polish their hacks. “Now, they’re asking us to come and are starting to provide more assistance, so it’s become much easier for us.”
Of course, Yahoo! is thrilled with the program’s growing popularity. But due to the limited availability of Hack Gurus—these guys also have full-time jobs—Hack U is only held at a select number of universities each season. This also helps the program retain a level of intimacy that’s critical to its success.
Hack U has been so well received at U.S. universities that it is now being extended to schools in Europe, Latin America, India and Asia.
Overall, Hack U has helped to strengthen Yahoo!’s tech brand by promoting the use of its cutting-edge web technologies and APIs. It has also served to differentiate Yahoo! from its competitors, engaging students in a unique way and getting them to think of Yahoo! as a great place to work.
What’s more, Hack U offers a unique opportunity for Yahoo! to partner with university faculty and involve them in the kinds of problems and challenges currently being tackled by the internet industry
Faculty at schools like Stanford, Carnegie Mellon, and the University of Illinois are welcoming the Hack U program with open arms. Professors typically sit on the judging panel, and some, like Mike Woodley at the University of Illinois, have incorporated Hack U-specific content into their course material.
“Many of our colleagues are faculty members who are training a new generation of bright, thoughtful people,” says Ron Brachman, head of Academic Relations at Yahoo!. “If we can get them interested in the kinds of issues we see everyday, the entire Internet industry benefits, not just Yahoo!.”
