User blog:Sarah Manley/Wikia's 1st Hack-a-thon

Here at Wikia one of the things we really value is creativity. It's everywhere around us, from the amazing content on all of our wikis to new initiatives taken on by our communities. We also see it in the office, in the creative ways that our internal teams approach solving the day-to-day problems of running such a huge network of websites.

As part of an effort to further tap into the creative energy of our Engineering team, I am pleased to announce that this week we are hosting our first ever Wikia Hack-a-thon. What is that, exactly? Well, a Hack-a-thon is a dedicated period of time for engineers to do some collaborative programming that fixes problems or unearths new features that we might not otherwise have invented.

It's an exciting time for engineers, as they have two full days to work, either solo or in small teams, 100% uninterrupted by meetings and long-term projects that they are currently tackling. It's also exciting for staff, because we get to play a game called, "Wouldn't it be cool if...?" As in, "Wouldn't it be cool if you could email a photo to a wiki instead of uploading it?" or "What about a 'read me later' feature?" Some of the fun projects being taken on as we speak include brand new social tools, API updates, new widgets, editing tools and much more.

So as you can see, our engineering brains are hard at work -- they've even cordoned themselves off from the rest of us! We are fired up to see what comes our of this process, and will be sure to announce it here if any innovative new products and features are borne out of this Hack-a-thon.

Have you ever done an awesome hack on Wikia -- or somewhere else? Do you have an idea for a future Hack-a-thon? If so, we would love to hear about it below.