(2005-05-10) Company Hackathons

Hack Athon-s were held at JotSpot and Atlassian (Confluence WikiEngine) to spur Innovation (and give Engineer-s a sense of Engagement outside the Block And Tackle of their normal days).

A couple of the JotSpots deliverables were:

• a Touch Graph WikiGraph Browser

• shared real-time Co-Editing (though alas not CoOutlining), locked at the paragraph level.

Update: Kathy Sierra on Squirrel Eiserloh and the Ad Lib Game Design Society. The idea can be mapped to virtually anything for which you want to encourage maximum creativity, innovation, and most importantly... getting something done. While it may be a Big Deal to start your own FooCamp/BarCamp-style self-organizing conference, the total immersion "ad-lib jam" model is something we can all start in our home town, wherever that may be... A big part of what makes this work is that you are not in your normal environment. No kids, no chores, no I-should-be-doing-something-else. More importantly, it's the energy of the other participants that makes this so effective. You know exactly what I'm talking about if you've ever been in a highly engaged group where everyone's really cranking and you can almost feel the brain power and creativity rippling out of each person's head like WiFi. The ALGDS seems oriented toward all the attendees working together on a single idea, but Kathy seems to be discussing just having people working independently in the same place/time maybe in the same genre.