For the past year, every Wednesday night at about 6:00 p.m. work stops! Since I have been working for Levers there has been a weekly hack night. To put it simply: “Stop your real work and work on something fun!”"
There have been some winning hack night projects and some losing ones. Let’s take a look:
Magic: The Gathering API : (winning)
- Author: Michael Curry
- Link: https://mtgapi.com
- Description: There was no card API for Magic the Gathering?! I could not stand for that. Over the prod of 3 weeks – only working on hack nights – this service was created and tested, and MTG API was born. This service is available for free to everyone that wants to use it. This was defiantly a hack night project that took on a life of its own.
Travel Blog : (winning)
- Author: Emily Timm
- Link: AboutGoingOverboard.com
- Description: Emily took it upon herself to make her own travel blog. She wanted to learn how code came together to make a website and how to merge WordPress into a custom format. After a few hack nights, Emily had her new blog up and running! It is full of amazing posts about places anyone would be lucky to visit.
Mirror Your Site : (Losing)
- Author: Michael Curry
- Description: I created a javascript file that would mirror a web page. This worked very well in theory, but not in practice. CSS transitions messed up everything. If it would have worked, it would have been a fun thing to put on a site to mess with your friends, or as a Konami Code.
Twimlbin : (winning)
- Author: Jonathan Kressaty
- Link: http://twimlbin.com
- Description: Do you use Twilio? Do you use TwiML? Twimlbin allows you to host TwiML at a static URL without any need for hosting or a web server. This service just recently hit 1 Million requests. This past year, there have been many ideas between our employees for hack night. Some have been notable and other not so much, but no one can deny the fact that every project brings new knowledge. Hack nights are a great break from the mundane and gives time for motivation to those who need it.
Take a break this Wednesday and build something!
UPDATE [06-23-2017]: http://twimlbin.com was aquired by https://www.twilio.com/. Way to go!