Mo Kakwan made the hour-plus drive from Richmond, CA to Sunnyvale on Friday to attend Yahoo's first-ever public Hack Day. Kakwan, a software engineer for HumanNature Studios Inc. didn't come to represent his company as much as for the experience of meeting some likeminded developers who enjoy "mashing up"--Web 2.0 style. As Friday wore on Kakwan partnered up with a few local Hack Day attendees and, in the true spirit of the event, over Yahoo-supplied pizza and beers, they began to brainstorm some ideas for a hack they could be proud of. But by 4:00 a.m., fatigue began to take its toll. One by one, Kakwan's partners gave him a rousing high five and made their way home for a few hours of sleep, promising to join him in the morning to get their hands dirty with the task at hand. Shortly thereafter, at a small aluminum table in the Yahoo cafeteria, Kakwan put his head down for a few moments--and awoke just after dawn thinking "Where is everybody?"

While Kakwan's makeshift team may have ultimately collapsed, Kakwan was determined to finish something. When I met him hours later, on Saturday afternoon, about 30 minutes before the formal demos were to get underway, Kakwan, a thin and lanky young man with a ready smile, was looking nervous. "I just made something totally silly," he said.

Indeed, Kakwan's mashup turned out to be the undisputed fan favorite in the "silly" category, giving the savvy but lighthearted crowd a very good laugh. Using Flash and the Flickr API, Kakwan hacked together a voice amplitude application that moved the jaw of a giant photo of former Star Trek star Patrick Stewart in synch with Kakwan's voice. (Unfortunately, my photos turned out terribly, but you can see a video that Kakwan made of his hack demo on YouTube--along with thousands of other photos of Hack Day on Flickr.)

It's been a long time since I've had so much fun at a geek event as I did this weekend at Hack Day--perhaps never. And it's probably safe to say that I wasn't having nearly as much fun as the attendees who arrived to do some actual hacking. By every subjective metric available to my five senses, I'd venture to say that each of the approximately 225 developer attendees was having an enchanting time. Between the excitement of hobnobbing with famous and semi-famous Web 2.0 insiders (including Michael Arrington of TechCrunch, Flickr co-founder Caterina Fake, venture capitalist Guy Kawasaki, Yahoo co-founder David Filo, and many more), the free concert Friday night by Beck, free beer and food, and free lodging (such as it was) via pitch-your-own-tent on the Yahoo campus lawn, this was an uncommonly unique opportunity to network and be inspired. It was, in every aspect of its being, a Web 2.0 hootenanny. It was casual yet smart; relaxed yet organized; silly yet deadly serious about community, Web 2.0, and the art of the hack.

By my count, 53 mashups were submitted for the judging, which began in the late afternoon of the second and final day of the event. Perhaps not surprisingly, Flickr was by far the API most often invoked by the hackers. And over the next few weeks I hope to get as many of these mashups as possible listed here on APIFinder. Many were designed to help users get more out of their mobile devices; others push the boundaries of address book capabilities, helping to keep communities closer; still others enhanced favorite online activities with associated visuals pulled from public photo albums. While not all the project demos went well, and not all hackers managed to complete their full vision in the time allotted, everyone seemed to grok that it was the journey that mattered.

If you haven't had the chance to read anything about Hack Day, here's the brief history: Hack Day was the brainchild of VP for Product Strategy Bradley Horowitz and Director of the Yahoo Developer Network, Chad Dickerson, who conceived the idea of a day set aside for internal development staff at Yahoo to air their creative energy in a way that received the attention of bosses and peers alike--regardless of whether the resulting hacks would ever make their way into official Yahoo products. "Mash Up or Shut Up" was the unofficial byword of the event, and after the first one, held in December of 2005, enthusiasm boiled over into one repeat performance after another. Six were held in all, including two at Yahoo's Bangalore office and another in the U.K. It wasn't long before Dickerson and Horowitz glimpsed the future: An open event where anybody who wanted to make the journey could get in on the fun--mashing up any of Yahoo's many public APIs with any other technology they wished--and to do it in a place where they could meet and collaborate with others. And with that the seventh Hack Day was born.

While attendance Friday night pushed up close to 500 people, many were Yahoo employees and their friends and family, drawn, at least in part, by the excellent carrot of a free concert by indie rocker Beck. The Beck concert itself was sort of an event inside an event, with some rather bizarre (and not-entirely family-friendly) antics, delivered by Beck's troupe of lookalike band marionettes. The core group of attendees, once boiled down, was nearer to 225, only a handful of whom took advantage of the makeshift campground. But I'd be willing to bet that any future Hack Days will feature more tents in addition to more hacks. Yahoo! says that they are curently planning a tour of Hack Days to take place on various college campuses; winners of these Hack Days will win a job at Yahoo!

Regardless, as I set down these reflections I find my inner cynic--who is so rarely quieted--utterly without remark. Hack Day is one of those things that just seemed right.

As for Mo Kakwan and his talking Patrick Stewart, he was presented with the "award" (few actual tactile awards were given) for "Best Schtick" as well as "Worst Hack," which, by all accounts, seemed just fine to him.

By Lori P Cleary