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Yelp’s 2nd Hackathon: iPad Kegbots, Coding and Guido van Rossum



Just six, short months ago, Yelp hosted its first ever Hackathon: 24 hours devoted to our engineering team to work on projects they think would be useful, funny or cool for Yelp. While we originally planned to make this an annual geekfest, with the amount of creativity and coding put forth, we thought: “Hey! Let’s do this more often!”

This time around, we learned from past mistakes and kicked it off with a champagne breakfast (bubbles make everything better, right?), Yelp branded beanies and a special guest star. In between building up Kegbots and concierge services, the legendary Guido van Rossum, creator of Python, stopped by to do a few code reviews and talk shop with some of our engineers.



After we got through TOTALLY FREAKING OUT from the honor, it was time to announce the winners with an awards ceremony in true Yelp-style:

Useful: Adam D., Evrhet M., Mark A., and Minh T. created a Q&A service that would let users ask and answer questions about a particular business.

Funny: Need to know when we’re launching our next product or how many users have signed up today? Then look no further than the Yelp Jumbo-Tron-O-Matic courtesy of Ben B., Jon M., Eskil O., Evan K., Daniel C., and James B.

Cool: At Yelp, we don’t mess around with our beer. To make sure we never run dry or get a bad pint, the geniuses on this team — John B., Gabe H., Alex D., Julien R., and Jeff M. — built the Kegbot. Controlled by an iPad app, you can tell how much beer is being emptied (and at what rate: cough, John), as well as leave a 5 star review for your brew. See more below!


While many more projects took place, including such gems that you might see on the site in the future like photo search and site personalization, don’t think it was just our long-time engineers and product managers dominating at the Hackathon. Our badass team of engineering interns rolled up their sleeves and got their hands dirty, as well.

Who knows what will happen at the next Hackathon, but if you’re interested in finding out for yourself, then apply to join our team here!

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