Scheduled for June 30 and July 1 in Mountain View, Calif., LinkedIn's 24-hour event is open to students, enthusiasts and professionals. The company has created a DevelopHer Hackday LinkedIn Group where people can pitch ideas to other participants and build groups for the contest.
“LinkedIn has a number of very passionate women engineers, including a few hackday masters," LinkedIn Principal Software Engineer Yevgeniy Brikman told Mashable. "We wanted setup the DevelopHer Hackday to encourage more women to get involved with tech. We hope it will help them develop their engineering skills and get a chance to network with and become inspired by other terrific women in engineering."
At hackdays, which typically last anywhere from a few hours to a week, people create new usable pieces of software or improve upon an existing idea. Finished projects are then presented to a panel of judges -- or just the others participating in the event -- and a group winner is often selected.
“Everything starts with a seed of an idea, maybe something that fulfills a personal need or something huge that can shake up an entire industry," says Prachi Gupta, Senior Software Engineer and Hackday Master at LinkedIn. "You do some quick research to make sure it hasn’t been done already and put together a team, which means you have to go out and sell your idea to prospective teammates.”
The event resembles LinkedIn's internal hackdays, where employees every month are encouraged to work on any project they are passionate about. Some of the products currently on LinkedIn and LinkedInLabs originated as hackday ideas.
In addition to the internal hackdays, the company has previously held a other competitions, including a Veterans Hackday and an Intern Hackday.
LinkedIn promises to make this particular event special with "yoga and meditation sessions for those dancing neurons, delicious food, killer prizes, and most importantly, sharing 24 hours with some of the smartest women in Silicon Valley."