In May, we announced that our innovation day had creeped on to the radar of none other than [redacted] Corp itself. After they asked us (kindly!) to discontinue using their brand in connection with our event, we put out an open call for help finding a new name for our hack day that still retained its ambitious “ship in a day” flavor.
The volume of responses was stunning, but not surprising considering how much the concept has grown in the hands of other companies like Adobe, Symantec, Ambientia, and countless other organizations who ran [redacted] Days for their own teams. In all, we received over 400 internal and external submissions, got some help from Dan Pink, and solicited feedback from Atlassians including Atlassian’s co-founders.
This won’t be a surprise for any of you who attended Summit 2012 and saw Scott Farquhar’s keynote address, but we’re happy to announce the new name for the day previously known as [redacted] Day is…..
ShipIt Day
We believe ShipIt Day perfectly captures the ethos of [redacted] Day (in the same amount of syllables, no less!): a day of innovation with the goal of creating something you can demo to your fellow hackers–or, the “if it compiles, it ships” desperation during the sprint at the end of a [redacted] Day.
| [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1zN1JDFjDuo&t=0m32s&w=320] |
| See Scott’s ShipIt Day announcement at 0:32. |
We’ve gone a long way since our first fourteen-man [redacted] event in 2005. Now, over 19 hack days, 550+ projects, and one new program onboarding new grads and interns with a [redacted] Day on the beach later, we’re ready to put the old girl out to pasture. [redacted] Day is gone, but not forgotten, and we’re already getting started running our first ShipIt Day in Sydney. Hopefully, you’ll swap your [redacted] Days for ShipIt Days alongside us!
Congratulations to Rich Cowin, who was the first non-Atlassian to suggest the “ShipIt Day” name. You’ll be getting a package of our finest Atlassian swag in the mail shortly.
Also, thank you to everyone who lent us their ideas and creativity! If you’re interested in running your own ShipIt Day, we have the resources to get you started. Get ready to rev those innovation engines and pump out some amazing projects for your own brand new, bright and shiny ShipIt Day.