Not too long ago we came up with an idea to shake things up with our hackfests: The One Night Stand. We held the infamous event last Wednesday by matching people that needed help on a project with people willing to share their skills for a couple of hours. It was a great time all around and there was even some actual code written!

Not bad, especially when you consider that nobody had to suffer the humiliation of a walk of shame.

Thank you to the Quick Left developer team for jumping in and an especially big thanks to friends of QL who came and volunteered their expertise. By the end of the night, everybody was considerably wiser about the ways of Ruby, Javascript, UI design, and APIs.

We had a few fresh faces including Tim, an Aussie who is passing through on his way to Berkeley. Just three hours into his pitstop he decided that he wants to move here instead. I'd like to take credit for deepening the Boulder talent pool, but I'm pretty sure that it was the lifestyle that convinced him.

Based on your feedback, we plan to run this again (probably quarterly) with a few adjustments:

• We'll do a better job of letting people know you don't have to bring a project or volunteer on one - everybody's welcome to just come and hang out.
• We'll get more detailed contact info from participants so you can learn about your match before the event.
• We'll give people more direction when they first arrive.
• We'll get a little crazier and set up menage-a-trizzles when a project owner needs both a front-end and back-end developer at the same time.

I haven't heard from all of you yet. Call me?

Better yet, comment away.