# upday Blogathon 2017

DevFeed: [upday Blogathon 2017](<https://devfeed.tech/articles/upday-blogathon-2017-35116.md>)

Original publisher: [Read original article](<https://upday.github.io/blog/upday_blogathon/>)

Author: Robert Bordo (robert@upday.com)

Published: 2017-07-20T05:00:00Z

Content type: opinion

Language: en

Sources: [Upday](<https://devfeed.tech/sources/upday.md>)

Topics: [Hackathon](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/hackathon.md>)

Tags: [2017](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/2017.md>), [blog](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/blog.md>), [hackathon](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/hackathon.md>)

## AI overview

upday describes creating a Blogathon by using a Hackathon to generate posts for its tech blog. The event produced eight finished or nearly finished articles, including tutorials and personal insights from the company's daily work.

## Source excerpt

What and why? Here at upday we have a lot of talented engineers doing very interesting "stuff" and using up-to-date (some would even say top-notch) technologies. Doing good is fine, but talking about it is even better. The problem is that not every engineer likes writing about his profession. Often I hear: "this wouldn't be interesting to anyone else", "there are already articles about it", "I don't have time for this" or "I simply cannot write". All this might be true. But for me, it's not enough of an excuse. Last year we started our upday tech blog to attract more talented people and of course, to get attention in the tech community. This worked out quite well. We received promising applications, a few of us got invited as speakers to international conferences and we also organised well-received meetups. Unfortunately, the driving force behind most of these activities left the company, hired by a much bigger player (another proof our efforts bear fruit). And Since then our blog has been more or less inactive. This needed to change. But how can one convince people to invest time and energy into something they don't really like or want to do? How? At upday, from time to time we organise Hackathons. During a Hackathon, people work intensely in unusual team formations (often business people also participate), test new technologies and dive into certain topics in order to produce something valuable, interesting or surprising within only a few hours of work. A few of these results have actually found their way into our product. Others were just cool. And some, of course, just sucked. Our plan now was to "abuse" one of those Hackathons to generate blog posts. The idea of a Blogathon was born. Okay, I know what you might be thinking right now. Anyway, presenting this idea provoked mixed reactions. Everything from "cool" to "it sucks big time". But no risk no fun, it's only painful at the start and attending was optional anyway. Timetable we announced the Blogathon two we