Tuesday, May 22, 2012

Gone Fishin’!

Once a year, we take a day out of our busy schedules to go fishing. 

But you can’t expect Ask.com to take an ordinary fishing trip. Nope. We do it at a public park. And we do it to hang out with some incredible kids.

Last week marked our sixth annual visit to the Fishing Derby for Special Kids, where about 150 kids from local elementary schools head to ride boats, get their faces painted, indulge in arts & crafts, and of course, fish.

Aside from being a sponsor of the event, Ask-ers join the kids at Oakland’s  Lake Temescal park to buddy up with the kids and help out. 

We began our participation back in 2007 and it’s been such a gas that we join in every year. Some Ask-ers help tie lines and net the catches, others help out with face painting, and everyone shares in having fun.

Seeing the smiles on these kids’ faces is a rare reward. And the hand-decorated tote bags are nothing to sneeze at, either. ;-) 

Feel free to join us next year! Mind you, It’ll be easier if you’re working here, but hey, we’re game if you are. 

—Ask.com

Wednesday, May 16, 2012

Seattle Has Spoken—And Ask Has Answered

Folks, we’ve kept you waiting long enough. Seattle has voted: here’s the results of our You Asked, We Answered campaign. 

The winner, with 58% of the votes, is Saving the Wading Pools. But wait…there’s more!

Seattleites, we were so impressed with your response to the campaign that we’ve decided to grant ALL THREE wishes:

Ease The Morning Commute: Tuesday Morning, May 29, We’ll partner with local small-batch coffee roaster Caffé Vita to hand out free coffee, complete with a take-home travel mug, at the following Park & Ride locations across the city: Northgate; Tukwila; Burien; South Kirkland; Issaquah-Highlands; Kent-Des Moines.

Minimize Stadium Traffic: Starting June 16 and running for several games through early July, we’re sponsoring a fleet of free pedicabs, ready to whisk you from Safeco field to your home or favorite post-game bar. 

Save the Wading Pools: More Seattleites voted for this option than the other two choices COMBINED! We’re in the process of donating the funds necessary to reopen the East Queen Anne, Powell Barnett and Wallingford wading pools  each Saturday for the 2012 summer season (which kicks off the last week of June). The reopening of the pools for the summer will also include a special Ask.com surprise event.

See below for a special infographic of the breakdown, for those of you who enjoy that sort of thing. 

Thanks for everything, Seattle…and see you soon on Ask.com! 

Monday, May 14, 2012

How Does Seattle’s Ask Look In Tights?

If you’ve visited our Seattle Asks website, are a regular reader of this blog, or just live in glorious Seattle, you’re aware of our campaign to (1) ask Seattleites what irks them most, and (2) make it better.

Late last week, The Seattle Post-Intelligencer reported that our quest to solve Seattle’s problems has attracted some very special help.

Meet Answer Man and Question Mark Boy, intrepid heroes-at-large set loose on Seattle’s emerald streets. Traversing the city at question-speed, they utilized their advanced powers of inquiry to poll locals on which Ask project should make the final cut. 

Witness this dynamic duo in action!

To learn more about the three options and see the latest polling results, visit SeattleAsks.com. And come back here on May 16 to discover the winning solution…same question-time, same question-channel!

—Ask.com

Wednesday, May 9, 2012

Tuesday, May 1, 2012

Seattle: The Polls Are Open!

Tell Us What You Want. We’ll Take Care of the Rest.

Dear Seattle:

You might have seen in our earlier post that we’re granting you a wish. Today, it’s happening: we kicked off our “You Asked, We Answered” campaign, designed to make the irksome things in your life (well, one of them at least) a little easier. 

Today Seattleites will see Ask sprinkled around the city. We’re hitting the streets to talk with people in person, hang banners over heavily trafficked areas, and more—all to find out what people really want so that we can make it happen. Ask will grant the thing that gets the most votes. 

So which of these will you vote for?

Ease the morning commute. We heard that the Seattle morning commute can be pretty rough. Vote for this, and Ask will partner with Caffé Vita  to brighten up the post-Memorial day commute with free coffee at multiple Park & Ride locations.

Minimize stadium traffic. We also heard that Mariners games can be one of the toughest spots to get home from so, if this is the number one request, Ask will provide transportation home after a game at Safeco field. That way traffic will be our problem, not yours.  

Save the wading pools. Ask will chip in funds to keep community wading pools open, many of which are in danger of closing without some extra help.

How To Vote:

We’re giving you options how to get in on this: 

1) Go to www.seattleasks.com  to make your voice heard (be sure to share your vote with your friends) 

2) download the Ask.com Pollroll app for iPhone 

3) Street teams are on the scene at local hotspots today—find them, and let them know what you want!

Polling will be open for the next two weeks and results will be announced later this month.

It’s just another way Ask.com is the answer to your problems. 

Happy voting!

—Ask.com

Monday, April 30, 2012

District Oakland, Our New Favorite Neighbor

Bay Area tech industry folks who’ve survived the last bubble or two will be familiar with District, an SF wine bar/restaurant and key lunch/happy hour/event spot. Multiple company ideas have no doubt hatched at their SoMa location. Lucky for us, They’ve opened up their second spot near us here in Old Oakland. We attended the soft-opening celebration, tipped a few among the exposed brick, and availed ourselves of many passed apps as Steve McQueen’s “Bullitt” played on the big-screen TV.

We also chatted with District co-owner Jon D’Angelica, who told us that the downtown location takes advantage of the area’s business centers, including its growing tech presence. “It just so happens we’re surrounded by (tech companies): Ask.com…Pandora…Oakland is a social hub.”

The new element to Oakland’s District? A whiskey list, curated the same way they do their wines. We know a few of our Product Managers who look forward to that.

—Ken Grobe, Ask.com

Thursday, April 26, 2012

Get Ready, Seattle!

If you’re a Seattleite, you’re in luck. Ask.com is coming to the Emerald City to grant you a wish.

We’ve asked around and discovered three problems that many of you would like addressed (based on our research). Your vote will determine which one you want solved the most.

Come visit SeattleAsks.com (or check your Pollroll app) starting May 1 to vote. On May 15 we’ll tally your votes and get to solving.

Seattle is just the first city on our quest to (1) find out what irks city residents most, and (2) make it better. After all, problems are solved by answering questions—and that’s what Ask.com does best.

Go Mariners,

Ask.com

Wednesday, April 18, 2012

Hackathon: And The Winner Is…

Let’s be honest. You’re expecting the moral of this series of Ask Hackathon posts (see 1 and 2) to be, “Everybody won!” Not going to happen. Sorry. We’re proud, but we’re not cheesy.

We had actual winners, who won bona fide trophies and prizes for services that you’ll see launched later this year.

That said, everyone at the Hackathon had a good time, learned new stuff, and came up with strong concepts. It’s amazing what smart people can do when email and meetings are taken off the table for even one day. 

Welcome to the Science Fair

As you’ll recall, this Hackathon had a theme: services, both internal and external. VP of Project Management and Hackathon co-leader Alisa Barnes explains it thusly: “We want to be able to serve up answers anywhere by creating things that people are going to be able to use in more places—(for instance) that a third party could use or syndicate in some way.”

After the first day of brainstorming, concepting, and building came day two: presentations. Affectionately called “the science fair,” each team presents their concept, via demo and/or PowerPoint presentation, to a roving panel of judges: Alisa, VP of Engineering Nick McCann, EVP of Business Operations Shane McGilloway, Chief Product & Technology Officer Lisa Kavanaugh, and CEO Doug Leeds. 

One project leveraged Twitter, YouTube, open APIs, and widgets of various stripes. Another focused on user-specific page optimization to lower email bounce rates. Still another incorporated a real-time element to questions and answers that included live video. Our judges reviewed, listened, asked questions, and ultimately chose six finalists.

These finalists presented to the entire company, and were evaluated not just by the judges, but the company at large , plus a guest judge, Josh Meyer, CEO of People Media, who watched the presos via videoconference. 

It All Comes Down To This

Once the judges returned from their chambers (AKA Doug’s office), the winners were…a hashtag-aggregation service which won the Judges’ AND Audience awards, and the aforementioned video-driven Q & A service, which won the Peoples Choice award.

After the ceremonies, the victors headed back to their desks with trophies and new iPads and Apple TV devices. The judges made plans to regroup to see how many of these ideas could become integrated within the product roadmap. And everyone got a taste of where this company is headed. If we can get there, THEN everybody wins. 

Have any ideas for great new services? Share them in the comments below.

Just kidding. Please don’t do that. BUT, if you have any comments about this three-part series of Hackathon posts, we’d love to hear them. Especially the nice ones.

PS: if you want to work at a place that holds regular Hackathons, check out our job listings. We’re hiring!

—Ken Grobe, Ask.com

Monday, April 16, 2012

Why Ask Hacks

For those of you not familiar with the standard company hackathon, it’s a department-wide event where engineers create new(ish) products and services in a short amount of time without having to sweat the standard company process (QA, L&P, general production readiness). 

Ask.com cranks that up a notch. Here, we hack the whole company.

Busting Routines, Building Teams

At any company, It’s all too easy to get caught up in roles and deadlines and forget to step back and think more creatively.  That’s why our Hackathons start by encouraging teams to cross-pollinate. For 24 hours, UX designers and product managers pair with operations personnel, engineers, support staff, marketers, etc.—taking everyone out of their comfort zones and, hopefully, exploding any bad habits. 

“Our Hackathons have many tangible benefits—only one of which is actually launching a product.” Ask CEO Doug Leeds offered. “Sometimes it’ll be the people who worked together, saying, ‘You know, the thing that we worked on (for Hackathon) didn’t necessarily apply to current roadmap—but I like working with you. Let’s continue to team on interesting things.’”

Cracking Code, Going Agile

When your goal is day-to-day maintenance and reliability, there’s often a tendency to rely on legacy systems and code. One of VP of Engineering Nick McCann’s favorite elements of the event is setting his engineers free to work with new and different technologies: Node.js, NoSQL variants…the list goes on.

“We normally code apps in C/C++ or Java.” Nick explained. “But let’s say that (a Hackathon team) decides to create theirs in Node.js (a newer language). It gives them a full day to experiment and work with this language—making our engineers better rounded.” 

Case in point: when we implemented Pollroll—our first Hackathon contender to be launched as an app—we did it in Node.js and used Redis as the data store.

The success of our multi-disciplinary Hackathon teams also helps us speed the current transition of our product development process from the classic “waterfall approach” to a modified single-team/agile/scrum structure (If you’re not familiar with the terminology, just know that it’s a good thing). ;-) 

Creating a New Culture

But the most Ask-specific goal of our two-day company-hack is our plan to forge a company culture of creativity Ask. We began it in earnest months ago with our “Funnovation” applied improv sessions, to encourage and farm innovation. The Hackathon—a full day of intensive email- and meeting-free collaboration—is proving a natural extension as we make the time to execute the best ideas. 

Sure, we want to create the next great service (more on that—and our winners—in Wednesday’s post)…but our Hackathons go beyond that. They’re a pilot program for what we want Ask to be: unified, nimble, supportive, and above all, innovative. 

Here’s a few more photos from the event itself. Tune in Wednesday when we cover the presos, the judging, and the victors. 

How does your company drive change—and how do you *wish* yours would? Let us know in the comments below.

—Ken Grobe, Ask.com

Friday, April 13, 2012

Hackathon Time!

For an entire day last week, you could walk the halls of Ask and hear next-to-no activity—that is, until you passed the conference rooms. There, teams of six typed frantically on laptops, sketched formulas on whiteboards, talked logistics. Translated: the Ask Hackathon was in full swing.

Ask’s quarterly Hackathons are two-day events: one day to concept and one half-day to present. The goal: come up with an idea and present to a panel of judges. Our team of judges gauge ideas based on potential business impact, creativity (both in concept and in use of existing technologies), and quality of pitch. 

The winning ideas receive development resources and bragging rights. The losing ones still give our people the chance to leverage the latest technologies, try non-traditional processes, and spread their wings creating something new. 

When We Say “All-Hands”…

Perhaps more important, our Hackathons aren’t just for our engineers or product teams. We open the event up to the entire company. Members from our design, operations, and marketing teams get involved. Even our finance and legal departments pitch in to devise, package and execute ideas to create the next great company innovation.

Last quarter’s hackers were encouraged to come up with virtually any idea that would benefit the company—and they responded with two dozen presentable concepts. One of these evolved into Pollroll, the mobile app that Ask launched at this year’s SXSW conference to great acclaim. This time around, Hackathon heads Nick McCann and Alisa Barnes focused this quarter’s teams to create a new service (or use an existing or third-party service in a new way). Aside from that, the only rules were (1) be in the office, and (2) be creative. 

Teams Working: Do Not Disturb

If you knew where to look, the company was buzzing. Phrases like “social signals,” “aggregated for you,” “iPad app,” and “pulling links from I.M.” bounced through the halls. As did, for some reason, Marketing Director Robbie Waeschenfelder’s spot-on George Takei impersonation.

Mid-way through Day One, in a common area near the marketing department, six Askers leaned forward from white leatherette couches and devised ways to get celebrity gossip more conveniently. In another room, the team from the Campbell office bounced between their laptop screens and their whiteboards. Another team pitched out names for their new service, but had trouble finding an acronym that didn’t sound like “murder” (spoiler alert: they found one)

Stay Tuned…

Come by the blog on Monday for a more in-depth look at the teams and how they collaborate—plus, find out why our Hackathons are a pilot program for how we’ll approach our products and services in the future.

Then come by on Wednesday to find out what some of our top brass has to say about the Ask Hackathon, and take an in-depth look at the judging…and the winners!

In the meantime, enjoy these snapshots of day one. Have any hackathon memories from your own companies you’d like to share? Let us know in the comments section below.