At Facebook, we strive to be a great place to work for people with families, which is why we held the third annual Facebook Family Hackathon this past month. Over 700 guests filled our headquarters in Menlo Park, California to “hack” with their kids, nieces/nephews and grandchildren on projects to develop and support computer science, math and building skills. It was a fun-filled day for our Facebook family to connect with their inner and outer nerds!

"Hackathons are core to Facebook's culture. They give us a time to try out bold new ideas. What I love about the family hackathon is that it is an opportunity to teach our children the importance of always trying new things and always working to improve,” said Jay Parikh, Facebook’s Vice President of Engineering after kicking off the event which was followed by Oculus Gear VR demos and tours of the new Hardware Lab at Facebook, Area 404.

The day was filled with activities including building with Goldieblox, and Magna Tiles, developing coding skills with Tynker and having fun mixing tech and digital art with Team Lab.

Younger kids also enjoyed playing with bubbles, face-painting and spirograph sets while former Facebook software engineer and author of Lauren Ipsum, Carlos Buenosigned copies of his book.

“My son is not quite three years old, so I wasn’t sure how much he’d be able to participate, but there was so much for him to do! He loved seeing his jellyfish swim in the interactive aquarium, and enjoyed building robots and playing with Legos," said technical writer Briana T., “The hackathon surpassed my expectations, and my son already talks about how he’s looking forward to returning next year. Thanks for organizing a wonderful event!”.

Families walked away with a set of new skills and bags full of goodies from our sponsors (Goldieblox, Magna Tiles, Team Lab, Tynker, The Tech Museum of Innovation, No Starch Press, Carlos Bueno author of Lauren Ipsum, Osmo Tiles, and Pley).

At Facebook, we are builders and embrace the idea of being the nerd. Hosting hackathons and including the whole family is one way we encourage learning no matter the age.