Why Your Company Should Embrace Hackers

I actually think hackers are good for you. And to be fair, what we're really talking about here is not hacker culture as much as maker culture. People who want to extend the things that they love. Maybe they love your brand. Maybe they love your payment app. They will build upon it. And when you send lawyers after them, it just goes to hell. Take this example. This is a guy, José Álvarez. He's a student in Tempe, Arizona, and like most students, he was completely broke. So what did he do? As you can see, went out to the dumpster and got FedEx boxes and made furniture out of them, and built all sorts of furniture. Now, before we talk about how FedEx responded, what does this say about FedEx's products? Yeah, right? Doesn't it? That's what it says to me. It's sturdy as hell. FedEx didn't think so. And they sent him a cease and desist. Here is the important thing. When people love what you do, the apps you create, the service you provide, they're going to want to build on it. And you should embrace this when it happens. It's going to happen to you. In fact, it may have already happened. Municipalities are quite far ahead in this. This is the City of Vancouver's list of accessible databases where it's— it's not real-time. Some are CSVs, some are Excel spreadsheets. But you can download any of these lists and use Use them any way you want. It's open data, right? There are some downright depressing lists, like this list of dead animals. Updated hourly. It's horrible. Some are useful. This is every call to Vancouver's 311. How would someone in an app use this? I don't know. I don't know. But you should encourage this. Not only because they might be good at finding security flaws for you, but they might be building new ideas. That's why the big players like IBM Security are publishing actual step-by-step tutorials on YouTube showing people how to hack mobile payment apps. This is a YouTube video that is on the website— is on the YouTube channel of IBM Security. Look at this. Clutch Mobile Banking. There it is. It's cracked. Sorry to all the security folks in the room. Hackers, makers, whatever you want to call them, are being taught— this is part of the culture today, right? Decrypting this technology, getting in there, see how it works, see what doesn't work. It's going to happen to you no matter what. And in fact, one of the more popular gatherings these days are these things called hackathons, where people gather for 24 hours, powered by pizza and energy drinks, and companies turn their source code of their apps and websites over to these people. Who are not really hackers. I mean, they have hacking skills, but they're not really bad hackers, to see what they can make from them. The one in Vancouver, look at these big-name sponsors. Microsoft was a sponsor of a hackathon. Most notably— excuse me— two law firms were sponsors of an event dedicated to people hacking TELUS's software. They went after TELUS's software. With Telus' permission and money. Hacking incredibly strong there. Out of hackathons have come products like GroupMe, which was so successful that Skype bought it a year later. Stock image company Shutterstock found it so helpful, it's now an annual event. And a lot of what gets created at these hackathons turns into real products. When the hackers come for you, my friends, you should embrace them. You should be having your own hackathons. All the brands you see here and hundreds more have hackathons. The Amazon Go store, right? The one where it's all NFC, the one you just walk out. I'm sure you've heard about this. Came out of a hackathon idea. You are going to be hacked, hopefully in the best way possible. And you should embrace these because some of these things might come up with some great things. I mean, through a maker's eye and with the open APIs that you provide, we might see a whole new different type of payment process where customers can choose from any number of combination of wallets. You've got some room left on your Visa? Throw it in there. Oh, you got some Facebook credits kicking around? Done. I've got a bit of cash in my PayPal account, and I think Amex owes me some loyalty points. All that to build. I mean, it's kind of the way it's sort of happening right now. I mean, like, I fly WestJet. You can pay with cash, or you can pay with the WestJet Dollars that are sort of bumping up, right? All of these things will be coming out, probably hackers first, if you're not there first. And either way, embrace them. So let's move out of the foundational type of stuff onto some of the social buying.