FB's QR Code to Be ‘Scanned In Space'

What happens when engineers are paired with beer, late nights and gallons of paint? Apparently they might go to their headquarters' roof and paint a giant QR code that can be seen from the air.

At least that's what happened at Facebook during its "Space Hackathon," a mini-celebration for the last of its employees moving into the new Menlo Park headquarters. Employees were encouraged to make their space their own, according to Mark Pike, an engineer from Facebook. 

(Mark Zuckerberg's) post encouraged everybody to decorate the new space to make it our own—tag the walls with spray paint, hang cool posters, and hack the building with some patented Facebook personality. But a few of us interpreted the call to action a bit too literally. We decided that we wanted our "space hack" to actually be visible from space. 

The group of about 100 then spent the next few days planning how to put a QR code on the roof and finally settled for the least expensive choice -- painting the roof. The 42-square-foot, black and white QR code has two-foot pixels that direct users to http://fbco.de (which right now is just a placeholder saying "coming soon.")
 
The FBers had one of their employees strap a digital camera to a remote control "quadcopter" at lunchtime to snap a photo.
 
Business Insider has already pointed out that (sorry, FBers!) the code can't be read as is, but we don't think that was the point of the whole adventure. It's partly being an engineer and proving he or she can do it, and partly being a dreamer. Both qualities are prized at Facebook, so it's not a surprise when they spontaneously collide.
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