Why Vox Media is in Philadelphia for its internal hackathon

The product team from Vox Media, the digital media company that owns sports site SB Nation, news site Vox, real estate site Curbed, game site Polygon and other properties, is spending the week in Philadelphia for its internal hackathon.

They call it “Vax.” (That’s a mashup of “Vox” and “hack.”)

It’s one of the most ambitious dev teams in online media.

Vox Product’s 64 members will call Center City coworking space Benjamin’s Desk their home base this week. The space was actually one reason Vox chose Philadelphia for its hack week, said chief product officer Trei Brundrett.

The other main reason was that the team wanted to find a place off-site, and Philadelphia was right between Vox’s two offices in New York City and Washington, D.C.

Plus, Polygon editor-in-chief Chris Grant lives in Philadelphia, as do a few Vox engineers, Brundrett said.

Internal hackathons are common at tech companies — RJMetrics, Comcast, Monetate and DuckDuckGo all have them, but this is the first we’ve heard of a team traveling to another city to do one.