Why Pinterest let its employees stop working for two days to teach each other their secret skills

Earlier this week, more than 700 Pinterest employees came together from all around the world for a two-day celebration of each other's talents.

Dubbed Knit Con, the internal conference included employee-led sessions on a wide range of topics - think sitcom writing, intersectional feminism, cheese plating, and workout hacks - as well as talks by luminaries like Momofuku founder David Chang, Apple's Lisa Jackson, and Adam Steltzner, a NASA engineer who worked on the "Curiosity" Mars rover.

The image-centric discovery site, which has $1.3 billion in funding under its belt and was most recently valued at $11 billion, aims to be the world's best "catalog of ideas." In its second year, Knit Con gives the company a chance to put its mission to work in a very real way, cofounder Evan Sharp tells Business Insider.

"Think of it as an analog version of Pinterest," he says.

He believes that for Pinterest to achieve its full potential, the way the company works should reflect how its product works for users.

Pinterest wanted to give people a chance to discover new hobbies or ideas while embodying one of the company's core values: "Knitting."

"'Knitting' is really when two ways of seeing meet and something new happens," Sharp says. "That's where the best ideas occur."

Take a peak inside Knit Con: