The CloudFest hackathon is intense. Three packed days of work and creativity at Europa-Park. This year I had the honor to come on as one of three project mentors. That still feels a bit odd to say. The hackathon has been a fixed part of my yearly schedule for many years now. So I’m really not exaggerating when I say I was blown away when Carole asked me to join the team.
Watching great project leads and their teams go from rough ideas on the first day to actual, working demos by the end of the event is something I don’t think I’ll ever stop finding remarkable. The energy in that room is hard to describe without sounding nuts. And this year, with all the AI tools imaginable, the team’s work became even more dynamic.
Is the work done only because the event is done?
After every CloudFest hackathon comes… well, CloudFest for some attendees, but then a couple of weeks of peace and quiet. Everyone travels back home; real life and work kick back in. And often even the projects that had a lot of momentum can slowly go quiet. We’ve seen this happen before and are thinking about ways to address it in the future. But for this year, there’s no official fix for this. Not yet, at least.
But I’m not quite done yet, and I have an idea. I want to get back into the ring and help interested project leads to build momentum with their projects again and keep them alive and kicking.
This could not be further from a formal, structured mentorship program. It’s more like, if you’re stuck on where to take things next, or you just want someone to think out loud with, I’m happy to jump on a call. I’ve spent a few years doing product management in the open-source space (most recently with the lovely people at Patchstack), and I would love to put all of that knowledge to task and help our hackathon projects to keep shining, prioritizing, and maybe even connecting to potential partners.
Motivating contributors, product strategy, roadmap prioritization, figuring out who your actual users could be, and scoping what’s realistic versus what’s exciting-but-maybe-too-much. Whatever’s useful, we can dig into it.
If you were at CFHack 2026 and want to keep the conversation going, reach out on Mattermost or right here in the comments. No fixed agenda, no timeline, and definitely no pressure. And who knows, maybe you could bring your project back to CloudFest Hackathon in 2027?
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