As an enterprise architect and data center infrastructure consultant, I am more of a big picture guy wanting to understand DevOps and core hacking concepts in order to deep dive into cloud services.  So I want to share my excitement and inspiration so you too can start your own journey down the “Hackathon” spirit path.

VMworld US 2017 Hackathon

Special thanks to @vmwarecode program and to our illustrious lab captains/champions William Lam and Alan Renouf for all their hard work in making the VMworld Hackathons a premier world-class event.

I really liked this year’s two new concepts introduced:

1. The pre-hackathon sessions called “VMworld Hackathon Training Session Prerequisites”, helped prepare, educate and enlighten participants. Please see the following slide decks:
   • Hackathon Training: Getting started with Clarity [VMTN6719U]
   • Hackathon Training: Integrating VMware API’s and Amazon Echo (Alexa) [VMTN6721U]
   • Hackathon Training: Open Source Projects for Enterprise Cloud Native Applications [VMTN6718U]
   • Hackathon Training: Getting started with the vSphere Automation SDK for Python [VMTN6720U]
2. Open invitation to participate in the Hackathon event as an observer, even though I was not officially on a team

I had a fantastic time and it was a great experience just watching and learning.  For more details checkout William Lam’s  GitHub VMworld-hackathon repository.

Blogs to check out

• Here is the official VMware {code} Hackathon blog
• My fellow vBrownBag LATAM colleague Ariel Sanchez has a nice Hackathon write up in his support for keeping the energy going beyond VMworld 2017. Ariel co-founded the Pittsburgh #PGHLittleHack, along with  Carl Capozza, who is the other co-founder and this Thursday, October 19^th, they are holding their 3^rd  Kudos and Congratulations to the #PGHLittleHack community.
• Also check out the world-class podcasts provided by Cody Bunch, Alastair Cooke and the rest of the fabulous #vBrownbag Crew members with outstanding speakers in the series “API Zero to Hero”, am must watch for now or the holidays.

DFW VMUG Hackathon

The DFW VMUG Hackathon birth has come about from the seeds planted at VMworld US by the VMware {code} program.  The DFW VMUG Hackathon events will start soon as we are currently in the planning stages. Please feel free to DM me @wmichel if you have any questions or would like to sponsor an event for the DFW VMUG.

Call to Action/Next Steps

Please join our slack channel to contribute to the discussions, as we start to finalize our inaugural start date and topics for the agenda for our first Hackathon event. My initial thinking is we tentatively shoot for the first event maybe sometime in mid-November 2017 before Thanksgiving.   So first please join the VMware {code} slack team and then join the DFW-hackathon channel.  Here are the instructions to join:

1. Join the VMware {code} program for free: https://code.VMware.com/join
2. Receive personal Slack invite immediately upon registration
3. Follow the instructions (accept invite, create account etc.)
4. Boom, you’re in! Now head on over to the channels, and find DFW-hackathon.

If for whatever reason you can’t figure it out, or have any issues DM me or @ryandotclair on the twitters for help.  From there we will start planning our first hackathon and get a head count for venue and logistics.