Musings by Mito

Why I Decided to Join the Hackathon

Last weekend, I competed in my first Sitecore Hackathon with some work colleagues—and had the best time!

I had heard about the hackathon through the Sitecore community and from another colleague who had previously competed—and won—shoutout to Gabe Streza! With my after-work schedule opening up a bit this year, I decided it was finally time to give it a shot. It was also a bit of a personal challenge: could I still “hang and hack” for 24 hours straight?

Events like the Sitecore Hackathon are one of the reasons the community remains so vibrant—developers from around the world get together to experiment, learn, and build something new in just 24 hours.

Forming the Team

I participated in hackathons during my college days and always loved the experience. There’s something special about the energy of the first few hours—when everyone is excited and full of ideas—that slowly transforms into sleep-deprived delirium in the early hours of the next morning.

Even though the hackathon itself was virtual, I’m really glad my teammates and I decided to work together in person. Being in the same room made a huge difference. It felt like we were truly in the trenches together throughout the night.

My team consisted of myself, Jason Hutchinson II, and Kiarra Dean.

Back in mid-January, when I started seriously considering the hackathon, I knew I wanted to participate as part of a team. While some people compete solo, I’ve always enjoyed the collaborative aspect of building things together—probably a side effect of spending the last seven years organizing nonprofit community initiatives. So I casually asked Jason and Kiarra if they’d be interested in joining, and thankfully they were both in.

Jason is a bit of a hackathon veteran, having participated in several over the years, and he brings a strong affinity for and experience in AI, tooling, and rapid prototyping. Kiarra is a seasoned full-stack developer with deep expertise in C#/.NET, TypeScript, and CMS platforms like Sitecore and Optimizely.

I’m also a full-stack developer with a decade of experience, but what I felt I brought to the table for this particular event was project coordination. Even though the hackathon only lasts 24 hours, success often comes down to how well you manage your time and resources. I helped keep things organized—from logistics like finding a place for us to work overnight, to acting as the team lead and point of contact with the hackathon organizers.

Back to the Drawing Board

We tried to prepare ahead of time by picking Gabe’s brain about how the hackathon typically runs, what to expect, and how teams can best prepare. He actually wrote an incredibly helpful post about the experience that we leaned on during planning.

The day before the event, we got together to brainstorm potential ideas. But when the official themes were announced and we started validating our concept, we quickly realized something humbling: our idea essentially already existed in the Sitecore ecosystem.

So we went straight back to the drawing board.

Discovering Knowledge Explorer

Under a bit of time pressure, we started throwing around new ideas—some serious, some ridiculous. One involved a pop-up quiz that would lock the CMS UI until a content author answered correctly. Another was a “rate your MVP” site reminiscent of the very early days of Facebook.

Eventually, though, we landed on something that felt both practical and interesting: a project we called Knowledge Explorer.

One thing I appreciate about the Sitecore community is how much knowledge is openly shared—through documentation, blog posts, Slack discussions, and user groups. Knowledge Explorer was our small way of contributing back by making that knowledge easier to explore and navigate.

The idea was also inspired by conversations and resources shared throughout the community, which made us think about how learning resources could be surfaced more intuitively.

(I’ll dive into the technical details of that in Part 2 of this post.)

Once we had our idea, we divided up the work and started building—or as the kids say these days, vibe coding.

AI, Rapid Prototyping, and Governance

One of the biggest revelations for me that weekend was just how different rapid prototyping looks today compared to the last time I participated in a hackathon. With the rise of modern LLMs, we were able to stand up something viable within just a few hours. The rest of our time was spent refining the functionality and improving the look and feel of the application.

The first time I prompted Claude for part of my portion of the solution, it generated a fully functional application using pure HTML and inline CSS in seconds. I was amazed—but also immediately reminded why developer experience still matters.

My instincts kicked in and I started noticing all the familiar code smells. Because I hadn’t given the AI any constraints, it produced something that worked—but didn’t follow good engineering practices.

It reminded me of something I had recently learned during a presentation by Akshay Sura at the last SUG Brazil about governance in the age of AI: the more we rely on AI to generate code, the greater our responsibility becomes to ensure that what we ship is clean, maintainable, and well-architected.

The Late-Night Hackathon Experience

Despite the tight timeline, I think our team managed the project well. There was never a moment when we felt like the project might fall apart. Everyone had their tasks, and we jumped in to help each other whenever someone got stuck. We definitely leaned into our strengths, but we also approached the entire experience with a learning mindset—even if it meant trying tools or technologies we hadn’t worked with before.

One memorable moment during the night came when a storm rolled through for an hour or two. I had taken a quick nap beforehand, so I was awake and working, while Jason and Kiarra had fallen asleep. When they woke up, Kiarra noticed that the area near the balcony door in our hotel room had flooded. I was so locked into the code that I hadn’t even noticed! Thankfully nothing was damaged, and maintenance came quickly to dry everything up.

Looking back, I’m honestly surprised I managed to stay awake the entire time. I had worked a full day before the hackathon even started and ended up getting only about 45 minutes of sleep across the whole weekend. Somehow the adrenaline—and a surprisingly effective YouTube playlist called Trapping in Japan—kept us going through the night.

We finished strong by compiling our documentation and recording the demo video for submission. By that point we had all gone back to our respective homes and reconvened online to finalize everything. The moment we submitted the project, my body finally relaxed—and the exhaustion I had been holding off for 24 hours hit me all at once. I think I slept for nearly the next full day.

Why You Should Join the Sitecore Hackathon

Overall, the experience was incredible.

What stood out to me throughout the weekend was how much the Sitecore community encourages experimentation and learning. From blog posts and user group talks to conversations with other developers who had competed in previous hackathons, it was clear that this event wasn’t just about winning—it was about pushing yourself to try new ideas and sharing what you learn along the way.

That spirit of openness and collaboration is something I’ve always appreciated about the Sitecore community, and the hackathon felt like a perfect reflection of that.

It reminded me why I chose to work in tech in the first place—the joy of building something new, the excitement of learning unfamiliar tools, and the creativity that emerges when people collaborate under a tight deadline.

As a bonus, I also got to know my teammates much better along the way.

10/10 would absolutely do it again.

So if you’re reading this and you’ve been second-guessing yourself about participating in the Sitecore Hackathon (or any hackathon for that matter), consider this your sign to just go for it. It’s stressful, exhausting, and chaotic—but also incredibly fun and ultimately very rewarding.

In the next post, I’ll dive deeper into what we actually built during the hackathon, including the idea behind Knowledge Explorer and some of the tools and technologies that helped us bring it to life.