Graffiti Hackathon Winner
As mentioned previously, we (Telligent) had our first ever hackathon during our August trip to Dallas. While we had previously had contests (csmodules, control panel add-on, theme extravaganza), this was the first one that was in person and lasted less than twenty four hours.
At about 3:00 pm Scott walked thru Graffiti, our new in-the-works CMS product, for the entire company. For most folks, it was the first look at Graffiti...ever. Soon after, we were given the challenge to do something...*anything*...and be done by 10:00 am the next morning.
As mentioned in the video, there were about 15 official entries, but some people worked together, while others chose not to submit their entry. So, in the end, at least 25 people participated. Food, drinks, and movies were in serious supply and many stayed at the office until early the next morning. (I made trips back to the hotel at 2am and 4am).
In the morning, we regrouped and gave everyone a couple minutes to present their entry to a standing-room only group of Telligenti. Since Graffiti leverages nVelocity for its theming, some folks created a new theme. Since it supports a simple widget interface, others created widgets. Some people looked at the core code and made performance/ui enhancements, a simple installer, reporting, and more. After the presentations, we setup simple voting and opened the polls. By the next morning, the votes were in, and I was one of the lucky winners for my online marketplace feature. Blake and Ken came in second with a purty installer. And Ben came in third with his drag/drop UI support.
Now that it's been about a month, it's nice to see that quite a few of the entries have actually made it into the first version of the product. In fact, I checked a rewritten version of my entry into the core just yesterday.
More about the marketplace in a future post...