An Inside Take a look at WP Engine’s Outdated West Hackathon

Saddle up for a Hackathon hoedown, pardners! At WP Engine, our Hackathons are two-day rodeos of innovation the place groups collaborate to craft new product concepts or remedy current issues. 

The occasion is not only about software program; individuals can select any venture associated to their day-to-day work or a brand new space of curiosity, together with making bodily objects. It’s additionally a wonderful alternative for workers to work with folks they won’t in any other case get to collaborate with, fostering new connections and cross-team studying.

This time, we ventured to the Outdated American West—horses, flannel, denims, spurs, cowboy hats, lassos, and—why not?—cats for the memes! 

Whereas the tasks that come out of Hackathon don’t all the time flip into future WP Engine improvements, they typically straight impression the lives of our clients and colleagues via experimentation and studying.

Maintain onto your hats; there’s extra to this rodeo! 

Embracing the spirit of pleasant competitors and neighborhood impression, WP Engine Hackathons include an non-obligatory contest wherein the winners get to pay it ahead, contributing to a charity of their alternative. 

Now, let’s tip our hats to the center of the occasion—the awards! There are six awards in whole. This contains 5 standard alternative awards for which any WP Engine worker can vote in addition to one particular award granted by an Govt Sponsor. 

This 12 months our awards have been as follows:

The Lone Can Award

The Lone Can Award celebrates the group that, whereas not hitting the end line, supplied a style of what might have been. Like a can of beans, this venture is nutritious, however not fairly a full meal. 

We embrace experimentation in each WP Engine Hackathon, understanding that ventures into uncharted territory can encounter challenges and even failure. Establishing this award for tasks dealing with such hurdles goals to encourage groups to share their experiences, fostering a tradition of studying and progress for all.

Pardner First

The Pardner First Award honors the group that skillfully blends innovation with buyer wants, fashioning an answer as comforting as an previous pal and as dependable as a well-worn pair of shoes. 

Rooted in WP Engine’s Core Worth of Buyer Impressed, this accolade applauds tasks that embody a deep understanding of and dedication to our clients.

Tighten the Bootstraps

The Tighten the Bootstraps Award acknowledges a group’s knowledge in deciding when to fix a fence as an alternative of constructing a brand new one. 

For an Engineer, creating new issues is thrilling, however this award acknowledges the worth of bettering what we have already got. This award is a nod to groups innovating on established foundations.

Shiniest Buckle in City

For the Shiniest Buckle in City Award, a group’s venture shouldn’t simply be practical; it must be a masterpiece, a finely crafted buckaroo of code that stands tall within the software program frontier. 

Simply as a cowboy takes delight of their belt buckle, this group can proudly put on the Shiniest Buckle in City to represent their meticulous consideration to element and design finesse. This award is closely impressed by one other WP Engine Core Worth: Design Issues.

The Platinum Prospectors Prize

We all the time need one award that permits groups to compete for a “high spot” within the competitors. 

The Platinum Prospectors Prize goes to the venture that hits all the best notes, leaving an indelible mark on the Wild West of code. Their innovation and execution resonate with brilliance and go away a long-lasting impression.

Girish Byraiah’s AI Code Wrangler Award

Each Hackathon has a particular prize awarded by an Govt Sponsor. This Hackathon’s sponsor, WP Engine VP of Engineering Girish Byraiah, challenged groups to boldly traverse the digital prairies, breaking new floor within the wild terrain of AI. 

This award acknowledges the daring innovators who emerged because the gritty mavericks of our Outdated West Hackathon.

Nineteen groups introduced their tasks on the finish of the Hackathon. Their scrappy 48-hour tasks are remembered by their displays, representing an imagined future state of what may very well be at WP Engine. 

These are a number of the award-winning tasks that we constructed collectively.

Hack for Cats: The Lone Can Award

Embarking on a purr-suit of innovation, two adventurous hackers, Christine Seeman and Courtney Sims, got down to improve the lives of their feline buddies. 

This group developed interactive toys, video games, and even a brand new cat authentication system, so our kitty buddies can extra simply log into our computer systems late at evening and chat with their buddies about world domination! 

As a nod to their creativity, the group donated their winnings to Alley Cat Allies, a nonprofit working to enhance the lives of all cats and kittens.

Search Cowboy: Pardner First

A pair of first-time hackers, Byanca De La Fuente and Daniel Urdialez, lassoed success with their creation: Search Cowboy, a strong inner search device. 

Their mission? To raise the client expertise by surfacing related info from a number of inner information sources like Jira and Guru, empowering our award-winning help groups with the knowledge they want at lightning pace. If the information is on the market, Search Cowboy will assist us spherical it up. 

For his or her Buyer Impressed win, the group donated their winnings to Latino Outside, a company devoted to constructing a world the place all Latino communities take pleasure in nature as a protected and inclusive place.

GoQueue: Tighten the Bootstraps

This group breathed new life right into a five-year-old hackathon venture to interchange our getting old visitors queuing system. Liable for routing billions of every day requests, this method permits WP Engine’s WordPress platform to distribute computing assets equitably as web site visitors fluctuates. 

The target was clear: attain efficiency parity with our current queuing system. Not solely did this venture present promising outcomes, but it surely additionally carried out a brand new weighted truthful queuing algorithm in Golang. 

In recognition of their achievement, group members Eric Miller, Daniel Ayvar, Alexander Wilcots, William McKinnerney, Wyatt Tall, and Nate Homosexual selected to pay it ahead by donating their winnings to Fund Texas Selection, a nonprofit offering Texans with entry to abortion healthcare.

Cowboys of the Darkish: Shiniest Buckle in City

Responding to buyer suggestions like “My retinas are burning,” this group braved the world of CSS, Materials UI, Typescript, React, Ruby, and only a trace of Sass to construct WP Engine Consumer Portal: Darkish Mode. 

Due to their efforts, aid for our eyes could quickly be on the horizon. All credit score goes to those gifted group members: Adam Kostuch, Adam Łapiński, Alex Butler, Donagh Kelleher, Marwa Saad, Robin Olaya, Ryszard Borzych, Sarah Ricker, Teresa Gobble, and Tyson Reeder. 

To rejoice their gleaming new buckle, the group donated their winnings to the Kessler Basis, which drives life-changing rehabilitation analysis for folks with disabilities.

The Knowledge Desperados: The Platinum Prospectors Prize

For this Hack, Justin Reasoner, Ty Christensen, and Ian Meron created a brand new database layer for our WordPress internet hosting platform. 

The aim was to separate a few of our stateful workloads from our conventional internet hosting stack. This group exceeded their preliminary aim and created a extremely out there Kubernetes service that might be simpler to handle than our current database answer. 

The impression of this venture on the way forward for internet hosting at WP Engine can’t be overstated, and that’s the reason it gained The Platinum Prospectors Prize. The group donated their winnings to Feeding America, contributing to the combat in opposition to starvation.

ChatWPYee-Haw: Girish Byraiah’s AI Code Wrangler Award

This group proved the underlying applied sciences that WP Engine might use to create an clever assistant for inner use. Leveraging Google’s Vertex AI Search, this group created a generative AI language mannequin that integrates into Slack. 

Their creation delivered a stellar interactive demo, offering the best cowboy details this facet of the Mississippi. This venture opens the door to future fashions skilled on inner information sources just like those utilized by the Search Cowboy venture. 

Ben Turner, Drew Holt, Eric Haase, Eric Hoanshelt, Justin Lim, Mehar Gangishetti, Parul Priya, Peter Nuernberg, Ramya Iyer, Silver Bowen, and Spencer Putnam donated their winnings to Medical doctors With out Borders, which delivers worldwide emergency medical help.

The spirit of innovation and collaboration we witnessed through the Outdated West Hackathon is one thing we stock with us day-after-day at WP Engine. Our dedication extends to fostering an atmosphere the place workers are empowered to discover new concepts and take dangers. Believing this ethos propels our ongoing innovation and progress.

Have you ever participated in different thrilling Hackathons? Please share your experiences with us within the feedback! 

In case you’re desperate to saddle up for our subsequent Hackathon, WP Engine welcomes passionate people to hitch our Engineering groups. Thrilling alternatives await, together with our latest announcement of 20 new job openings at our award-winning Limerick workplace. 

For extra particulars, go to our careers web page.