Welcome to the Jukebox Podcast from WP Tavern. I’m Nathan Wrigley, and in this episode I take you inside the CloudFest Hackathon — a three-day, in-person collaboration held at Europa-Park in Rust, Germany, just before the main CloudFest conference.

CloudFest’s hackathon is different from many pitch-driven or vendor-specific events. It brings together developers, UX designers, sysadmins, platform engineers, and open source advocates for focused work on projects that strengthen the open web and hosting ecosystem. The event is professional, non-commercial, and aimed at producing practical, shareable improvements rather than product demos.

Organization and selection

Carole Olinger runs the hackathon, supported by a team that includes Lucas Ratke (Automattic), Alain Schlesser (Yoast), Thierry Muller (Google), and volunteer support from Simon Kraft (Group One). Planning starts months ahead: initial goals are set in September, preparation ramps up from October, and January is a particularly busy month for logistics.

This year the organizers received 22 project pitches and chose ten that matched CloudFest themes — AI being prominent — and emphasized cross-CMS collaboration. The hackathon intentionally mixes contributors from WordPress, TYPO3, Joomla, Drupal and beyond so solutions are portable and interoperable.

Attendance is competitive: roughly 300–400 applications for about 110 places. Partners cover part of the roster, leaving around 60 seats open to independent open source contributors. Applicants declare skills during signup, and organizers match those skills to project needs. After short project pitches on day one, participants initially pick where to work, but the support team monitors skill coverage and may shift people so each team has the talent it needs.

Focus on durability and follow-up

There’s increasing emphasis on producing lasting results — not just three-day prototypes. The organizers want projects to attract attention, resources, and continued contributors after the event. To that end the hackathon works to better publicize promising work and set up paths for follow-up so efforts don’t stall once participants return home.

Judging and awards

A jury made up of partner representatives, a Groundbreaker Talents charity rep, and members of the hackathon’s project support team (nine people in all) evaluates the projects. Awards include categories such as Tech Visionary (technical excellence), Pitch Perfect (best presentation), Social Media Master (engagement), Breaking Barriers (inclusion and teamwork), category winners, and an overall winner determined by points. Sponsorship money is used to support the Groundbreaker Talents initiative.

Why people travel from around the world

Contributors come from 30+ countries because the cloud and web ecosystem is interconnected: maintainers, host operators, plugin developers and platform architects all benefit when they meet in person. Face-to-face collaboration can clear months of backlog in a few days; while prizes exist, the primary aim remains open source contribution and keeping the web’s infrastructure secure, resilient, and interoperable.

Project highlights and participant voices

– Javier Casares — CMS Cloud Manager: This project addresses a common gap where one-click installers deploy CMS software but leave server configuration undone. The team’s goal is to configure CMS and server together; work on the public interface and creation tools progressed toward the hackathon milestones.

– Mattias Pfefferle — ActivityPub / Fediverse Federated Events: Aiming to build a decentralized events discovery and management layer that reduces reliance on proprietary networks. The team uncovered differences in implementations, filed bug reports, and made federation progress across WordPress and other platforms.

– Milana Cap — WP-CLI with AI: Exploring AI integrations for WP-CLI to speed local development workflows. The team produced a playful “spam machine” MVP early and experimented with how AI can assist developers on local instances.

– Patricia BT — CMS Freedom: Using large language models to extract structure from arbitrary HTML and convert pages into WordPress block themes and content. The approach is designed to be adaptable so extracted content can be imported into various CMSs.

– Nemanja Cimbaljevic — AI Accessibility Content Updater: A proof-of-concept that applies AI to identify and help fix accessibility issues automatically. The team treated this as an exploratory effort to see what AI can meaningfully correct.

– Anne-Mieke Bovelett — Accessible Infographics: Building a WordPress block/plugin that makes infographics accessible by embedding structured metadata and alternate content. It’s designed to be portable to other CMSs and to support bulk processing so organizations can retroactively make existing infographics compliant.

– Wesley Stessens — Peer-to-peer Federated RAG Framework: Developing a decentralized Retrieval-Augmented Generation network where anyone can create and share niche knowledge bases; queries route to the best-matching node in a peer-to-peer way and augment LLM responses without central servers.

– Tadas Pukas — WordPress Staging Environment Manager: An open source plugin to create and manage staging sites and sync changes to live environments. The plugin is near completion and available on GitHub.

Across rooms and teams

Teams tackled server configuration, decentralized social/event tools, AI-assisted development and accessibility, content migration, and staging workflows. The atmosphere mixed friendly competition with community-driven problem solving; many contributors worked late into the night, driven by camaraderie and the satisfaction of shipping something useful.

You don’t have to code to help — designers, project managers, documentarians, and marketers all play vital roles. CloudFest’s hackathon is proof that concentrated, in-person collaboration can accelerate open source work that keeps the web’s infrastructure healthy.

CloudFest will be running events in the US and Germany in 2026. For more details and links, visit wptavern.com/podcast.

Thanks for listening — more coverage from CloudFest and the hackathon will follow.

Nathan Wrigley opens the Jukebox Podcast from WP Tavern with a first‑hand report from the CloudFest Hackathon, the three‑day event held before the main CloudFest conference in Europa Park, Rust, Germany. Unlike vendor showcases, CloudFest’s hackathon is professional, non‑commercial, and focused on sustaining and improving the open web by bringing together developers, UX designers, system architects and other contributors to collaborate on open source projects.

Carole Olinger, who runs the hackathon, describes it as a concentrated meet‑up of open source enthusiasts who spend three days coding, designing and refining projects together. She leads a project support team that includes Lucas Ratke (Automattic), Alain Schlesser (Yoast), Thierry Muller (Google) and volunteer Simon Kraft (Group One), who helps with logistics and attendee care.

Planning for the event starts months in advance. Early discussions begin around September to set objectives and gather feedback; active preparations pick up in October and intensify through January. Organizers carefully select both projects and participants. This year they vetted 22 project pitches against CloudFest’s themes (including AI) and prioritized cross‑CMS collaboration so work could benefit WordPress, TYPO3, Joomla, Drupal and others.

Entry isn’t open to everyone: the hackathon receives roughly 300–400 applications for about 110 spots. Partners provide funded slots, leaving around 60 places for community contributors. Applicants list their skills during the application process and organizers match those skills to project needs. During the opening pitch session attendees choose projects, but staff actively monitor team balance and will reassign people if a group lacks key expertise, maximizing the chance each project will make progress.

Sustainability and follow‑up are growing priorities. Carole wants better publicity for hackathon outcomes and more resources so projects can continue after the three days. The aim is to help prototypes gain traction, support and longevity beyond the event itself.

There is also friendly competition. A nine‑person jury — composed of partner representatives, the Groundbreaker Talents charity initiative and the project support team — awards prizes across categories like Tech Visionary (technical achievement), Pitch Perfect (best presentation), Social Media Master (measured engagement) and Breaking Barriers (inclusive technologies and diverse collaboration). The overall winner is decided by accumulated points; sponsorship money for awards goes to the Groundbreaker Talents initiative.

Nathan reflects on why the hackathon matters: the cloud depends on countless open source projects and the people who maintain them. CloudFest Hackathon acts like a “human API,” putting plugin maintainers, host engineers and other specialists in the same room so problems that might linger for months can be solved quickly through face‑to‑face collaboration. While prizes exist, the primary goal is contributing to free and open source software and strengthening interoperability and infrastructure.

Contributor highlights from the event:
– Javier Casares — CMS Cloud Manager: Working to configure CMS and server settings together rather than relying on one‑click installs, with a public interface and backend to provision CMS instances and related server configuration.
– Mattias Pfefferle — ActivityPub / Fediverse: Building federated events tooling as a decentralized alternative to proprietary platforms like meetup.com, filing interoperability bug reports and improving federation standards.
– Milana Cap — WP‑CLI + AI: Adding AI features to WP‑CLI to help development workflows in local environments; the team produced an MVP and tested AI behavior locally.
– Patricia BT — CMS Freedom: Using large language models to parse arbitrary HTML, detect structure and elements, and convert pages into WordPress block themes and content so extracted data can be imported into various CMSs.
– Nemanja Cimbaljevic — AI Accessibility Content Updater: A proof‑of‑concept that uses AI to suggest practical accessibility improvements for website content through trial and iteration.
– Anne‑Mieke Bovelett — Accessible Infographics: Creating a WordPress block to upload infographics and generate the descriptive metadata needed for accessibility, with plans for a cross‑CMS approach and bulk conversion tools.
– Wesley Stessens — Peer‑to‑peer Federated RAG Framework: Designing a decentralized Retrieval‑Augmented Generation network where niche knowledge libraries are published by peers and queries are routed to the best matching node to augment LLM responses without centralized servers.
– Tadas Pukas — WordPress Staging Environment Manager: An open source plugin to create staging environments and sync changes to live sites; the team focused on finishing touches and distribution.

The episode stresses that successful hackathons need a mix of talents — designers, communicators, project managers and coders. The energy of in‑person collaboration and the cross‑community mix produce outputs that strengthen the web’s infrastructure. CloudFest 2026 and the accompanying Hackathon will continue this tradition. For show notes and links, listeners are pointed to wptavern.com/podcast, and the podcast will return with more coverage from CloudFest and its hackathon.