Openhack Amsterdam 2017

So this hackathon/training thing popped up on my twitter feed a week before it actually started.

It caught my attention because it mentioned Azure Service Fabric as one of the tech stacks (the other being Kubernetes) that would be the focus of the event. The event is Openhack that took place in Amsterdam from 9 to 11 october 2017.

So Azure Service Fabric caught my attention because it’s a big part of the job I’m currently working on. We run a bunch of services and actors with great satisfaction, but there’s always more to know and learn.

The event started with some instructions and announcements. We were doing a ’lift-and-shift’ of a ’legacy’ application. This eehm… application, turned out to be Minecraft Server (for the java edition)!

I’m not going to spoil any of the challenges (in case there is a repeat of the event somewhere else), but we started with 1 minecraft server and ended with a lot of minecraft servers.

The event was set up around a bunch of assignments to be completed before the end of the event. All visitors were assigned a team (Shout out to Eugene, Claus and Rutger! Team-06!) to take on the challenges.

There was also the option to schedule a short meeting with a platform expert and talk about some of your own experiences with service fabric. I signed up for that and got a spot. Aside from all of the cool things you get to do and see during the challenges, the one-on-one time was excellent. I got some really good tips and tricks to apply to real world problems. If you are attending an event like this and have a real project, I highly encourage you to apply for some time and talk about some of things you work on (to the extent that you are allowed and/or comfortable of course).

The only noteworthy thing was, as a software developer, there was a lot of platform stuff and a little bit less development stuff. I learned so much about service fabric that in the end it didn’t really matter.

All in all, this was a great event to attend. I had a great time and got to hang out and do cool stuff with some really smart people.

10/10.