Few things excite software developers more than an opportunity to work on cutting-edge technologies with top industry talent. Pair that with a road trip to Redmond, just outside of Seattle, and you’ve got a week of epic stories and incredible accomplishments. Here’s what happened:
In late October, Microsoft hosted a week-long Microservices HackFest designed to dive deeper into microservices architecture and provide developers the opportunity to code in a controlled and supported environment alongside Microsoft engineers. To prepare, Microsoft asked teams to define clear problems that would then be prototyped. Instructions were to create highly detailed scenarios with the goal of going deeper into solving each particular challenge with prototypes built with real code. In other words, Microsoft challenged developers to come up with an actual architectural problem, work with Microsoft to solve it, and leave HackFest with a solid start to a potential solution that can be implemented in an actual product environment.
Microsoft’s top goal was to help teams gain more technical skills and empower companies to keep working on each project after the HackFest. MediaValet jumped at this chance and had a fantastic time working side by side with top Microsoft engineers and even teaching them a trick or two about development on Azure!
MediaValet at Microsoft HackFest
Our team focused on a project using Actors on the Azure Service Fabric platform.
So what was it like participating in HackFest?
As MediaValet’s Dev team attended Microsoft presentations and completed HackFest projects, they worked with influential Microsoft Azure Service Fabric team members. Great friendships and long-lasting professional collaborations formed, and overall, key progress was made. The highlight was presenting MediaValet’s scope and vision for the future to Corporate VP Gopal Kakivaya, who was instrumental in the creation of Microsoft’s Service Fabric.
MediaValet’s Senior Software Engineer, Sergiy Chernets, called it: “…an amazing team bonding experience, which is hard to overemphasize. We went there to work on and get the latest insights for our architectural piece, but we got senior tech expert Haishi Bai assigned to our team for the whole week! Haishi is the author of the book about programming in Service Fabric, and the chance to work with him was phenomenal.”
Even though they worked late into the night for much of the week, MediaValet’s Dev team saw this as an irreplaceable opportunity – relationships will continue for years to come, and they look forward to attending such events in the future.
Reporting back to our whole company, our team repeatedly echoed the following statement, which was made clear by our Development Manager, Johnny Hermann: “It was an excellent Goldilocks-sized event – not too many or too few participating companies. We were able to interact extensively with key Microsoft devs and program managers and to get attention that is simply priceless.”
The Results
In the end, MediaValet developed insights and architectural decisions for our innovative platform, especially related to the Actor Model on Service Fabric. And our whole team agrees that the two biggest highlights were working with a high performing cross-functional team while getting to know the Microsoft folks on a more individual level and presenting to the Corporate VP of Azure.
All around, Microsoft’s Microservices HackFest was a highly positive experience – one that MediaValet will absolutely take the opportunity to experience again in the future.
