Greetings from Ecuador, dear readers!
Introduction
I have been working at Oshyn for two and a half years as a Backend Developer, I recently had the privilege of participating in my first Sitecore hackathon, an experience that taught me more than I imagined and challenged me in unexpected ways. In this blog, I’ll share my journey from the initial nerves to the final satisfaction of creating something new and exciting.
Preparation
From the moment I learned about the hackathon, a mix of excitement and anxiety took hold of me. While I was excited to dive into the world of Sitecore and rapidly create innovative solutions, I also felt somewhat intimidated by the idea of competing in such a demanding environment.
Registration
The administrative staff of Oshyn motivated us to participate in this global Sitecore challenge by encouraging us to form teams of three people, two backend developers, and one frontend developer. Finally, we were able to form a multidisciplinary team with my colleagues Mariela Parraga (BE Ecuador), Juan Anaya (FE Colombia) and me Gabriel Baldeon (BE Ecuador).
In total, 42 teams from over 15 countries registered worldwide into the Sitecore Hackaton. You can find all the registered teams at this link: Sitecore Hackathon 2024 Teams. We named our team Epic Code Crafters.
Day 1: Immersion in the Challenge
The first day of the hackathon was a rollercoaster of emotions. From the moment we arrived at Oshyn’s offices in Ecuador, I immersed myself in a sea of coding, collaboration, and creativity. I met other passionate Sitecore colleagues, exchanged ideas, and began shaping our strategy for the challenge.
The team organizing the Sitecore Hackathon kicked off the 24 hours of programming by publishing the Ideas for the 2024 Sitecore Hackathon. In total, there were 2 ideas from which we had to choose one to develop our solution: The Ideas were: Best use of AI and Best Module for XM/XP or XM Cloud. We chose the first, Best use of AI.
Challenges and Obstacles
Once we chose the idea, we began thinking about what we could develop in 24 consecutive hours and present as a functional product. We came up with several ideas, but the one we chose was to use Artificial Intelligence to generate descriptions for images in the media library. In other words, we would use an AI service to create text descriptions based on each image (photo). Then, we had to decide when to generate the description—should it be on-demand, when the content editor uploads an image to the media library, or perhaps through another approach?
We thought that if we could automatically generate descriptions of the images, we could build an image search engine. Imagine the content editor entering the search engine, which would have a user-friendly interface, and searching for “blue sky.” All images with descriptions generated by AI that contains a blue sky would appear. This feature would be incredibly useful, especially when the media library is extensive.
With this vision in mind, we decided to create a Computed Field to index the descriptions of all images in the media library using Solr. This would optimize the search and allow us to build an initial prototype.
We got to work and started building it. We experimented with different AI engines for the “images to text” requirement, trying Azure Vision AI and Google Cloud Vision API. We chose the latter for the first prototype due to its ease of use and the speed of consuming the Google API.
Of course, not everything was easy. Along the way, we faced a series of technical and logistical challenges that tested our resilience and determination. From infrastructure issues to unexpected code errors, each obstacle forced us to think quickly and work together to overcome it.
Collaboration and Learning
One of the most rewarding aspects of the hackathon was the opportunity to collaborate with other talented professionals in the Sitecore field. I learned so much from my team members, from coding tricks to best development practices, which I will surely carry with me in my future career.
Day 2: Final Adjustments and Presentations
As the hackathon progressed, our project began to take shape. We spent the second day polishing the final details, fixing bugs, and preparing all the documentation required by the judges. The atmosphere was charged with energy and anticipation as we prepared to showcase our work to the world.
The Hackathon organizers created a GitHub repository for each team, in which, mainly, the source code of the project had to be uploaded, the solution description had to be written, as well as, a video demonstrating the solution working.
Presentation and Reflection
Finally, the time came to upload our project to the repository for the judges to review. Although we were nervous, we were proud of what we had achieved in such a short time. After completing the deliverables, we had the opportunity to reflect on our journey and celebrate our achievements, regardless of the final result, which we would know in a couple of weeks.
Conclusions and Next Steps
In retrospect, our first Sitecore Hackathon was much more than just a competition. It was an invaluable opportunity to grow as a professional, learn from others, and challenge myself in new and exciting ways. I’m excited to take the lessons learned and the connections made during the hackathon into my future projects and adventures in the world of Sitecore.
Here I share the link to the GitHub repository where you can find the deliverables of our first Hackathon project: 2024 Epic Code Crafters.
Thank you for joining me on this journey!
