Tutorial: "Working Code Wins": Win Big With a Cloud Native Hackathon Start... P. Morton & A. Bangser
P. Morton, A. Bangser
KubeCon + CloudNativeCon Europe 2025 · Tutorial
This KubeCon EU tutorial, "Working Code Wins: Win Big With a Cloud Native Hackathon Start," presented by P. Morton and A. Bangser, delves into the transformative power of platform engineering in accelerating developer experience (DevX), particularly within the context of internal hackathons. The talk showcases how The Access Group, one of the UK's largest software companies, leveraged **Kratics**, an open-source platform orchestration framework, alongside other cloud-native tools to streamline the provisioning of development environments and applications. Morton, an engineer at The Access Group, shares his journey of building a robust, self-service platform that significantly reduced the operational overhead traditionally associated with hackathons, while Bangser, a CNCF ambassador and platform engineer, provides the foundational theoretical context for this shift.
AI review
This talk presents a robust, practical blueprint for building a self-service internal developer platform using Kratics, GitOps, and Backstage. It addresses a real pain point—streamlining development environment provisioning, particularly for high-velocity events like hackathons—with a highly technical and actionable solution. The emphasis on codified security, disaster recovery via GitOps, and abstracting complexity for developers delivers significant value.