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Coffee With Developers • Aug 2, 2026

What to Do About Hackathons in the Time of Agents - Mike Swift

Mike Swift

Mike Swift claims generative AI is collapsing traditional engineering swimlanes. Learn how to combat open-source code slop. Rethink the strategic ROI of your corporate hackathons.

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#1 about 4 min

Shifting from academic theory to hands-on software education

How participating in hackathons provides practical software engineering experience that traditional education often lacks.

#2 about 3 min

Organizing internal hackathons for enterprise skills development

How companies use internal hackathons to teach practical technology skills to non-traditional software creators.

#3 about 5 min

Understanding the iPhone moment of software engineering

How artificial intelligence enables rapid prototyping for everyday tasks without replacing the need for professional architects.

#4 about 8 min

Collapsing specialized developer roles into cross-functional teams

How artificial intelligence lowers the barrier to entry for various software disciplines and encourages horizontal team structures.

#5 about 5 min

Measuring the business return on investment for hackathons

How organizations track the value of internal hackathons through employee retention, experimental learning, and internal tooling.

#6 about 5 min

Refocusing Hacktoberfest on open source artificial intelligence

Why modern open source events are shifting focus from code contributions toward adopting and understanding open weight models.

#7 about 3 min

Fostering soft skills and ethics in open source contributions

How open source projects build community engagement and evaluate soft skills like communication and pull request management.

#8 about 4 min

Navigating token economics and open source artificial intelligence

How rising subscription costs and limits on application programming interfaces drive the need for shared open source alternatives.

#9 about 3 min

Incentivizing continuous learning through accessible hackathon prizes

Why offering smaller hardware and resource prizes promotes educational goals better than large cash bounties.

#10 about 3 min

Lowering the barrier to entry for blockchain development

How artificial intelligence tools are helping developers understand complex paradigms and build decentralized applications more easily.

#11 about 2 min

Repurposing mining hardware for sustainable artificial intelligence inference

How energy consumption in technology can be mitigated by utilizing existing cryptocurrency mining rigs for open weight model inference.

#12 about 3 min

Bridging developer relations across specialized technology ecosystems

How niche technology foundations build developer trust by engaging in broader software engineering conferences and events.

#13 about 4 min

Building diverse and inclusive developer event communities

How intentional outreach and aspirational storytelling create environments that represent a wide range of developer backgrounds.

Matching moments

11:34 min

Rapid prototyping with AI agents at hackathons

Chris Heilmann Chris Heilmann +2 · LIVE

2:21 min

Shifting hackathon strategies towards AI-assisted development

Michelle Duke · Coffee With Developers

4:47 min

Driving AI tool adoption through mandatory engineering hackathons

Ellen Jones Ellen Jones +1 · World Congress 2026 Europe

1:55 min

Shifting developer workloads and realistic AI productivity gains

Chris Heilmann Chris Heilmann +2 · LIVE

4:37 min

Maintaining the value of hackathons and unstructured exploration

Carly Richmnd · Coffee With Developers

3:01 min

The rise of in-person meetups amidst AI-generated content

Chris Heilmann Chris Heilmann +2 · LIVE

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