How Grafana Hackathons Turn Weird Ideas into Real Features (Birds, Agents & More) | Big Tent S3E4 скачать в хорошем качестве

How Grafana Hackathons Turn Weird Ideas into Real Features (Birds, Agents & More) | Big Tent S3E4

What makes a hackathon entry stand out — and how do those entries become features? Mat Ryer and Matt Toback host a panel with Grafana engineers Sven Großmann, Alexa Vargas Ortega, and Lukasz Gut to discuss how Grafana hackathons actually work — from science-fair projects and agentic monitoring to dashboard linting, birds, chess, and conspiracy theories. You’ll hear how hackathon teams form, how ideas evolve (or pivot entirely), why storytelling matters as much as code, and how multiple Grafana features started life as a one-week experiment. Along the way, we cover AI tooling, pitching, working with people you’ve never met before, and why curiosity-driven projects matter. If you’ve ever wondered how innovation really happens inside Grafana — this is it. Timestamps: 00:00 – Welcome to Grafana’s Big Tent 04:00 – Wingspan, board games, and bird dashboards 07:45 – Chess, observability metaphors, traces, logs, and metrics 12:00 – Do hackathon projects really start like this? 15:30 – How hackathon teams form at Grafana 24:45 – Hackathons outside Grafana: Startup Weekends & university hacks 29:30 – From idea to pitch: communicating what’s possible in a week 34:30 – Where the agentic monitoring idea came from 43:00 – When hackathon projects pivot (and why that’s healthy) 49:45 – Solving real customer problems through hackathons 53:30 – What happens after the hackathon ends 56:45 – Hackathon code vs production-ready features 59:30 – AI tools (Claude, Cursor) and hacking faster than ever 1:02:00 – Birds, curiosity-driven projects, and final thoughts 1:04:10 – Wrap-up and goodbye Links/resources: Learn more about Grafana's Big Tent: https://bigtent.fm/ Have a question? Ask Grot, your AI helper: https://grafana.com/grot/ Reach out in our community forums: https://gra.fan/communityyf --- Thanks for watching! 👍 Was this video helpful? Like and subscribe to our channel for more videos. Connect with Grafana Labs: X: (  / grafana  ) LinkedIn: (  / grafana-labs  ) Facebook: (  / grafana  ) #Grafana #Observability