Olivier Dobberkau
CloudFest provides a platform for companies to showcase their latest solutions and make valuable business contacts. The event is known for its inspiring talks and opportunities to connect with industry decision-makers.
TYPO3’s Core Team, along with other TYPO3 contributors, attended CloudFest Hackathon in Rust, Germany, on 15–17 March 2025, as part of the Meet TYPO3 initiative. See upcoming Meet TYPO3 events.
What is CloudFest Hackathon?
The Hackathon at CloudFest is a three-day event focused on open-source projects that brings together developers, designers, and innovators to collaborate on technological solutions. Participants can collaborate in teams, develop new ideas, and present their projects on a stage during the main CloudFest event. The hackathon promotes creativity, collaboration, and innovation and provides a platform to showcase the latest developments in cloud and hosting technologies.
TYPO3 joined the Hackathon in 2024 with a small delegation and quickly saw the value in connecting with the broader open source community — a multi-day sprint with over 100 people worldwide and a wide range of communities was energizing. The vote was unanimous: We love the format and we knew we wanted to come back!
Our Preparation
This year, we were allowed to bring our own project to the hackathon, and we chose to continue last year's CMS Health Project — an initiative to define a shared standard for assessing the health of a CMS installation. The project is based on an RFC that was developed at the 2024 hackathon and explores a JSON-based output that reports whether core features (like scheduled tasks or checkout flows) are functioning correctly.
The idea is to create lightweight, interpretable status checks that hosting providers or site owners can easily integrate into observability tools. Our aim with the CMS Health Project was to develop as many integrations as possible for well-known content management systems, which the communities could then adopt as needed. We developed integrations for Drupal, WordPress, TYPO3, and Sulu CMS. Of course, we also wanted to promote this standard to site owners and hosters, who can incorporate the health checks into their observability solutions.
We also joined other teams working on exciting projects like a software bill of materials (SBOM) dependency checker, and a one-click installer prototype for launching CMSs in the cloud.
The Hackathon — a Unique Atmosphere
On Saturday morning, the hackathon started with a project presentation at the beautiful museum hotel Krønasår in Rust. Sharing a large room full of 110 nerds is always a great experience. After forming teams and introducing ourselves, the tasks were recorded and divided up — and then, in addition to the delicious food, it was, of course, all about coding.
But the conversations and highlights away from the computer were also lovely: the annual Mario Kart Tournament or a VR-based puzzle task at YULLBE were possible.
Collaboration and networking
The biggest challenge? Creating a great user experience in such a short time. A jury judged awards for the most technologically innovative project, the most active social media team, and many others.
In addition to the creative team, it is always impressive to learn about new technologies, think outside the CMS box, and learn from each other.
By Monday, the focus was on celebrating these successes together. New connections were formed with the newly acquired contacts and the CMS communities — something that hardly any other event manages — making the CloudFest Hackathon one of a kind.
Looking Forward to 2026
CloudFest Hackathon is a unique event that addresses the atmosphere and challenges that must be overcome. A special thanks goes to Carole Olinger and her team for organizing this event, where nothing was missing.
We’re already looking forward to 2026 — and hope to see even more TYPO3 folks apply to join us next year!
Felicity Brand
Mathias Bolt Lesniak