Abbie: Hey Paulo, thank you so much for chatting with us about SpawnFest, we would love to learn more about it!
Please could you give us a brief introduction to yourself and your tech background?
Paulo: Hey. My name’s Paulo F. Oliveira. I’m a software engineer from Portugal. I started working in tech about 20 years ago, initially as a software consultant for SAP, then quickly moving to Software Development. I’ve lived abroad for many years, mostly pursuing job opportunities that’d allow me to broaden my scope of knowledge and embrace new tech stacks (C++, C#, Java, Node.js, …), but now I’m back in sunny Lisbon, Portugal. For the last ten years or so I’ve been mostly concentrated in the BEAM ecosystem, Erlang and Elixir. This is how I “discovered” functional programming, professionally, and am very glad I did.
Abbie: Please could you give us an overview of what SpawnFest is and what’s involved?
Paulo: SpawnFest is an annual 48 hour online Software Development contest in which teams from around the world get exactly one weekend to create the best BEAM-based applications they can. (shamelessly copied from our website, https://spawnfest.org/)
What we do as organisers is contact sponsors, judges, players, market the event, and following it up while it’s happening. Most of the initial work (after deciding on a date) is pretty much “automated” so we do a couple of pull requests to the website code, contact some people, ask for help here and there, and then most of the time until the competition starts is making sure we have solid sponsors and sponsorships to offer the players, so it’s not only enjoyable but there’s a prize to look forward to. Last year (2022) we offered more than 12k EUR worth of prizes.
Check out our sponsor list at https://spawnfest.org/#sponsors and our prize list at https://spawnfest.org/#prizes.
Abbie: You’ve been an organiser of SpawnFest for a number of years, how did that come about?
Paulo: There were other people organising it until 2020, that included Brujo Benavides, another Erlang veteran and member of the BEAM ecosystem. He contacted a few of us (I’d already done some FOSS with him, on several projects) on Slack, some answered the call, and we got together. We had an initial meeting with him and the rest of the (new) team, where he explained the whole “process” to us and accompanied us for a while (a few weeks only, since he then went on to be a player in the competition - even getting a good result).
Our goal was to not let this competition “die”, since it’s the oldest BEAM-based competition there is, and the results from it are always exciting and useful.
Abbie: How do people enter the contest? Do they need to have previous experience using BEAM technologies or can newbies join too?
Paulo: No prior experience is required, just the will to have fun, connect, play, learn… While it’s not yet up, players will be able to register via http://play.spawnfest.org/.
Abbie: What are the benefits to SpawnFest & Hackathons in general?
Paulo: I’d say the main benefits to Hackathons (and SpawnFest is no different from others, in that sense) are -
1. Learning and exchanging ideas
2. Connecting
3. Having fun
4. Creating something.
Different people will find different ways to enjoy it.
Abbie: Have you taken part in any similar events? If so, which ones & have you learnt anything from doing so?
Paulo: While working at Miniclip, there was an annual hackathon. I took part every year. The one I loved the most I accomplished with a colleague/friend, João Machado. We put the BEAM running in a cell phone and got some of our backend code to do client-side stuff. For that we started with Jérôme de Bretagne’s excellent https://github.com/JeromeDeBretagne/erlanglauncher and tweaked it until we made it work for our use case. This also led to an exchange with Jérôme, and eventually an OTP pull request, so it was a learning exercise as well as fun to do.
Abbie: Have you taken anything from your experience organising SpawnFest into your own professional career?
Paulo: I have. I use some of the projects that started there (even before “my time”), every now and then (some on a daily basis), and I keep contact with many of the people I’ve known over the years. Since we’re almost all the BEAM ecosystem it’s like being part of an extended family.
Abbie: Looking back at previous contests, what are the most used BEAM languages Developers chose for their applications?
Paulo: The most widely used languages are for sure Erlang and Elixir, but we’d like to see Gleam get some teams this year, too. With José Valim’s help, last year, we were even able to set up and hand out prizes for Elixir/Livebook specific categories. It was the first time we tried having this sort of tier, and it worked well.
Abbie: When is the next SpawnFest contest taking place?
Paulo: It’ll be around October. The organisers this year, The BEAM Brothers, will be me and Bryan Paxton (who was also an organiser in 2021).
Abbie: Lastly, do you have any tips for Developers just starting out using Elixir or Erlang?
Paulo: Join the community, especially the Slack spaces (highly recommend the EEF one) and the forums. Ask questions, be curious. Try to participate in some FOSS, as you’ll get a feeling of what software development in the BEAM world is.
Abbie: Thank you again for your time Paulo, we really appreciate it and it’s been great to learn more about SpawnFest. It sounds like lots of fun and a brilliant way to meet other Developers who share the same BEAM passion.
Register to enter the contest here: http://play.spawnfest.org/
Website: https://spawnfest.org/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/spawnfest