Impressive stats from ideation phase of Bengaluru Python hackathon, now closed
This is part of a blog series on the MariaDB-Python Bengaluru Hackathon announced in August 2025. Want to organize a hackathon with MariaDB? Read more about MariaDB hackathons.
The ideation phase of the MariaDB-Python Hackathon wrapped up on Sunday — and the response was phenomenal!
A huge thanks to everyone who joined the journey: from the BangPypers’ meetup announcement to the AMA webinars, from registration on HackerEarth to the final idea submissions — your creativity and energy made this phase a success!
We have been evaluating idea submissions as they have dropped in, with a final big push now after the deadline – we even brought AI into the loop to help out. The deadline was extended by a few days by popular demand, and to accommodate the local Indian holidays.
Congratulations to all the short-listed idea submissions that will proceed to the development phase that will take place during October – coincidentally during “Hacktoberfest”!
Ideation by the numbers
Huge thanks to everybody that participated in the ideation phase!
- 4,189 registered individuals
- 597 idea submissions from teams (1-5 people)
- 29% Integration track / 71% Innovation track
Congratulations to the shortlisted idea submissions!
- 148 shortlisted idea submissions
- 50 Integration track / 98 Innovation track
We’ll be going further in on the ideas in an upcoming blog.
Starting the development phase
Well done so far! But remember, the ideation phase was just 5% of the work – now comes the real challenge of turning your idea into working code.
We are here to support you. There will be AMA sessions coming up, so get going so you have good questions for Kaj and Robert.
Everybody can stand out in the crowd, not just the prize pool winners. All meaningful contributions will get listed and thus get widespread attention from the MariaDB user community.
As participants gear up for the development phase, let me recap what the hackathon is about by quoting Kaj in his previous blog: Our objective: Make MariaDB easier to use! Which for each track means:
- Innovation: By writing sample code. By showing off code that uses cool MariaDB Server features. Reference implementations on GitHub provide an ideal starting point for users to copy and paste from, to extend, to apply to their own situation.
- Integration: By writing interface code. By making MariaDB Server easy and convenient to use from existing frameworks, tools, and environments. Pull requests into existing GitHub projects, or separate “connectors” provide the key for users to use MariaDB in whatever setting they need a database.
Reflections on evaluating idea submissions
Due to the large amount of idea submissions, we have used AI to assist in evaluation. This was an interesting exercise in prompt engineering: the AI evaluations got better as we asked it to improve its own evaluation prompt based on the blogs we have been sharing during the past weeks.
What to learn from non-shortlisted ideas? In short, read carefully what a hackathon organizer and track goals are. Apart from short descriptions not even mentioning MariaDB, we were forced to drop submissions with:
- Too many MariaDB features – it made the submission implausible as a good MariaDB feature use case. Innovation track works best when you deeply demonstrate ONE feature’s strengths rather than superficially touching many.
- Idea too far outside the box – there were some interesting ideas about what could be done around MariaDB, but they didn’t fit the two track goals in this particular hackathon. Remember: Integration = interface code for existing frameworks; Innovation = MariaDB reference implementations (very strongly recommending) using OpenFlights dataset.
Onwards to the development phase!
Next up: the development phase — where ideas turn into working code. Stay tuned as we highlight some of the most promising projects in the coming weeks!”
