A Search Hackathon at Community over Code, Glasgow 2026

It’s always a pleasure to spend time with search people - and last month’s Community over Code, run by the Apache Software Foundation in Glasgow, was a great opportunity to do so. Although you might think that the majority of these people would be concerned with Apache Solr, the underlying Apache Lucene project underpins many other search engines including Elasticsearch and OpenSearch - so this was a gathering of search enthusiasts from many different backgrounds, companies and traditions. On Monday I (Charlie Hull) was pleased to join and help organise the Search Hackathon.

For many, this was the first time they had met in person for a while (we were going to make up for this over a few evenings enjoying the attractions of Glasgow!). There were a lot of friendships renewed and sometimes begun between those who had already collaborated on a project but hadn’t yet met in person. This felt like a gathering that hadn’t happened since the old days of Lucene Revolution conferences, with around 20-30 people in the room, many of them Lucene and/or Solr committers - a chance to set the direction and make the big decisions about projects that underpin most of today’s search and AI infrastructure.

Photos from the day

  • Hackathon participants collaborating around tables with laptops
  • Participants discussing search projects in the hackathon room
  • An overview of the hackathon room with groups working together
  • A flip chart listing participants and their search project ideas
  • Two participants working together at a laptop
  • Three participants discussing their work around a laptop
  • Participants collaborating on search projects at a table
  • Flip chart notes connecting cluster, node, and core concepts with search collection schema design
  • A participant explaining ideas on a flip chart
  • Participants gathered for a presentation in the hackathon room
  • The audience watching a search project presentation
  • A presenter sharing project results with the hackathon participants

Use the previous and next arrows to browse the photos. Select a photo to view the larger image.

What we worked on

We tried to record some of the work that was done - this isn’t in any particular order or an exhaustive list, as some people worked on their own or moved between projects, and apologies to anyone we missed out. I’ve added JIRA numbers and links to repositories where appropriate.

Thanks to everyone who came and for all the hard, collaborative work! It was fantastic to see such progress in only one day - although no doubt the work will continue. We need these kind of gatherings to swap ideas, build real-world relationships and to figure out the future.

During the conference I had some interesting discussions about when we might all meet up next…watch this space for more news!

Charlie Hull - The Search Juggler