The End of ingress-nginx: How We’re Navigating the Migration
2025-12-17
By Simon Rondelez
We went to the hills near Naples with a simple intent: get in the same room, build together, and come back with the engine running smoother. Not “a vacation with laptops” and not “a conference” either. Something more human, more focused, and a little more memorable than a normal week.
With the reorg behind us I think everyone was looking forward to another theme for the retreat.
We based ourselves in Frasso Telesino, staying at (castle) Villa de’ Luccheri: a place built for medieval feasts: big shared spaces, corners for focus time, and a garden to get lost in.
And then the weather showed up (who knew end of November)…
It felt a bit apocalyptic: horizontal rain, power cuts, and a house that forgot it was supposed to be waterproof. It forced us to stay inside more than planned and cut some corners in the original idea of “work + wander”.
But honestly? It also added to the ambiance. When the world outside is storming sideways, the inside becomes a little warmer: more coffees, more collaboration, more of that shared “we’re in this together” energy.
Our recipe was:
That combination made it easy to be productive without feeling like we’d recreated a normal work week in a different country.
If you’ve never done a team hackathon while living under the same roof for a few days, the main difference is the bandwidth (pun intended 😁).
In normal weeks, other work gets in the way, you schedule a call, write a doc, wait for replies, and hope you’re all imagining the same thing. In a hackathon you get the quick brainstorm and then go head first into a direction with no clear goal or deadline. This is exactly what makes it a good playground for creativity.
Several of us used the hackathon space to try things we’d normally postpone. There’s a magic to having the right people nearby: uncertainty feels smaller when you can ask a question immediately.
And the real output isn’t only what we built. It’s that we left with fresh ideas to fuel what’s next.
At some point you need to leave the laptops behind and let your brain do something else.
We did Pompeii and then briefly Naples to visit the coolest car park followed by a nice dinner combined with a spotlight round. A combination of history, culture, chaos, fine dining and peer evaluation.
It created a different kind of bonding. The team chemistry you get from wandering streets, getting lost ( 🙈) , and sharing a table is not the same chemistry you get from a zoom meeting.
In the retro, a few themes stood out:
If there’s one common thread: we all enjoyed the time together: the spontaneous demos, cooking together, the kitchen conversations, the shared “should we try this?” energy, the shared frustrations towards the cat and yes… the storm outside making the inside feel as a safe space.
A few of us felt the hackathon would have been even smoother with stronger wifi. Next time: connectivity is a first-class requirement. Both for collaborating and including people who can’t join physically.
Even with a flexible program, people asked for some planned discussion moments: brainstorming, more intentional topic time, guided conversation. Not heavy, just creating space for it.
A practical suggestion: split planning into a few clear “pillars” (e.g. location / food / fun / program) so ownership is obvious and we don’t need as many planning syncs early on.
Winter has charm, but it can also be grey (and wet… apparently). A few voiced for trying May/June or Sept/Oct next time.
Here are the things that we want to keep:
A few next-destination ideas that popped up: Armenia, Belgium, Greece, Koppenherberg, France, Warsaw,… Who knows in what century we’ll end up next time 😊
Retreats are a bit like compression: you squeeze time, context, and collaboration into a short window and you come back tired and sick, but with a warm heart and s stronger connection to each other.
This one did exactly what we hoped. Ideas were sparked and the engine purrs a little more now.
