O-CEI Horizon co-organizes the “Code the Continuum” Hackathon together with Eclipse Foundation, CEI-Sphere, and COP-PILOT Horizon. The event will take place on 30 June – 1 July 2026 at the University of Cagliari, Italy.
The two-day hackathon will bring together students, developers, researchers, innovators, open-source communities, and technology providers to collaborate on practical challenges related to the Cloud–Edge–IoT continuum. Participants will have the opportunity to experiment with open technologies, test ideas in realistic environments, and explore how interoperability and reusable digital assets can accelerate innovation across Europe.
One of the three challenge tracks will be led by O-CEI: Eclipse Zenoh & Sustainable Edge-Cloud. This challenge will explore how Eclipse Zenoh can support more efficient and sustainable edge-cloud applications by comparing cloud-only and edge-accelerated deployments.
Participants will work with real open-source tools and demo applications to investigate how optimising data flows across distributed infrastructures can reduce bandwidth consumption and improve resource efficiency. Through hands-on experimentation, teams will deploy and adapt existing examples, analyse message exchanges, and compare different execution models across the continuum.
Two practical scenarios will be proposed. The first focuses on distributed image processing using Zenoh, comparing cloud-based and edge-based execution. The second explores geo-distributed content delivery using Zenoh and SkyFlok, allowing participants to evaluate traffic optimisation across edge and cloud environments. The challenge provides a concrete opportunity to understand how intelligent workload placement and efficient data distribution can contribute to more sustainable digital infrastructures.
Beyond the O-CEI challenge, participants will also be able to engage with two additional tracks. The COP-PILOT Horizon challenge will focus on orchestrating distributed applications using OpenSlice and Kubernetes across edge and cloud environments, while the Eclipse Foundation challenge will explore the development of Jakarta EE applications integrating AI capabilities and the Hourglass Model.
The hackathon reflects O-CEI’s commitment to promoting open-source innovation, interoperability, and collaboration across the European Cloud–Edge–IoT ecosystem. It also aligns with the project’s objective of encouraging the reuse of technologies and digital assets across domains, helping bridge the gap between research, experimentation, and real-world deployment.
Whether your interests lie in edge computing, distributed systems, AI, open-source technologies, or digital infrastructures, Code the Continuum offers a unique opportunity to collaborate with peers, learn from experts, and contribute to shaping the future of Europe’s computing continuum.
Discover the full programme and register to participate: https://ceisphere.eu/events/code-continuum
