Luminous Goes to the Philippines! (The Hackathon Edition)
.svg)
- “I've talked to them almost every day for five years. I've never seen them.”
- The Hackathon: Building Real Tools, Fast
- This Isn’t a One-Off
- More Than Just Code
- Ready to See What We're Building?
Most people know Luminous for the software. What they don’t see is the team behind it—distributed, deeply skilled, and in many cases, people we've worked with daily for years... without ever meeting in person.
That changed this month.
Jared Ward (CEO) and Brendon Beebe (CTO) flew out to Cagayan de Oro to spend a week with our Philippines team—some of whom they've talked with almost every day for years, all online. What started as a hackathon turned into something way more valuable: a human connection we didn’t know we were missing.
“I've talked to them almost every day for five years. I've never seen them.”
It’s hard to overstate what it meant to meet our engineers, project managers, and team leads in person. When you’re scaling a company, it’s easy to get locked into tasks, timelines, and tech. But behind every sprint is a person.
Whether it was debating how tall Jeyran might be (spoiler: just as tall as Brendon), sharing seafood dinners, or just learning how to pronounce each other's names correctly—this trip turned names on screens into real relationships.
“There’s a language barrier. There’s also a barrier of human connection.”
The Hackathon: Building Real Tools, Fast
For the hackathon, we split into teams and gave everyone a simple challenge:
Build something that works. Build something useful. You’ve got three days.
The ideas were strong. The energy was real. Everyone pushed beyond their day-to-day roles to think creatively about the workflows our users struggle with the most.
One team took on a flow that uses sales order line items to help users make the split-second inventory decisions they face every day. The winning hack, built by Arnold, was a custom widget with custom actions and views.
This Isn’t a One-Off
This was our first annual hackathon—and it won’t be our last.
The energy, the collaboration, the insight—we need more of it. The goal is to come back at least once a year, and ideally every quarter.
“If we hit our goals, then f*ck yeah, we’re coming back. In style.”
This trip wasn’t a vacation (despite the hopeful beach plans). It was about alignment. About seeing the humans behind the commits. And about recognizing that even as we build with efficiency and speed, we're building with people.
More Than Just Code
This hackathon reminded us what culture really is. It’s not ping-pong tables or Slack emojis. It’s people pushing each other to solve hard problems. It’s laughing over dinner after a long day of building. It’s turning “remote” into “connected.”
Big thanks to the entire Philippines team and everyone who made this possible.
We’re coming back.
In style.
Ready to See What We're Building?
Whether it's real-time inventory decisions, seamless inbound shipment reconciliation, or powerful custom workflows—everything we build starts with solving real problems for real teams.
Want to see Luminous in action? Book a demo today. Let’s talk about what’s slowing you down—and how we can fix it.
Video transcript
Meeting the Team in Person
“Is that all you brought?” “Uh, yeah.”
I've talked to them every day, almost every day, for the past five years. I've never seen them.
We're guessing Jeyran's height. My guess is right here. Right here. Alright, we're good. Wait, wait.
Arriving in Cagayan de Oro
Alright guys, so I made it to Cagayan de Oro. This is where the Philippines team lives, and we're going to a special seafood restaurant to eat with the team.
Jeyran is a lot taller than we thought. He's just as tall as Brendon. I actually thought he might be taller. I feel so much better. It was so crazy.
So follow along with us this week as we go and explore the Philippines and get to know our team a little bit better.
Three Years Online, Now Face to Face
This is my first time meeting the Philippines team in person. Hans here is driving us.
“Yeah, so I'm a DevOps engineer and also a project manager at Luminous. I've been with the company for three years this month. We've been talking since, what, three years ago? All online. And right now, we're face to face.”
The Hackathon Challenge
So follow along as we take some cool ideas and see what we can hack together in a couple of business days — and see if anybody can build something incredibly useful or innovative in a couple of days.
For this hackathon, we divide into teams, and whoever pushes something that actually works and is actually useful, they win.
We are trying to hack together a very specific flow that takes line items of sales orders. It helps you make inventory decisions — like the split-second decisions our users always have to make.
Welcome, everybody, to the Luminous Hackathon!
Why Meeting in Person Matters
When they're just people on a screen, it's so hard to see who they are. They're just names. So many of these names I've worked with, but I didn't know how to pronounce them. I didn't know who they were. I didn't know their questions. There's a language barrier. There's also a barrier of human connection. We never actually connected with them before. This solidifies the connection — the human connection.
I think at a minimum we have to come back once a year. Every quarter would be ideal.
“I mean, look at this. This is vacation, right?” “We haven't seen a beach yet, but I hope we'll see it soon.” “Ah, it's not a vacation.”
The Final Presentations
We are doing the final hackathon presentation. All the developers are presenting the ideas they've built over the past three days. It's gonna be awesome. All their families are here. Everybody from the Philippines team is here. Stay tuned! There are some really cool ideas.
And the Winner Is…
Last night was the presentation of the hackathon — the first annual hackathon for Luminous. There were some really cool ideas. Arnold ended up winning. More on that later, but it was a really cool hack. It was basically a custom widget with custom actions and views. It's really cool. Success!
Coming Back Next Year?
“You coming back next year?” “If we hit our goals, then f*ck yeah, we're coming back. In style.”