Code, Chaos, and Cheese: Highlights from SoCraTes 2026

A week ago, two teams from 56K Cloud—one from our Winterthur office and another from our Sion location—packed their bags and headed to Ilanz for the annual SoCraTes unconference. This wasn't our first rodeo; we've been supporting and sponsoring this event for years, and it's become a cherished tradition.

SoCraTes runs on hallway track, whiteboards, and apparently raclette.

If you haven't experienced SoCraTes yet, here's what makes it special: forget keynote speakers and rigid schedules. This is an unconference where the agenda is built each morning by the attendees themselves. You pitch your idea, gather interested participants, and off you go. Some sessions are educational deep-dives, others are hands-on workshops, and some are pure rapid prototyping chaos—the best kind of chaos.

The Vibe and the Sessions

Throughout the weekend, we jumped between fascinating sessions. Some were deep dives. Some were hands-on. Some were pure "let’s build it now" energy.

We even put together a quick automated email response bot in one session, but that’s not the story of this post.

What I love most about SoCraTes is how it elevates what's usually secondary at traditional conferences—the corridor conversations, the unexpected connections, the spontaneous collaborations—and makes them the main event. The openness of the format means you're constantly bumping into interesting people and ideas.

One Session Worth Mentioning: AI-Powered Open Source Support

There's one session I want to tell you about properly, because it's something we're genuinely excited to pursue: supporting open source projects by offering your spare computation power.

Remember Folding@Home during COVID-19? Thousands of people donated their idle computing capacity to fold proteins for medical research. During one session, we sketched out how a similar system could work for open source development. Yes, I'm sharing the whiteboard photo despite my embarrassing handwriting, you know what they say: if you're not embarrassed by your first release, you released too late.

The concept: project owners define what kind of help they need through a standardised configuration file. This could include debugging assistance, pull request reviews, documentation writing, dependency updates, or architecture proposals. They add a tag like ai-help-welcomed ( exact tag to be confirmed ) to signal they're open to AI-assisted contributions.

On the contributor side, a lightweight client monitors a feed of tagged tasks. Your local agent picks up tasks matching your preferences and processes them using your preferred coding agent or that leftover GPU from crypto mining days. Maintainers can specify whether they want human review before submission, opening opportunities for less technical contributors to help by reviewing AI-generated code, hence the spare time combined with spare compute make a whole contributor.

We're considering a priority system where your own organisation's issues get processed first, and then the agent picking up general open source tasks when idle. The long-term sustainability of open source depends on contributions from both companies and individuals, and this feels like a practical way forward.

Right now, this is just an idea—but watch this space. We're likely to release something publicly soon.

Cheese, Wine, and Community

As long-standing sponsors, we brought a bit of Valais tradition with us: cheese and wine. This year's raclette oven session was a massive hit—the queue felt endless, and everyone kept coming back for more. The feedback was brilliant, and honestly, these moments of connection over melted cheese are what make the conference special.

Why You Should Try to Get In

It's hard to secure a spot at SoCraTes due to limited availability, but it's absolutely worth trying. The learnings are invaluable, the connections genuine, and the format refreshing.

If your company relies on open source, I strongly encourage you to support the ecosystems around it. That includes conferences and communities, but also the projects themselves: sponsorship, maintainers' time, bug reports with good repo steps, documentation improvements, and contributions.

We're already looking forward to next year. Hopefully, by then, we'll have the first release of our open source helper solution ready to share.

A Big Thanks to Those Who Make This Possible

Events like SoCraTes don't just happen—they require dedication, support, and a venue willing to host a group of passionate developers for a week.

First, huge thanks to Patrick Baumgartner for his tireless organisation. Pulling off an unconference year after year takes real commitment, and Patrick ensures everything runs smoothly while maintaining the open, collaborative spirit that makes SoCraTes special.

We're also deeply grateful to the sisters at Kloster Ilanz for hosting us once again. The monastery provides the perfect setting—peaceful, inspiring, and surprisingly well-suited to hosting a bunch of developers debating clean code over raclette.

It's been an honour to sponsor SoCraTes alongside BVV, Ergon, House of Test, and 42talents. Supporting the open source community and fostering these spaces for learning and connection is something we all believe in deeply, and we're proud to be part of keeping this event alive.

Get in Touch

Curious about our AI-powered open source support project? Have thoughts on what we've shared, or just want to chat about SoCraTes, open source, or Swiss cheese traditions? We'd love to hear from you.

Drop us a message at on our website or connect with us on LinkedIn. We're always happy to talk code, collaboration, and community.

Find out more about the SocratesCH movement here.