When people think about what’s being built in Hampton Roads, they picture steel.

Aircraft carriers at Newport News Shipbuilding.
Rockets launching from Wallops Flight Facility.
Massive systems tied to defense and aerospace.

That reputation is earned.

But on February 27, something different was being built inside the Zeiders American Dream Theater.

Community.

Hampton Roads DevFest brought together 255 developers, engineers, technologists, and students for a full day of technical sessions. Six talks. No fluff. Just practitioners walking through how they solve real engineering problems.

Architecture decisions. AI implementation. Scaling systems. Lessons learned the hard way.

In the middle of it all, Tim Banks surprised the room with a live Jiu-Jitsu demonstration. It wasn’t theatrics. It was about adaptability — reading pressure, adjusting in real time, understanding systems instead of memorizing moves.

That idea landed.

But DevFest didn’t appear overnight.

For decades, developer-focused meetups have quietly taken place across Hampton Roads. User groups. Technical roundtables. Engineers sharing what they’re building after hours.

The team at RevolutionVA has steadily helped bring those builders together — creating space to learn, connect, and celebrate progress.

DevFest is a larger expression of something that’s been growing for years.

The moment that captured it best came from a group of high school students from the Advanced Technology Center who attended as a field trip. Watching engineers debate tools and tradeoffs, one student said, “I didn’t know this community existed.”

That’s the point.

There are thousands of software engineers working across Hampton Roads — inside startups, inside defense contractors, inside product companies — but they’re often invisible to each other.

DevFest makes them visible.

As Erin Moore, Founder of hunnie & attendee, put it, “DevFest demonstrated the collaborative potential of the Hampton Roads tech ecosystem. Bringing together professionals across different domains, industries, and technical backgrounds creates the kind of cross-pollination our region needs to stay competitive and innovative. I see events like this as foundational infrastructure for community-driven growth. I’m excited to see its continued evolution next year.”

Hampton Roads will always be known for ships and rockets.

But software — and the community behind it — is being built here too.

And rooms like this are part of how it grows.

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