Article originally posted in the August 26th, 2026 edition of What’s Up Wednesday on LinkedIn.
Community events like FME Community Bingo are more than just a fun way to pass the time - they're a chance to bring people together and to explore FME in ways that go well beyond the everyday workflow.
A Bit of Backstory
Over the years, I had the chance to work closely with Mark Ireland, and that gave me some unique insight into how FME Community events are built. I'd already taken on the challenge of digging through some of his other events, like the 12 Days of FME Balloon Race, so when I was approached about bringing back community bingo, I jumped at the chance.
Once again, I found myself piecing together everything he had put together - and honestly, it was a really fun challenge. Mark loved building puzzles for the community, and untangling his workspaces turned into an unintentional puzzle in its own right. Tracking down all the pieces and figuring out how everything was connected taught me a lot.
It also drove home something I think a lot of us know but don't always practice: the value of documenting your workspaces. It doesn't need to be extensive - even tiny notes on what's connected to what, how things are triggered, and any areas to update if a workspace may be reused can make a huge difference for whoever picks it up next.
What the Event Is
FME Community Bingo is a fun and interactive way to connect with fellow members of the FME Community during the month of August.
Whether you're answering a question, uploading an image, or participating in a team challenge, each completed task earns you a square on the Bingo board - and every square is a chance to win exciting prizes!
How It's Built
The whole event runs on 20 unique workspaces, 7 automations, and 12 webhooks working together behind the scenes on FME Flow Hosted. A PostgreSQL database stores each user's square information and tracks progress as the game unfolds.
We wanted to make sure this year’s bingo still felt fresh compared to last year's round. To do that, we mixed things up with a different style of puzzles, square tasks, and quiz questions.
The Technical Details
The bingo page itself is the control center for the whole event. It's triggered by an FME Flow Hosted workspace webhook embedded in the page's HTML.
From there, each square is controlled by a workspace, and those get triggered in a few different ways:
- Most are triggered by a webhook from the Gainsight platform
- Some are triggered by other streaming workspaces embedded in the HTML
- A few rely on a spreadsheet that gets updated manually for our communal events
- Others are triggered by an FMEFlowJobSubmitter transformer added to existing workspaces
Honestly, the most interesting (and challenging) part of this whole project was figuring out how everything talked to each other, and troubleshooting when it didn't.
A few things stood out to me along the way:
- Repurposing existing workspaces. Some workspaces already exist and run outside of this community event, like our webinar badging workspace. To repurpose those for bingo, an FMEFlowJobSubmitter transformer is added to the existing workspace, which runs a parameterized workspace that updates the database and awards the user their square.
- The parameterized workspace - the biggest hurdle. This one wasn't really documented, but it kept showing up everywhere. A lot of squares were being triggered by what looked like unknown magic, and it turned out to all trace back to this one workspace. It's a genuinely fascinating way to reuse existing work rather than build everything from scratch.
- Using JSON for real-time messaging. Another thing I found fascinating was how JSON was used within the workspaces to give users front-facing messages in real time as they interacted with the game - depending on things like whether the game had started, whether the user had started their own bingo game, or whether they'd already earned that square. Using JSON for something beyond API calls was new to me, and it's a technique I'll definitely be using in future projects.
Running It Day-to-Day
I want to say a genuine thank you to everyone for their patience when squares weren't awarded quite like they were supposed to be. And thank you for reporting those issues as they came up - it made a real difference in keeping things running smoothly.
Why It Matters
Bingo was one of Mark's favourite ways to get the community playing with FME instead of just reading about it, and I'm glad I got to bring it back this year. Untangling everything he built taught me more about FME automation than I expected - and reminded me why we should all be leaving a few more notes behind in our workspaces for whoever comes next.
If you played this round, thanks for being part of it - there’s still time to join! And if you're curious about how any of the pieces above work, drop a comment - I'm happy to go deeper on the setup in a follow-up post.