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Summaries are not the original full articles. ## Waggy, Claude, and Code: Celebrating Drake Fish, Our Newest Beacon DevFeed: [Waggy, Claude, and Code: Celebrating Drake Fish, Our Newest Beacon]() Original publisher: [Read original article]() Author: Juan Santana Published: 2026-08-10T05:00:00Z Content type: opinion Language: en Sources: [8th Light](), [8th Light Insights]() Topics: [Artificial Intelligence](), [Claude](), [anthropic](), [Robotics](), [Code](), [Slack]() Tags: [ai](), [anthropic](), [claude](), [culture-and-news](), [robotics](), [slack](), [work]() ### AI overview An 8th Light profile celebrates Drake Fish as a Beacon Award recipient, highlighting his open sharing of the Waggy autonomous robot project, experimentation with Claude and real-world hardware, and work helping colleagues and clients adopt AI systems. ### Source excerpt Working at 8th Light, we have the daily privilege of collaborating with truly brilliant minds--people who bridge the gap between deep engineering and meaningful human connection. We are also incredibly fortunate to work alongside folks who, no matter how tough the problem or early the hour, are overflowing with honesty, curiosity, and of course, the jokes. That's why it brings us immense joy to announce our latest Beacon Award recipient at 8th Light, Drake Fish! The Beacon Award is a peer-nominated honor celebrating the individuals who bring 8th Light's values to life and elevate everyone around them. Drake was nominated by multiple colleagues last quarter, which tells you everything you need to know about his impact. As a Lead Engineer, Drake has built a reputation at 8th Light that reaches far beyond client teams. The secret sauce? He learns in the open, bringing everyone along for the ride. Waggy is an autonomous robot pooper scooper that Drake started building in his spare time. He stepped into the project without much background in electronics or robotics. Instead of tinkering quietly in private until everything worked, Drake shared the entire journey in Slack (mistakes, wiring mishaps, and all) so the rest of the company could learn, and giggle, alongside him. Along the way, Drake used Waggy to give us a front-row seat to what agentic tools like Claude can actually accomplish when paired with real-world hardware and a little bit of experimentation. As if building an autonomous pooper scooper wasn't enough, Drake took his AI experimentation even further. He became the first of many 8th Light team members to earn the Claude Certified Architect credential, one of Anthropic's benchmarks for engineers building production-grade AI systems. Right after passing the exam, he presented to the company to share tips, break down the material, and demystify the process. If you drop into our internal AI Slack channels or our "AI in the Open" sessions, odds are high you will f ## Celebrating our Beacon: Kevin Buchanan DevFeed: [Celebrating our Beacon: Kevin Buchanan]() Original publisher: [Read original article]() Author: Juan Santana Published: 2026-06-23T05:00:00Z Content type: article Language: en Sources: [8th Light](), [8th Light Insights]() Topics: [Artificial Intelligence](), [Claude]() Tags: [ai](), [claude](), [culture-and-news](), [productivity](), [work]() ### AI overview 8th Light recognizes Principal Engineer Kevin Buchanan with its Beacon Award. The article highlights his role in helping a client adopt Claude and develop an AI-supported Research-Plan-Implement workflow that improved productivity while reducing costs and time. ### Source excerpt Congratulations to Kevin Buchanan, our latest Beacon Award recipient, a peer-nominated honor that celebrates the people who bring our values to life and light the way for others to follow. Kevin, Principal Engineer, has been an 8th Light for over 12 years. A long-time favorite of our clients and his peers, he has a reputation for raising the bar on whatever he touches, and those who work alongside him come away sharper and stronger for the experience. Kevin's nomination came out of a year-long re-platforming effort for a long-time client. As AI reshaped what software teams could do, the client was questioning what was truly possible given their limited resources. Collaborating with past Beacon honorees Kelsey Roy and Eric Olson, Kevin introduced AI-forward solutions in a practical, grounded way. He helped the client adopt Claude, build patterns for using it well, and shape a Research-Plan-Implement (RPI) workflow they've kept refining. The result was real productivity for the team, but more importantly, cost and time savings for our client. Kevin showed what it looks like to stand on years of craft and still adapt quickly, bringing others along as he goes. Our CEO, Jenny Farver, put it well: "I'm really excited to see somebody like Kevin, who can stand on all that experience he's been building for years at 8th Light, and also rapidly change, adapt, grow, and bring along others with him." Join us in congratulating Kevin Buchanan, our newest Beacon! ## Celebrating Our Beacons: Hugh Sato and Pierce Edmiston DevFeed: [Celebrating Our Beacons: Hugh Sato and Pierce Edmiston]() Original publisher: [Read original article]() Author: Juan Santana Published: 2025-11-21T20:31:00Z Content type: opinion Language: en Sources: [8th Light Insights]() Topics: [systems](), [Tooling](), [User interface design](), [Usability](), [trust]() Tags: [build](), [culture-and-news](), [delivery-and-practice](), [product](), [time](), [trust](), [usability](), [workflow]() ### AI overview 8th Light celebrates Hugh Sato and Pierce Edmiston as Beacon Award recipients, highlighting their complementary contributions in design, engineering, and product leadership. The article describes their work improving a fragmented experimentation platform by unifying its design, workflow, and technical foundations, reducing deployment time from three weeks to the same day and pursuing a fifteen-minute SLA. ### Source excerpt Congratulations to Pierce Edmiston and Hugh Sato, our latest recipients of 8th Light's Beacon Award! Our Beacon Award recognizes team members who exemplify 8th Light's values and inspire us all. Pierce and Hugh represent two different strengths within 8th Light that come together to create meaningful, high-impact work for our clients. Pierce, Sr. Principal Engineer blends scientific rigor with technical and product leadership to turn complex research and modeling into stable, production-ready systems. While Hugh, Principal Designer, elevates that work through a human-centered design lens that makes intricate workflows clear, usable, and trustworthy. He brings coherence where systems feel chaotic and reduces cognitive load, helping teams and customers move with confidence. Both leaders build products from the system out to the experience, ensuring the core is solid and the experience makes the system clear, adoptable, and effective. They design for adherence, flow, safety and change. They prioritize what matters for the business and what will sustain value over time. They translate complexity into outcomes. They build systems people can use, learn from, and rely on. This partnership became a turning point for one of the world's most valuable enterprises, where Hugh and Pierce were brought in to strengthen a critical experimentation platform at the heart of the client's product decisions. When the work began, that platform was fragmented and difficult to operate. Experiment owners with great ideas had to rely on scattered tooling and manual engineering support just to get started. Pierce and Hugh anchored a full turnaround. They joined forces to unify the platform's design, workflow, and technical foundations, ultimately transforming a cumbersome three-week deployment process into a same-day experimentation engine and charting a path toward a groundbreaking fifteen-minute SLA. This shift did more than speed up launches, it elevated experimentation into a strategic, tr ## 8th Light Honors Rani Zilpelwar with Quarterly Beacon Award DevFeed: [8th Light Honors Rani Zilpelwar with Quarterly Beacon Award]() Original publisher: [Read original article]() Author: Juan Santana Published: 2025-07-11T17:27:00Z Content type: article Language: en Sources: [8th Light Insights]() Topics: [Development](), [Software Engineering]() Tags: [beacon](), [culture-and-news](), [delivery-and-practice](), [growth](), [leadership](), [mentorship](), [software-delivery](), [team](), [trust]() ### AI overview 8th Light highlights Rani Zilpelwar as the recipient of its Quarterly Beacon Award. The article recognizes her leadership as a Software Delivery Lead, including managing contractors for a client and mentoring others. ### Source excerpt Congratulations to Rani Zilpelwar, the recipient of 8th Light's Quarterly Beacon Award, a peer-nominated honor that celebrates team members who shine light on our core values. Rani is a Software Delivery Lead with over a decade of experience building high-quality software and high-trust teams. This quarter, Rani's leadership and influence grew significantly beyond her original role with one of the world's largest entertainment providers. Her ability to build credibility with key client leaders resulted in her being entrusted with new leadership responsibilities, including managing a team of contractors on the client's behalf. Beyond the client work Rani leads, she is also deeply committed to the mentorship and growth of those in her circle of influence. Recently, Rani published an insight on "Integrating Agile in the Era of AI", amplifying the voice of her practice and helping to shape the conversation around modern software development. Through her commitment and trusted leadership, Rani is a powerful Beacon to the values we hold true at 8th Light. Her actions illustrate how 'Honestly Builds Trust' and how a commitment to continuous education and growth can fuel limitless opportunity. Our CEO, Jenny Farver, sums it perfectly: Rani doesn't just lead. She blazes the trail. She delivers with purpose, speaks with honesty, and helps make our organization better. If Rani is your manager, you're lucky. If she's not, you're still lucky because her leadership lifts all of us.