In late 2015, COSA hosted 5 of the key developers of Processing, an opensource creative coding language used in classrooms and for artworks around the world. It is used in K-12 and higher education settings by tens of thousands of people every year to learn and express ideas with computer code. Over the course of 5 days, the developers of Processing were able to complete a major update from version 2 to version 3. The developers live in several different cities across the USA, so this achievement was only possible because they could work together in one place. The event took place in the Emergent Digital Practices classrooms at the University of Denver where all meals and other logistics were completely taken care of.

Processing has existed for almost two decades and came out of MITs Media Lab as a way to make computer coding more accessible to artists. It has now become so ubiquitous that it is used not just in art programs but also in computer science programs as well as in math classrooms. It set new standards for how artists could use code and has inspired the creation of numerous other creative coding languages.

In addition to working on Processing, the developers spent time with students and the general public who were all invited to several lectures and workshops led by the development team. They shared their work and talked
about advanced techniques for creating art and visualizations with computer code. The University provided support for the event because several classes in Emergent Digital Practices and the Computer Science department are taught with the free and open-source tool.