Last night I attended the Platform Engineering Amsterdam meetup at Tolhuistuin, one of my favorite venues in Amsterdam Noord. The theme was “Human Intelligence” — a refreshing counterpoint in a world where every event is about AI. The idea: real experiences, lessons learned, and hard-earned knowledge shared human-to-human.
The event was hosted by Darko K. and Michaela at the beautiful Zonzij room inside Tolhuistuin, sponsored by Coder and Tarmac. Around 128 attendees showed up for three talks, food, drinks, and a gorgeous sunset over the IJ.
Talk 1: Efficiency Patterns in Agentic Software Development
Michael Suchacz, Head of Engineering at Coder, tackled the question every platform team is asking: How do we make AI work efficiently at scale?
His talk covered practical approaches to optimizing agentic workflows:
- Context management strategies that keep models focused and reduce token waste
- Architectural patterns like sub-agents and swarms that distribute cognitive load across multiple specialized agents
- Efficiency tradeoffs — where gains are real versus illusory
- Security considerations when giving agents more autonomy in development environments
This resonated strongly with my own experience building AI-augmented infrastructure workflows. The key takeaway: throwing more compute at agents is not the answer. Smart context windowing and task decomposition matter more than model size.
For teams exploring GitHub Copilot Agent Mode or similar agentic tools, Michael’s patterns around sub-agent orchestration are directly applicable.
Talk 2: A Practical Guide to Inner Sourcing Your IDP
Lian Li, Cloud Native Human and experienced Developer Advocate, presented a compelling framework for treating your Internal Developer Platform as an open source project rather than just a product.
The core insight: product thinking gets you started, but inner source thinking gets you adoption. When developers can contribute to and maintain platform features, the gap between “what developers need” and “what the platform provides” shrinks dramatically.
Her concrete steps included:
- Identifying contribution opportunities — which platform components benefit most from developer input
- Setting up maintainable processes — contribution guidelines, review workflows, and ownership models
- Measuring engagement — tracking adoption, contributions, and developer satisfaction
This aligns perfectly with what I see in Backstage-based developer portals. The most successful IDPs are the ones where application teams feel ownership, not just consumption. Lian’s framework gives platform teams a roadmap to get there.
Talk 3: Escaping the Data Center — Migration Wins and Woes
Dejan Mladenovski, Principal Software Engineer at G+D Netcetera, gave the most honest talk of the evening. Three questions framed the whole presentation:
- Why did we migrate to cloud?
- Was it a good idea to migrate?
- Did I at some point want to quit and move to a farm?
The answer to the third question got the biggest laugh of the night — and anyone who has led a major cloud migration knows exactly why. The reality of moving enterprise workloads to the cloud is messier than any vendor presentation suggests.
For teams considering similar moves, the lessons around cloud infrastructure strategy and understanding the true cost of migration (not just the compute bill, but the organizational change) were invaluable.
The community is the point
What I appreciate most about Platform Engineering Amsterdam is the quality of conversations that happen between and after the talks. The meetup has grown into one of the strongest PE communities in Europe, with 4.8 stars across 147 reviews — and it shows in the caliber of attendees.
The “Human Intelligence” theme was more than a catchy title. In a field obsessed with automation, the reminder that platforms are built by people, for people, was exactly right. The best platforms encode human judgment into reusable patterns — they do not replace it.
Upcoming: Platform Engineering Executive Roundtable at KubeCon
If you are heading to KubeCon Europe 2026 in Amsterdam, the Platform Engineering Amsterdam group is hosting an Executive Roundtable on March 24 at NHOW Amsterdam RAI. Worth attending if you are a CTO/CIO looking to connect with peers on platform strategy.
Building a platform engineering practice? Let us talk about developer portals, automation strategy, and making your IDP a product developers actually want to use.
