Careers and Leadership at tech events
16 write-ups · 15 events · 2024–2026
This page collects talks on careers, leadership and engineering culture, including DevOpsDays, CTO and CIO gatherings and my own year-in-review posts. The recurring themes are how leaders approach agents and AI, how engineers grow, and what keeps the community connected across events. These notes are for engineers and leads thinking about their own next step.
2026
1 Oct 2026 · CTO Network breakfast: State of Agents 2026 · Amsterdam
CTO Network State of Agents 2026 at Databricks AmsterdamA Builders CTO Network breakfast at Databricks Amsterdam: four people who ship agents, five trend slides and a closing look at the software factory.
8 Sept 2026 · How to Roll Out OpenTelemetry at Scale (Grafana Labs) · Amsterdam
Why I Am Dusty: Burning Man, Art Installations, and ObservabilityTed Young's 'Why I am dusty' talk: linking a 30-foot Burning Man art tower to building observable software systems.
26 Aug 2026 · Go Amsterdam meetup · Amsterdam
Go Meetup Amsterdam: How to Stay Passionate in Tech in the Age of AINotes from Ainsley Clark's Go Amsterdam talk on staying passionate in tech during the AI age, covering career, craft, community, and motivation.
26 Aug 2026 · Go Amsterdam meetup · Amsterdam
Go Meetup Amsterdam at JetBrains: Event RecapA recap of the Go Amsterdam meetup at JetBrains, with talks on the select statement, memory debugging, and staying passionate in tech during the AI age.
29 Jul 2026 · KubeCon + CloudNativeCon Japan 2026 · Yokohama
Post KubeCon Japan 2026: Reflections on AI, Cloud Native, and the Developer JourneyStraight from KubeCon Japan 2026: the shift from CPUs to GPUs, exploding AI models, and the new accelerator landscape — what it means for developers.
25 Jun 2026 · RoachFest London 2026 · London
Major Tim Peake at RoachFest London: What Space Missions Teach EngineersMajor Tim Peake's RoachFest London keynote on launch day nerves, spacewalk training, psychological safety, and a decision framework for incident response.
30 Apr 2026 · Amsterdam Java User Group evening (Project Valhalla) · Amsterdam
Amsterdam JUG: Project Valhalla and Java's Pain PointsAmsterdam JUG, 30 April 2026: a talk on Project Valhalla's JEPs, Java's checked-exception pain in streams, and a career talk on reputation.
23 Apr 2026 · A Real Founder Story: Manage your Ego, before it Manages your Company · Amsterdam
Zeal Partners Founder Story: Manage Your EgoNotes from a founder-story evening in Amsterdam with Anthony Meijer zu Schlochtern of ZEAL Partners: the Brains, Power and Social model of founder ego.
1 Apr 2026 · European Playbook: Scaling European Tech Leaders (VivaTech Tour Amsterdam) · Amsterdam
European Playbook: Scaling Tech Leaders at AIInsights from the European Playbook event at AI House Amsterdam. Miro's Andrey Khusid, Prosus strategy, Qonto growth, and Upway expansion — why Europe.
17 Feb 2026 · SRE NL: What Your Dashboards and Your Brain Won't Tell You · Amsterdam
SRE NL at Elastic: OpenTelemetry and Your Brain's BiasesSRE NL's 'What Your Dashboards and Your Brain Won't Tell You' at Elastic Amsterdam: an OpenTelemetry demo, then the cognitive biases behind bad incidents.
13 Jan 2026 · Amsterdam tech meetups, January 2026 (roundup) · Amsterdam
Amsterdam Tech Meetups, January 2026: A RoundupFive January 2026 evenings: a YC founder panel at Miro, Polarsteps product principles, BitBash Jurassic Edition, a Xebia book launch and a pitch night.
2025
19 Nov 2025 · HOPE 2025 (HCS Open Platform Experience) and Agents in Production (MLOps x Prosus) · Amsterdam
Agents in Production at AI House and HOPE 2025One day in Amsterdam: a platform maturity model at HCS company's HOPE 2025, then Just Eat Takeaway's CTO on cultural lag at Agents in Production, AI House.
30 Oct 2025 · SRE NL meetup (Learning from Incidents) · Amsterdam
SRE NL Amsterdam 2025: Learning from IncidentsSRE NL at Datadog Amsterdam, October 2025: Busra Koken on why people, not systems, learn from incidents, then SRE culture and why engineers skip postmortems.
10 Oct 2025 · FikaWorks Day 2025 · Amsterdam
FikaWorks Day 2025: Writing Technical Books That Sell...Luca Berton shares his journey from engineer to six-time published author at FikaWorks Day 2025—learn how to write, pitch, and scale your impact through.
18 Jun 2025 · DevOpsDays Amsterdam 2025 · Amsterdam
DevOpsDays Amsterdam 2025: OpenTelemetry and OpenSSFDevOpsDays Amsterdam 2025 in photos: an OpenTelemetry adoption story, OpenSSF supply chain practices, trust-driven teams, and Identity Week Europe.
2024
21 May 2024 · CIO & CISO Inspired Summit
CIO & CISO Inspired Summit 2024: GenAI Risk and LeadershipNotes from the CIO & CISO Inspired Summit, 21 May 2024: a fast-moving GenAI roadmap, the ADKAR model and GenAI security slides.