Tilburg Tech Tuesday XXL

Block Tuesday, October 13 in your calendar, because it’s time for the fourth Tilburg Tech Tuesday XXL!

Freshheads and Fontys ICT Tilburg are hosting another inspiring XXL edition of the Tilburg Tech Tuesdays, where leading developers share the latest and the greatest from the field. Expect top speakers. Food and drinks. And lots of fellow developers. What more could you want? ;-) Trust us: this is an event you don’t want to miss. Secure one of the 180 spots by clicking Attend in the bottom right corner.

Program:
17:30 – 18:30 Walk-in with drinks and a food truck
18:30 – 19:00 Opening
19:00 – 20:15 Break-out sessions
20:15 – 22:00 Closing drinks

During the walk-in and closing drinks, Basil will take you back to the IT and gaming culture of the early 2000s. Play classics such as Quake 3 and Unreal Tournament on Windows XP PCs, experience the atmosphere of an old-school LAN party, and take on hands-on hardware challenges such as assembling a PC.

Break-out sessions, opening and closing talk:
The break-out sessions cover a variety of themes, so there’s something interesting for everyone. You don’t need to sign up for a session in advance. Simply choose your break-out upon arrival at the event. Seats are limited: first come, first served. So make sure you’re on time to attend your favorite session!

• Opening: Leon Schrijvers – Trustworthy Evaluation of LLM Systems (EN)
  How do you know whether an LLM system is truly performing well? Ad-hoc tests may reveal that something is going wrong, but they often fail to explain why or how the system can be improved systematically. Leon shows how to analyze large volumes of AI-generated output, identify recurring failure patterns, and translate them into measurable quality criteria. He also explores how LLMs can be used as evaluators and how to assess whether their judgments are reliable, consistent, and aligned with human experts. A research-driven yet practical opening session on evaluating generative AI applications in a more transparent and trustworthy way.
• Break-out 1: Danny van der Sluijs – Open Source Software from a maintainers perspective (EN/NL)
  Using open source software is easy, but what does it take to maintain a successful project? Danny takes you behind the scenes of life as an open-source maintainer. He discusses common challenges, collaboration with users and contributors, and the tools GitHub provides. You will learn how to structure repositories so others can contribute easily, how to create clear processes for issues and pull requests, and how to organize essentials such as documentation and sponsorship.
• Break-out 2: Matthias Noback – DDD and Your ORM (EN/NL)
  You want to clean up a complex data model using Domain-Driven Design and create clear boundaries between different parts of your domain. But your ORM mainly thinks in terms of entities and relationships, with little regard for Bounded Contexts. Matthias shows the practical problems that arise when DDD principles clash with the way frameworks and ORMs handle your data model. You will explore key DDD concepts, discover where boundaries can unintentionally become blurred, and learn practical solutions for keeping your domain model manageable and independent.
• Break-out 3: Ruben Steins – The Mythical Junior IT Professional (EN/NL)
  The junior IT professional you may or may not hire is not the problem — but neither is the education that prepared them. As AI takes over more and more routine work, both industry and higher education are grappling with the same question: what skills will an ICT professional actually need in 2030? Ruben presents data from the field, takes a critical look at what education is not yet delivering, and explores where the responsibility lies.
• Break-out 4: Brent Roose – Things I wish I knew (EN/NL)
  Brent fell in love with programming at the age of twelve, but throughout his career he discovered how many lessons cannot be learned from documentation or tutorials. Now that the rise of AI is once again transforming the profession, he looks back at the things he wishes he had known fifteen years ago. Which insights can help you deal with uncertainty, change, and new technologies? Drawing on more than seventeen years of experience as a programmer, author, and developer advocate, Brent shares personal lessons that offer guidance in a new era of software development.]
• Break-out 5: Peter Eijgermans – Where Real-Time Architectures Break: The Browser (EN/NL)
  Real-time systems often work perfectly up to Kafka and the backend, but new challenges arise in the browser. Using Spoorviewer as an example, Peter shows how Dutch Railways provides insight into live train movements and infrastructure status. He walks you through the architecture and explains how to combine microfrontends with real-time data without creating socket chaos, share WebSockets across frontends, and keep communication secure without storing tokens in the browser. A practical deep dive into scalable and secure real-time architectures.

Location:
Fontys ICT Tilburg, Professor Goossenslaan 1, Building P8, 5022 DM Tilburg

Costs:
Participation is completely free of charge. Can’t make it? Please deregister in time, so your spot becomes available for someone else and we can prevent food waste.

📸 Photos and videos will be taken during the event.

Professor Goossenslaan 1 · Tilburg, NB

Fontys ICT is located in building P8. The car park is right outside the entrance. There is plenty of space for cars and bicycles. Fontys is also easily accessible by public transport. From Tilburg Central Station, take bus 1 (towards Stappegoor) or bus 601 (towards ETZ Elisabeth).

Sign up via meetup