Stand-up Maths

Demoscene: The Golden Years

Who Wants to be a JavaScriptær?

The Sky(net) is Falling

The Linebreakers

No judgment, just good vibes and great tunes.

The Phil Nash Karaoke Party

This workshop will teach you how to get the best out of GitHub Copilot. You'll get guidance and hands-on experience with everything from to getting up to speed with an unfamiliar codebase, using Copilot and Copilot Chat to improve your productivity, and we'll even take a look at some upcoming features.

Workshop (60 min)

Part 2/2: Getting the most out of GitHub Copilot

Tools

After this workshop, you will discover how to make your voice count in the crowd.

This talk is crucial for engineers who find their messages lost in translation amidst team discussions or cross-discipline meetings. Learn to navigate the nuances of ensuring your ideas are not only heard but fully understood and appreciated, especially when dealing with non-technical team members.

Don't let communication barriers hold back your potential.

Join us to master the art of making every conversation count, where your input is not just acknowledged but drives meaningful action and decision-making.

Part 2/2: Building Bridges, Not Walls: Effective Communication Strategies for Engineers

People

Soft Skills

Part 1/2: Getting the most out of GitHub Copilot

Let's look at how we can improve developer lives and why we should. Whether you're an engineer yourself, manage a team, or run a company, come and learn how to reduce friction, make developers happier, more productive, and more likely to stay in their current jobs.

Talk (60 min)

Developer Happiness and why it matters

Continuous Delivery

DevOps

OAuth 2.0 is more than a decade old and has been adopted far beyond the initial expectations, including highly-sensitive eHealth and financial scenarios.

This session will guide you through using OAuth 2.0 in environments where security is paramount. We will dive into the latest specifications designed to enhance OAuth 2.0's security capabilities. Topics include advanced security features like Resource Indicators, JAR, PAR, and DPoP. By the end of this session, you will possess a comprehensive understanding of the security aspects of OAuth 2.0, equipped to implement it in high-stakes settings.

Supercharging OAuth 2.0 Security

Security

Talk (120 min)

NDC Party: The Phil Nash Karaoke Party

In Part 1, we are going to explore the real-world challenges we have had delivering AI projects.
We’ll look at the use cases that are delivering the most business value (and the ones to stay away from).
We will look at tools for accelerating delivery, and talk about how to get started fast
Most importantly, we’ll share our scars and war stories earned building AI solutions.

In part 2, Andrew will walk through an architecture and code for rapidly deploying Enterprise AI solutions to avoid these issues.

Templating prompts, security and data sources to deploy new usecases in seconds.

Separating front end and back end for flexible UX or integration into existing systems.

Enhancing OpenAI with company data sources, both structured and unstructured

Integration with complex calculations, existing API’s, ML models and direct database access.

Come along for practical strategies for building AI projects, and tips to avoid the pitfalls that we've had to climb out of.

Part 2/2: Building Enterprise AI Solutions Workshop

NDC Party: The Linebreakers

Live Music

NDC Party

Residuality theory models software systems as interconnected residues - an alternative to component and process modeling that uses applied complexity science to make managing uncertainty a fundamental part of the design process.

An Introduction to Residuality Theory

Architecture

Cloud


Talk 1: Tools for assessing teams - Jakob Wolman
How do you gain a quick understanding of a team when you meet them for the first time? How do you uncover the team’s best opportunities for improvement? Drawing on decades of knowledge from working with software teams, Jakob will give you a brief introduction to how to spot the most common problems in a team and their flow of work. Concepts like lead time, work in progress, and value stream mapping are used to diagnose teams and pinpoint ways you can quickly help a team improve.

Talk 2: The Pants Paradox - Michael Dowden
From the very beginnings of western civilization, clothing has been used as an indication of a person’s social standing. This fast-paced, pun-filled talk explores this idea by focusing on the use of pants, set against the backdrop of a global pandemic, while exploring the role of technology in topics of social inequity.

Talk 3: Winning with unique data: Standing out in a world full of AI - Marion Løken
As more and more people start using generative AI (Gen-AI) to create products, finding ways to stand out becomes a challenge. Everyone seems to have access to the same tools and technology. So, what makes one product different from another? While being clever with how you ask (politely?) AI to do tasks (prompting engineering) is important, the real game changer is the unique data you have. In this talk, we'll share our story of how we made our products special by focusing on data that no one else can use the way we do. We'll talk about how we look upon scraping and build AI products that are truly different because they leverage unique data.
Come find out how having your own, unique data can make your products stand out, even when everyone is using the same AI tools.
Data is still the new oil, Gen-AI is just a new powerful drill.

Lightning Talks 5

Agile

Big Data

Database

Ethics

Machine Learning

Pre-emptive implementation of a distributed architecture has led to many engineering teams struggling with vast complexity and sadly for many, the dreaded "Distributed Monolith".

Some teams are in such a pickle that they are even reverting their distributed applications back to a monolith.

I'm all for designing and developing for future growth, but there is a better way than diving straight into distributed architecture.

Behold, the Modular Monolith.

By design, the modular monolith is "distribu-ready" and in this session, we'll cover the design principles and implementations that make the modular monolith one of the best options for future-proofing your application whilst minimising complexity.

Distribu-ready with the Modular Monolith

Microservices

.NET

While the classical models still work and have their own merits, some of them rely heavily on documentation, extensive coordination between teams or code-sharing. We use shared libraries, and over time our projects become intertwined with dependencies. In these cases, we need something to untangle those and reduce coupling. Welcome gRPC.
gRPC has been around for a while and .NET Core 3.0 welcomes it as a first-class citizen. It is contract-based, performant - with smaller response/request bodies, perfect for polyglot environments and supports different models – from client-server to bi-directional streaming out of the box.
If we sprinkle some client-side load balancing and the ability of exposing a gRPC service also as a HTTP API we might the perfect point-to-point communication mechanism.
In this session, we will deep-dive in how to use gRPC, configure client-side load balancing and gRPC transcoding to streamline communication.


.NET gRPC - deep dive

This presentation is designed for developers and security professionals who want to use AI to improve the security of their code. By incorporating AI into the software development process, teams can identify potential security issues more efficiently and reduce the risk of vulnerabilities in their applications.

In this session, we will cover key topics to help you understand and apply AI for secure code creation, including:

The Role of AI in Enhancing Software Security

How to Integrate AI into the Software Development Lifecycle (SDLC)

Using AI to Detect and Fix Code Vulnerabilities

Predicting and Preventing Security Breaches with Machine Learning

Improving Static and Dynamic Code Analysis with AI

Enforcing Secure Coding Standards with AI

Real-Time Security Monitoring in CI/CD Pipelines Using AI

Case Studies of AI in Secure Code Development

Ethical Considerations in AI-Driven Security

This session will provide you with practical insights into how AI can be used to create more secure applications. You will learn about the latest AI tools and techniques, and how to integrate them into your development process to enhance software security. Join us to explore how AI is transforming secure code creation and how you can apply these technologies to your own projects.

Using AI for Secure Code Creation: Enhancing Software Security

Join Richard Campbell as he talks about the near-term technologies that are moving this idea closer to reality. The first problem is getting up there - and improvements in rocket design have substantially lowered the cost of access to space. Then the question - what do we do up there? And how do we stay? And is that even possible in the long term? Why bother being a space-faring civilization?

On Becoming a Space-Faring Civilization

You may not be an aviation nerd, but there are so many fascinating parallels between security and the aviation industry: the layering of safety controls, making sure there are different types of security controls in place, the improvements made after bad things happened, etc.

In this talk I'll discuss some of some notable examples in both the aviation and security industry and what we can learn and take away from that as security professionals.
Note: You don't have to be an aviation geek to enjoy this talk, promise!

Nerds on a plane: what we can learn from the aviation industry

Containers have become the standardized interface between software and the platform you run. Having that interface helps increase productivity in getting new software deployed. However, a container is fairly low-level interface, where processing architectures, and operating systems are part of it.

WebAssembly is a platform neutral compilation target. With the component model, the interface between your platform and software is no longer tied to operating systems, and processing architectures, but can include a much higher-level abstraction, e.g., an HTTP request/response platform.

This is not too different from working with a platform like AWS Lambda, but because of WebAssembly components, you get to choose freely between the programming language you want to use. This is one of many use-cases WebAssembly components will give you, as a software developer, or platform provider.

An introduction to WebAssembly components

Serverless

Would you believe it if we told you that the secret lies in the ancient philosophy of Stoicism, born in the heart of Athens over two thousand years ago?

I invite you to join me on a fascinating journey from the cradle of Stoicism in ancient Greece to the buzzing industry of technology. This isn't your average talk on leadership; it's an exploration of the hidden power that fuels resilience, emotional intelligence, and strategic thinking in our tech leaders today. We're about to unlock an age-old secret and unveil the unseen force that has been driving successful tech leaders around the globe.

Ready to decode the mysterious formula for impactful leadership? Come, and be part of this enlightening journey. The secrets from ancient wisdom await you.

Athens to Algorithms: Zeno as a Tech Leader

Part 1/2: Building Bridges, Not Walls: Effective Communication Strategies for Engineers

With a critical eye, we revisit the XR timeline, dissecting pivotal moments and products. This analysis aims to dispel common misconceptions and highlight how these advancements have shaped the industry. The focus then shifts to the current state of XR, showcasing recent evolution in hardware (Meta Quest 3, Apple VisionPro, Magic Leap 2) and software (AR Foundation, MRTK3, Lightship ARDK) that demonstrate its growing impact across various industries.

This talk also simplifies the technicalities of XR development, making it accessible for developers looking to transition into this field. We discuss practical applications, emerging tools, and opportunities for innovation. Concluding, we explore XR's future impact on digital interaction, urging developers to rediscover XR with a clear-eyed view of its potential and challenges.

XR Demystified: Separating Facts from Fiction in 2024

We will start with getting your development environment set up, whether you are using Visual Studio 2022, VS Code, or Rider -- we got you covered.

Next stop is the design, we will get to play around with the original UI designs for the application within Figma and see how we can actually generate the C#/XAML for the UI of the entire app directly from Figma!

You will then learn how to properly integrate the Uno Toolkit into your app, a library of UI components and helpers, as well as our support for Material Design 3.

By the end you will have a shiny new cross-platform YouTube player. Go ahead and run it on whichever platform you choose!

Let's build a .NET YouTube player! For which platform? All of them!

Cross-Platform

Microsoft

Mobile

This session invites you to fast forward from those simple beginnings to today's gaming world, illuminated by ray-traced graphics and orchestrated soundtracks, transforming the humble blips of Pong into a grand symphony of digital artistry.

Let's revisit key moments that have forever shaped the landscape of video games, leading us to the immersive gaming experiences we enjoy today. Whether you're a veteran gamer or just a casual player, this nostalgic expedition promises to be an enlightening, entertaining, and engaging experience.

From Pong to Playstation: The Evolution of Video Games

Gaming

It all started with: "hey I'm porting Doom to C#, want to have a go at getting it to run on MAUI?".
Couple of weeks later there was something resembling Doom running on my phone, few months later and we have a fully playable game.

During this adventure I have hit a couple of limits of Microsoft's new cross-platform framework. In this session I'll explain the limits we've run into, the workarounds, and how much code we can actually share between the WPF version and the MAUI version of Doom.

This session has demons, in more than one way.

From Hell to Heaven: Porting Doom to MAUI

This talk delves into the awe-inspiring stories of artists who, coming from fine arts backgrounds, stumbled upon the magic of computers in the 1970s. We'll unravel the mysteries of mathematical algorithms that have become the still lives and croquis nudes of computer art, adding a touch of beauty and emotional resonance to the digital canvas.

Relive the rebellious 1980s, where amateur programmers ignited the demoscene movement, echoing the ethos of the street art. Explore the fusion of technology and rebellion, where code became a medium for expressing raw, unbridled creativity.

In the digital age, witness the internet transform into a global gallery, showcasing not only the final masterpieces but also the code itself as a form of art. Marvel at the unexpected instances where a computer printout of a well-known algorithm commands thousands at art auctions, blurring the lines between traditional and digital markets.

We'll unravel the artistic potential of mathematical algorithms, exploring how they breathe life into digital works. Moreover, we'll showcase instances where the code itself is the masterpiece, challenging conventional perceptions of art.

Be prepared for a visually engaging experience supported by stunning imagery and beautiful code, aiming to inspire you to dive into the rich world of computerized art. Gain insights into the frameworks and tools that empower you to channel your creativity through code. Join us in embracing the fusion of technology and imagination, where the possibilities for artistic expression are as limitless as lines of code on a screen.

Maybe you'll even have an answer to the everlasting question of "What is art?".

The History of Computer Art

GenAI

But with using a NuGet Package that is developed by others, we also put a lot of trust in it, which might result in bigger security problems later. Of course, it's always a good idea to get updates of libraries in case of a bug fix related to a functional and/or security issue found. But will that be enough? What about packages that have malicious code inside? Even related to your own supply-chain security, any problem in the package its supply-chain implicitly means your supply-chain is compromised as well!
Would it not be nice if there is a better way to review NuGet packages for security? An easier way to perform an assessment based on certain aspects of the package that will tell you more about the package its software security. With the introduction of Scorecard project the Open Source Security Foundation (OpenSSF) exactly tries to achieve that. You could consider a Scorecard being the equivalent of a nutrition labels put on food you buy in a supermarket. It will allow you to see what's inside and determine if you want to eat it or not.
In this session we start out with different area's covered by of OpenSSF Scorecard, like how well it's maintained, does the build have dangerous workflows, and does the project use other security tools to check for problems? We're also going to identify additional area's for NuGet packages in which we could add additional information related to reproducibility, insights on what .NET APIs are used, and security review of the codebase. All combined will give us the ability to assess a NuGet package its security posture more easily and improve our own application security.

Reviewing NuGet Packages security easily using OpenSSF Scorecard

With the increasing importance that the CI/CD pipeline has, the demands placed on it rise proportionally.

As with a lot of things in life, a great pipeline operates seamlessly in the background, wile a poorly designed one becomes a constant source of irritation.

In this talk I will bring up a few antipatterns that I have encountered in the wild, explain why I consider them antipatterns and what you should do instead.

Let's make sure that our pipelines never frustrate us again!

CI/CD Patterns and Antipatterns - Things your Pipeline Should (Not) Do

In this talk, you will learn about the problems of microservices development that has arisen over the past decade, such as distributed monoliths and black boxes, and discuss how developers can avoid them. Then we will dive into the concrete value-adds of .NET Aspire and how it incorporates those best practices for microservices development. Finally, I will demo how to use each of its three key features to build modular, observable, and resilient applications that make full use of their distributed architectures.

Build Microservices At Your Own Pace with .NET Aspire 

So would it shock you to know how many new features have come to CSS in recent years? Now you can style an element based on how big it’s parent is, or based on what child elements you have, or change the page layout depending on if someone’s native language reads left-to-right, right-to-left or top-to-bottom!

Gone are the days we have to say “Sorry, CSS can’t do that” or reach for 52 different libraries to have something according to the design*. So join me as we tour the new world of CSS and play with the shiny new specs.

**Disclaimer: you’ll still need a library to style a select field, sorry. But pretty much everything else is possible now!

What's new with CSS?

In this talk, I will describe at length the current process, share some of the real-world challenges we’ve encountered from publishing open source packages, opportunities for improvement, and tradeoffs.

This talk is not to brag about how smooth and amazing our release process is. It is a slightly awkward and lumbering 80% solution that includes a few manual steps is perfect for us. Hopefully some open-source teams can learn from our experience.

Open-source releases: Everything we've learnt in 4 years

Languages

In this talk, you will learn how React Server Components work, how to use them in your web apps, and what benefits they offer over traditional approaches. You will also see some real-world examples of React Server Components in action and get some tips and best practices for adopting them in your projects.

React Server Components: A New Way to Build Fast and Interactive Web Apps

JavaScript

In this session I'll highlight some of the most impressive demos, dive into the art of live demo creation, and explore various topics including:

Classic effects: Plasma, Moiré, Fire, and more

The creative process behind these digital art pieces

I got started back in the 90s, and I have made a couple of winning demos in my later years. Come join me on a fun and exiting hour of celebrating creative programming and the beauty of algorithms. The scene is not dead, and we are hiring... 

So you wanna be a demoscener

Most of us will know the names of the most commonly used asymmetric encryption algorithms, RSA and ECDSA. But how many of us know how they actually work? What are their drawbacks and limitations, and where are they vulnerable?

Join me for a mathematical deep dive into one of the most fundamental underpinnings of our security infrastructure, journeying from the inception of these algorithms and their algebraic foundations to their modern day usage. We'll talk about why ECDSA has superseded RSA, why it's still not good enough in a post-quantum world, and what's next for asymmetric encryption.

Asymmetric Encryption: A Deep Dive

He used to go to the bar with his friends, got some financial resources from his grandpa. Had loads of fun! Today, the world is only accessible via a digital interface. Unfortunately John is not able to use a computer with the software currently build, not able to use a smartphone with apps either. With a bitter feeling John's parents decide to put him in a home for people with disabilities. John is not able to participate in the digital world. He is not able to participate in the world at all.

Lisa is a teenager on the autism spectrum. She is not the smartest of the class but she's not dumb either. She need some more time to execute the thoughts in her head. She has a brother without autism or other disabilities. Unfortunately Lisa's parents focus all the way on her brother. In school, due to time restrictions teachers only invest the bare minimum in Lisa. It seems more interesting to invest in the other students. Lisa has more and more hassle to keep up with the rest of the class. When she is 18 she is not able to find a job. She is not able to participate in the world.

Kim is 56 and has an accident with a severe brain injury. She has a lot of trouble to communicate and to understand what is happening around her. She is married with Dave, he is 66 and has a light form of dementia. The couple has a lot of difficulties navigating and living in the world where everything in real life has mandatory digital twin to access. They are not able to participate in the world.

Today I'll teach you about those three persona's. 3 Persona's we unfortunately don't see enough in our day-to-day jobs and environment. I tell you, it's not because you don't see someone, they are not there! I have more than 10 years experience building digital interface for people with those kind of disabilities. It's possible to build the digital world in a way that everyone can participate. I'll show you how!


Coding a Disability Inclusive World: 3 Stories

In this session, you'll learn all about that and more with tips taken from building event driven systems in the real world. Starting from why, understanding what and plenty of practical things you can take away and use in your own applications. From the simple, through to some advanced integration patterns that this architecture style unlocks. To improve the resilience, extensibility and scalability of your systems.

So You Want to Build An Event Driven System?

The MVVM Community Toolkit allows includes Source Generators that write all of the boilerplate MVVM code for you. The .NET MAUI Community Toolkit includes Converters, Behaviors, Custom Views like DrawingView + Popup + MediaElement; all of the essentials you need for your mobile apps. And the .NET MAUI Markup toolkit allows you to quickly + easily write your .NET MAUI UIs in C# (no XAML!).

As the creator of the .NET MAUI Community Toolkit, I am a bit biased, but I promise that you will use these libraries in all of your .NET MAUI apps going forward if you aren't already!

Join me in this session as we dive deep in the Community Toolkits to learn best practices and shine a spotlight on some of its best features!

The .NET MAUI Community Toolkits: Three (3) Essential Libraries for Every .NET MAUI Developer

Concurrency

In this session we will explore how things can go wrong, very wrong. We will look at LLMs from responsible AI perspectives, and from security perspectives, and see what happens if they are exploited or used improperly. And what you can do to evaluate or combat things like hallucination and undesired effects.

LLMs gone wild

In today's age of frequent cyberattacks, relying solely on traditional identity verification methods isn't sufficient. Organizations collect extensive personal data from users, often leaving users with little control over who can access their information. This session aims to demystify Verifiable Credentials by explaining their concepts, showcasing use cases, and offering a practical overview of how they can be implemented.

Why Verifiable Credentials and Decentralized Identity?

This session is meant to encourage participants to consider their own biases (and the impact they may have on machine learning models), and to provide the tools needed to create more fair and just systems. We will begin with an interactive and human-focused discourse about bias: what it is, the forms it appears in, and how it permeates our society. Then we'll explore different types of bias within the context of machine learning using real-world stories and examples. Together we will examine the consequences of bias left unattended, including the potential for discrimination and unfair decision-making.

We will delve into the latest research and several approaches to mitigating bias, including methods in pre-processing, in-processing, and post-processing. We will also work through one example together to give participants a hands-on understanding of how to apply these techniques in practice. By understanding bias and taking the steps necessary to quell its effects, we can ensure that machine learning is used responsibly and ethically in the future, resulting in a world with more trustworthy technology.

The Elephant in your Dataset: Addressing Bias in Machine Learning

Prompt design, often referred to as Prompt Engineering, is a burgeoning field that demands creativity and meticulous attention to detail. It involves carefully selecting the right words, symbols, patterns, and formats to guide the LLMs in generating high-quality and relevant texts for the tasks at hand.

We will write live prompts - taking input from the audience, and improving it on the fly!

In Prompts We Trust

Don't despair. We can leverage centuries-old practices used by scientists. Observation, hypothesis, experiment - rinse and repeat. This method worked for me in real cases. I'll tell about a non-deterministic test, a nasty production issue, and malfunctioning CI infrastructure.

This talk will show you how to debug without frustration. You'll see practices hardening you for a fight against complex bugs. Finally, you'll know how to scale debugging to the entire team.

Debug Like a Scientist!

In this session, Steve will share his latest work at Elastic, generating the majority of the .NET client for Elasticsearch from a simple specification. Steve will introduce and demonstrate how to get started with leveraging the Roslyn APIs. He will show you how the Elastic .NET code generator transforms a JSON spec into a C# syntax tree and outputs thousands of classes in only a few seconds.

You'll leave this session with an understanding of the Roslyn APIs and how to utilise them in your work. You'll understand core concepts such as syntax trees, the SyntaxFactory and tools to help you write code with code.

Writing Code with Code: Getting Started with the Roslyn APIs

However, even basic constructs of programming languages are broken. Strings, collections, async, private members, equality checks and many more - all these things are ill-designed and should be reworked. Do you know why and how?

In this talk, we're going to revisit the basics of programming languages. We'll see why our interfaces are wrong, why async shouldn't use coroutines, why we shouldn't encapsulate with private members, or why we should replace strings with something better. We'll see the problems and then consider solutions that lead to better language design and better code quality.

Basics Designs and How We Got Them Wrong

Design

And yet, CSS continues to be an ever-evolving, eternally fascinating and downright amazing language for doing just that.

In this high-energy talk, Lemon’s going to take you on a whirlwind tour of twelve different design challenges and the methods for turning that into resilient, responsive, performant code using some CSS (and Sass) methodologies to assure nothing is more complicated than it needs to be. You’ll leave with some concepts, code snippets and examples you can start playing with right away.

Solving Layout Challenges With Pure Sass

How building a portable escape room made me a better developer

However, as a developer, you still have important responsibilities, such as changing indexing policies, configuring connections, estimating workloads, and selecting the right throughput options. All of these tasks have a direct impact on the performance and cost of your application.
To keep your application running smoothly and fast, we'll explore the .NET/SDK settings, connection types, and indexing types. We'll also focus on selecting the right throughput options, using Query Execution Metrics and server-side programming.
Join me as we explore how to optimize your Azure Cosmos DB solutions for the best performance.


Performance tuning for Azure Cosmos DB

With a wave of powerful new features, Java has shed its verbose reputation and emerged as a streamlined, expressive force in modern development.

In this talk, we'll dive into the Java renaissance. Explore records, sealed classes, pattern matching, and string templates – the tools that are making Java code more concise and elegant than ever before. We'll also take a peek at virtual threads and structured concurrency, features that streamline multithreading for the modern era.

Ready for a fresh look at an old favorite? Discover the Java that will surprise you and transform the way you code.

Breaking Java Stereotypes: It's Not Your Dad's Language Anymore

Java

Working with a weaver, though, is tedious, error prone and the resulting code is a black box. These are some of the reasons that convinced us to migrate to Source Generators, a feature introduced in .NET 5 that allows to produce code on the fly during compilation.
This talk will go through the reasons why IL Weaving was used in the first place, our long journey switching to Source Generators and why they do not yet satisfy all our needs.


From IL Weaving to Source Generators, the Realm story

But when creating a modern application, in addition to the Frontend, you also need a Backend to store data and media, send notifications and etc. Additionally, you need to grow your user base and improve your app experience. Integration with Firebase gives the opportunity to develop these features easily.
This session is focused on the integration of Firebase products like Firebase Cloud Firestore, Authentication, Analytics, Remote Config, and Firebase Cloud Messaging with your Flutter apps.
How to build a beautiful app that runs natively on iOS, Android and Web, all from a single codebase. Besides, how to marry Flutter's latest multi-platform reactive UI elements and other capabilities with powerful Firebase SDK functionality.
Together with the audience, we will take a look at the development of an application that allows you to mark your favorite speakers and show their ratings.

Flutter + Firebase. Explosive combination

But what is it about LLMs, compared to other, similarly complex algorithms, that have so captured our imagination? And why is it that we are so ready to believe that these models have started to show signs of human behavior?

In this talk, we’ll delve into some of the more extraordinary claims that have been made about LLMs in the past few years, including that these models are showing signs of sentience or intelligence. We’ll discuss why humans have a tendency to see such traits in these models, due to the way they mirror back a “lossy compression” of our humanity. And we’ll talk about how dispelling myths about LLMs being anything more than language models can help us apply them to their best current uses.

Mirror, mirror: LLMs and the illusion of humanity

In this session, we will explore Microsoft's new Radius project, an open-source Cloud-native application platform designed to empower developers and platform engineers to collaborate on a common definition of an application and an environment. Leveraging them, teams can easily understand, deliver and manage applications that follow corporate best practices for operations and security by default. We will delve into the key features, benefits, and potential use cases of Radius, and discuss how it addresses the challenges of building and managing Cloud-native applications across multiple environments

The Future of Cloud-Native Application Development with Radius

This talk will use working code examples in TypeScript to show ways to represent time and handle time zones, uses of the JavaScript Date object and Luxon date time library. We’ll also introduce Temporal, the upcoming ECMAScript standard.

The examples will be based upon my experience building applications in parking, scheduling, and logistics with complex requirements for date and time representation, and I look forward to sharing some of the lessons I’ve learned along the way.

It’s About Time! Practical examples of time zones in TypeScript

In this talk I look at examples of fun in programming and examine to what extend this benefits work. Is it just about making people happier, or can we discover more things by creating environments where play is part of work? Along the way, we’ll also look at some examples of corporate “play” and how they can often not deliver - including why 20% time might not be what you think it is.

Is Fun Fundamental?

Rust-ifying Your C# Codebase: A Tale of Adventure and Transformation

Discover how to bring simplicity back to your web applications without sacrificing power or scalability. 

We'll navigate through practical examples demonstrating how HTMX can make your Razor Pages more interactive with minimal JavaScript. Learn to enhance user experiences with easy-to-implement features like long polling, modals, and server-side validation that feel like the client side without a full page refresh. 

Whether you're a seasoned developer or new to the ASP.NET ecosystem, this talk will equip you with the knowledge to create more responsive and efficient web applications. Get ready to transform your approach to web development by leveraging the best of both worlds: the robustness of ASP.NET Core and the simplicity of HTMX.

Part 1/2: Enhancing ASP.NET Core Razor Pages with HTMX: A Simplicity-First Approach

Key takeaway:
•	Unveiling Gemma: Understand the core functionalities and architectures of these lightweight, state-of-the-art models
•	Benefits and Use Cases: Discover the advantages of using Gemma, including its open-source nature, versatility across tasks, and efficiency
•	Implementation in Front-End Projects: explore practical methods for integrating Gemma into your front-end applications, unlocking new possibilities for user interaction and functionality
•	Gemma vs. Gemini: shed light on the connection between Gemma and its predecessor, the powerful Gemini model, and explore the distinct characteristics of each model, including size, performance, and optimal use cases.

Join this session to:
•	Gain a comprehensive understanding of Gemma open models
•	Discover how to leverage Gemma's potential in your front-end projects
•	Make informed decisions about choosing between Gemma and Gemini for your specific needs
•	This talk is ideal for front-end enthusiasts eager to explore the cutting edge of AI and its applications in user-facing experiences

Building amazing Front-End Project with Gemma: A State-of-the-Art Open Model

However, today, software engineers often find themselves under scrutiny for their roles in creating data-gathering apps, facial recognition software in CCTV systems, and the constant tracking of citizens through GPS, among other issues.

From being heroes to becoming modern-day Dr. Frankensteins, tech creators face an unenviable dilemma: to embrace malevolence or strive for heroism.

During this talk, we will delve deep into the complex relationship between technology and ethics, and explore how developers navigate the fine line between progress and principles.

This is our villain’s origin story, told with a touch of dark humor.


Agenda

19:30 - 20:30 (UTC+02)

20:30 - 20:50 (UTC+02)

21:00 - 22:00 (UTC+02)