Amsterdam JUG Meetup at Picnic

Join in with the latest Amsterdam JUG Meetup at Picnic HQ, Van Marwijk Kooystraat 15, 1114 AG Amsterdam.

Agenda

• 17:30 – Doors Open (and food!)
• 18:00 – 18:45 – "Keynote: How Software-defined Robotics is Rewriting the Physical World" by Daniel Gebler, Picnic CTO
• 18:45 – 19:00 Small Break
• 19:00 – 19:45 - "Part 1: The Gray Factory" by Victor Rentea
• 19:45 – 20:00 Small Break
• 20:00 – 20:45 - "Part 2: Career Reconversion to Agentic Engineer" by Victor Rentea
• 21:00 The End

Abstracts

"Keynote: How Software-defined Robotics is Rewriting the Physical World" by Daniel Gebler, Picnic CTO

Robotics is not primarily a hardware challenge. The hard part is building software that turns imperfect data into reliable decisions and coordinates thousands of moving parts in the physical world. Picnic is building a software-defined grocery operation spanning demand forecasting, inventory, automated fulfilment, warehouse robotics, routing and delivery.

Java/Spring microservices, event-driven workflows, optimisation engines and machine-learning models work together as a distributed cyber-physical system - handling asynchronous events, partial failures, changing state and hard real-world deadlines.

In this keynote, Daniel Gebler, CTO of Picnic, explores how to decompose physical operations into reliable services, coordinate them through events and state, combine probabilistic AI with deterministic rules and guardrails, and use observability, simulation and feedback loops to evolve complex systems safely.

As AI begins to write code, operate tools and make decisions, engineers will increasingly design the boundaries, evaluations, failure handling and ownership models that make these systems trustworthy. A practical deep dive into Java microservices, AI, robotics and the architecture required to make software move the physical world.

"Part 1: The Gray Factory" by Victor Rentea

The most agentified engineering teams of my clients are all converging towards the same workflow, aiming to optimize the code review step while preventing human cognitive debt and skill erosion.

This talk summarizes their practices, teaching actionable steps and milestones to gradually improve the quality of AI-generated code up to a point in which you can safely start decreasing the code review ‘intensity’.

Dark Factories are not built ground up - instead, lights are responsibly dimmed, then turned off one by one, area by area, after observing impeccable code produced consistently.

"Part 2: Career Reconversion to Agentic Engineer" by Victor Rentea

• Identity crisis - who are we?
• Mandatory mindset changes
• What makes a good Agentic Engineer?
• Job Interviews - what matters?
• Skill Erosion
• Team structures
• Cognitive Debt (former Tech Debt)
• Agentic Worklife Calisthenics
• Fastest Reconversion Path
• Helping the Skeptics

Bios

• Daniel Gebler builds the systems that power modern retail and grocery logistics at Picnic. As CTO, he leads the engineering teams responsible for scaling the company’s infrastructure and shaping the technical strategy behind online shopping. His recent work focuses heavily on the practical applications of artificial intelligence in retail.
• Victor Rentea is a Java Champion with extensive experience in training mid-senior developer groups (5000+ developers of 100+ companies). During these intense workshops, Victor gets to debate with very bright engineers about the challenges faced by their projects. Discover how Victor can help you at https://victorrentea.ro: training catalog, consultancy, and YouTube channel.