AmsterdamPHP Monthly Meeting July 2026

We hope you’ve survived the heatwave, enjoyed the sunshine, made it through the thunderstorms, and most importantly remembered to drink enough water! ☀️⛈️

This month we’re excited to be welcomed by TicketSwap . After a little break, it’s great to have them back as an AmsterdamPHP sponsor. While TicketSwap connects people through live events every day, this month they’re also helping bring the AmsterdamPHP community together.

Join us for an evening of great talks, cold drinks, and catching up with the local PHP community. Whether you’re here for the technical deep dives or the networking, it’s going to be a fantastic night.

Program

• 19:00 Doors open
• 19:30 Opening
• 19:35 Venue introduction
• 19:40 Main talk: Sophie Fischer – How We Trained Sarah!
• 20:30 Raffles & announcements
• 20:45 Food & socializing

📍 Location
TicketSwap
Rokin 75
1012 KL Amsterdam

How We Trained Sarah!

As a developer, my focus is on solving technical problems. Customer communication is a different skill, and not one that comes naturally to me.

When we introduced an AI support agent named Sarah, it seemed like we had found the perfect solution. She could take technical documentation and turn it into clear, friendly responses for customers.

Problem solved—or so we thought.

After the first successes, we discovered that getting useful and reliable answers from an AI chatbot has its own requirements. We had to troubleshoot unexpected behaviour, refine instructions, and learn how to debug a system that doesn’t always explain why it behaves the way it does. Developing with AI is completely different from operating AI reliably in a production environment. In many ways, developing with AI is the easier part.

It got me thinking. Sarah wasn’t driven by technical possibilities. She was driven by customer needs and employee frustrations. What if we, as developers, started with the needs of our communities instead of the possibilities of the technology?

In this talk, I’ll start with our experience building Sarah and the challenges of running AI in production. Then I’ll focus on the requests we see in our communities and how AI could help solve them. I hope this sparks a discussion, because I suspect that we, as developers, have more influence on society than we realize.