DevPulse #6 - Frontier Experience

On September 3th, DevPulse Zwolle takes place! DevPulse Zwolle unites developers and entrepreneurs in the regional tech scene, fostering collaboration, knowledge sharing, and insights from experts driving the future of technology!

• Rio Kierkels Head of Infrastructure Engineering at Tribe AI
• Susanne Pieterse Java Engineer specializing in GenAI & AI-Driven Systems | iSAQB Certified Software Architect | Microsoft MVP
• Marc Buma Industrial, IOT and blockchain application development

We're preparing a tasty and wholesome meal that you're sure to appreciate! 🍱

Ps. We don't like wasting food, so please do not unsubscribe 3 days prior to the meet-up or be a no-show.

🗓 Programma

• 18:00 ⏰ Doors open
• 18:15 👋 Welkom & Dinner!
• 19:00 What's in the box? Rio Kierkels
• 20:00 Back to the Future: Building a RAG-Powered VR Time Machine Marc Buma & Susanne Pieterse
• 21:00 🍺 Drinks & Socialising!

🚗 Parking
You can park at the De Makersfabriek parking lot; enter the old Philips terrain via the McDonald’s. The meetup is in building ZF (Het Ketelhuis). Or use the following link:
Google Maps

Back to the Future: Building a RAG-Powered VR Time Machine Marc Buma & Susanne Pieterse
Imagine stepping into the streets of Utrecht in the 1500s. Now imagine having an all-knowing guide who can answer any question about the monuments around you.
We built a browser based VR application that gives users a 360-degree historical view of Utrecht on their phone or in a VR headset, where they can ask questions about the monuments around them. The answers are generated using Retrieval Augmented Generation, combining spatial context from the 3D environment with historical texts written by archaeologists.
In this session we will show how we built this time machine using Spring Boot, Ollama, Docling, LangChain4J, React, Typescript, cloud based LLM and LangChainJS. More importantly, we share what we learned while building the RAG pipeline: extracting text from archaeological reports, chunking sources in meaningful ways, improving retrieval quality, preventing hallucinations, and engineering context-aware prompts in the frontend.
After the presentation you can visit Utrecht in 1528 and the following centuries yourself and talk to our guide!

What’s in the Box? Rio Kierkels
In this talk, we’ll explore how to run powerful AI models locally using Pi and Qwen 3.5. You’ll learn how Pi can be used to experiment with AI agents, understand how they work, and extend your own capabilities through practical, locally running tools.
The session will cover the building blocks behind agentic workflows, show what is happening “inside the box,” and demonstrate how local models can be used without relying entirely on external AI services. Whether you’re curious about agents, local LLMs, or simply want to start experimenting yourself, this talk will give you a practical introduction and plenty of ideas to build on.

✨ Sponsors
DevPulse Zwolle is hosted by CloudProud and powered by ZWINC & DDZ. ZWINC helps entrepreneurs grow their start-up from idea to business.