Tilburg Tech Tuesday XXL will take place on the Stappegoor campus from 5:30 p.m. to 10:00 p.m., with food and drinks provided. Registration is now open and completely free of charge! Please note that there are a maximum of 180 places available. Visit https://www.meetup.com/tilburg-tech-tuesdays/events/308560515/?eventOrigin=group_upcoming_events to register and find out more.

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 – 20:30 Short break
20:30 – 21:15 Closing talk
21:15 – 22:00 Closing drinks

Break-out sessions, opening and closing talk:
The break-out sessions cover a variety of themes, so there’s something interesting for everyone. Unlike earlier editions, you don’t need to sign up for a session in advance this time. 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: Tim Lorent – From Hello World to Team Lead (EN)
  From your first commit to leading a team: what happens in between? During the opening, Tim, frontend developer at The Future Group and author of the book 'From Hello World to Team Lead', shares his personal journey from bootcamps and burnout to becoming a team lead in tech. An honest talk about learning, failing, leadership without a title, and finding your place in a world full of frameworks and expectations.
• Break-out 1: Timo Bakx – Testing APIs Written in PHP using the Behat Feature Testing Tool (EN/NL)
  Testing your APIs over and over again manually with Postman or another tool? That can be very time-consuming. Unit tests only cover parts of the picture: they test components but often skip the network and framework configuration. In this session, Timo, lead backend developer at Linku, shows how you can easily test your APIs with Behat. You write your tests in plain language (Gherkin) and run them against a real webserver and database. That way, you know for sure your endpoints truly work and are secure.
• Break-out 2: Dimitri van Hees – From Design Rules to Developer Happiness (EN/NL)
  What if your API specification could do more than just describe endpoints? With OpenAPI, you can enforce design standards, reuse schemas across services, and empower developers with more powerful tools. In this session, Dimitri, product owner at developer.overheid.nl, shows how OpenAPI drives consistency and productivity in software development, sharing insights from its use in the Dutch government’s developer portal.
• Break-out 3: Joannis Orlandos – Code in the Open: Building a Career through Open Source (EN)
  Joannis is a backend developer and co-founder of Unbeatable Software. In this breakout session, he shares how open source can open doors for you. It shaped his skills, guided his career, and even laid the foundation for his own company. You’ll discover what it’s like to work on tools that improve large-scale systems. And how contributing to open source connects you with some of the smartest minds in tech.
• Break-out 4: Carlo Palinckx – From Idea to Production with AI (EN)
  Let’s cut through the AI hype together. In this session, engineering manager Carlo shows how Basic-Fit uses AI to bring ideas into production quickly. He’ll demonstrate what already works well and what’s still missing when it comes to AI-assisted development.
• Break-out 5: Geert van der Cruijsen – Letting Agents Control Your Web Browser: What Could Go Wrong? (EN/NL)
  2025 is the year of AI agents. Geert, CEO of Zure Netherlands, demonstrates how an agent can operate a web browser just like a human. He introduces the Model Context Protocol (MCP), which enables seamless connections between agents and systems. You’ll learn where agents truly add value, when not to use them, and the risks that come with handing over control.
• Break-out 6: Leon (Lonn) van Bokhorst – Push-Back AI: Fine-tuning LLMs to doubt, disagree or refuse (EN/NL)
  Tired of over-helpful AI? This session shows how to engineer friction as a feature: LLMs that surface uncertainty, ask first, and push back when needed. We’ll start with a quick A/B demo (including visible inner reasoning) and then walk the practical path: lightweight QLoRA fine-tuning on a reasoning-centric base, running via Ollama, and the creation and curation of synthetic datasets that explicitly train doubt, disagreement, and guardian behavior. You’ll leave with a repo, models, a micro-dataset, and a tiny eval script to try at home. This isn’t a prompting talk... it’s hands-on model adaptation for developers.
• Closing Talk: Joris Verhaak – The Matrix is Already Here: How Tech Reshapes our Behavior, Relationships and Sense of Reality (EN)
  Joris is a creative strategist and speaker who uses pop culture to make technology both entertaining and confronting. In his talk, he looks beyond the hype to explore what technology really does to us. What does it say about us when we find a machine more honest than each other? How is AI reshaping our attachment and relationships? And why do we willingly swallow a new blue pill every day? Don’t expect a list of tools and trends, but a mirror: a psychological exploration of our desire for control, validation, and frictionless intimacy.

Location:
Fontys 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.