Lightning Talks summary: from building AI agents to managing Docker containers in Minecraft
For the second edition of our 2025 lightning talks, we gathered once again at our office. Despite the Dutch Railways (NS) going on strike, our dedicated colleagues from Nijmegen still managed to join us, along with the usual familiar faces. The evening was filled with a diverse mix of topics, from deep technical demos to a humorous rant about "sporten". Here's a recap of the presentations.
Inju: Arcade Adventure, Adding Playwright
Inju demonstrated how he uses Playwright for end-to-end testing on his hobby project, an online party game. He highlighted the power of the record feature, which automatically generates a test script simply by clicking through the application. This allows him to test his project without relying on user feedback.
Geert-Jan: Docker client in Minecraft
Geert-Jan presented 'Dockercraft', a ten-year-old project he brought back to life. This project visualizes Docker containers as buildings in a Minecraft world. He showed live how starting, stopping, and removing a container directly resulted in structures being built or demolished in the game. A creative and visual way to manage a Docker environment. Please do not use this in production.
Esper: Developing Agents with Pydantic AI and Logfire
Esper showed how to build and debug AI agents using Pydantic AI combined with Pydantic Logfire for monitoring the LLM query. The key takeaways were:
- Tools: Give a Large Language Model (LLM) access to tools (like a function to get the current date) so it can provide correct, factual answers.
- Structured Output: Force the model to return data in a fixed format (JSON), for example, by extracting names and ages from a text.
- Reasoning: Include a reasoning field in the structured output, to make the model explain how it arrived at an answer. This increases transparency and trust. He demonstrated this by having an agent search the Four Digits website for employees in real-time.
This lightning talk was based on Esper's experience at PyCon. If you're interested in more AI-related content, you can read his blog: My takeaways regarding AI from PyCon Italy in Bologna 2025.
The demo project is available on Github.
Ruben: Why I use (Neo)vim
Ruben explained why he prefers the (Neo)vim editor. The main reasons are its speed, the ability to stay within the terminal, and the "motions" (keyboard commands for navigation and actions) that make programming feel like a game. Although configuration can be a challenge, he recommended everyone try Vim motions, which are available as plugins in almost any IDE.
Laurens: Next.js metadata and API routes
Laurens took us into the world of metadata in Next.js. He showed how the framework simplifies managing SEO tags, favicons, sitemaps, and robots.txt. A standout feature was the ability to dynamically generate social media images (Open Graph images) via an API route. Instead of a static image, the code returns an image that is built on the fly.
Siemen: The Revolution of Server Hosting (actually about The Culture Factor)
With a provocative title, Siemen drew attention to Geert Hofstede's cultural dimensions theory. He explained that when preparing for meetings with international clients, it is valuable to compare cultural backgrounds, for instance, by using tools like the culturefactor.com country comparison tool. This provides insight into potential differences in communication and values, which helps to build a better connection with the client
Kees: "Sporten" a personal annoyance
Kees delivered a humorous and sharp presentation about his allergy to the Dutch verb "sporten" (which roughly translates to "to do sports" or "to work out"). His argument: people with a passion for a specific sport (like running or football) will say exactly what they are going to do. The generic verb "sporten," he claims, is mainly used by people who go to the gym without passion, simply out of obligation. These are, in his words, the people with a Basic Fit backpack.
Dennis: Update on Lightning Talks R33
Dennis gave a brief update on the successful lightning talks at R33, a co-working space with a focus on design. Their concept is growing and has led to collaborations with the Innovate Festival and Theater aan de Rijn, allowing them to reach a broader audience.
The next edition of the lightning talks will be on Thursday, September 18th, taking place at Plauti. Are you interested in attending or speaking yourself? Check our lightning talks page for more details and get in touch.
