Architecture for the Agentic Era and Make Cybersecurity Fun

After a nice summer holiday BeJUG is back and were going to Hasselt again this time!

A big thank you to we+ for hosting us once again.

We have two excellent speakers ready to share some knowledge:

• Artem will show us how to make cybersecurity fun by hosting your own security-themed hackathon, sharing lessons from running a CTF-style event at his own company.
• Makan will introduce Capability Mesh, a new architectural pattern for the agentic era, exploring how the service mesh ideas that tamed microservices chaos need to evolve for a world of AI agents.

Come join us for this next event!

Schedule
18:00: Doors open + Food and Drinks
18:45: Intro and BeJUG updates
18:50: Talk 1
19:35: Little break
19:45: Talk 2
20:30: Mingling + Drinks

Topics

Make Cybersecurity Fun: Host Your Own Security-Themed Hackathon

Developers often hear about cybersecurity in the abstract, but rarely get hands-on experience unless something breaks in production. To make security learning less dry and intimidating, we organized a jeopardy-style CTF hackathon at our software consultancy company. We created engaging puzzles and added some friendly competition — and it turned into one of the most effective (and fun) ways to get people thinking about security.

In this lightning talk I’ll share how we planned it, how we designed challenges that feel natural for backend developers, and what we learned along the way. You’ll leave with a practical blueprint for running your own security-themed hackathon that boosts awareness and gets developers genuinely excited about the topic.

About Artem
Artem Makarov is a Principal Engineer at Code Nomads, based in Utrecht. He's spent the past 12 years building Java systems across a range of industries.

Capability Mesh: Architecture for the Agentic Era
Ten years ago, microservices chaos led to "Service Mesh" solving the discoverability problem by replacing network endpoints with meaningful references, enabling scalability and observability. It worked brilliantly for connecting services. Today we're living through the same cycle with Generative AI and Agents, but the chaos is about integration, not networking.

The old problems discoverability, scalability, observability are back because orchestrators now pick agents by capability, not name. Plus we face new challenges: explainability of agent actions and the possibility of unintended actions due to the non-deterministic nature of large language models.

We need the same evolutionary leap from "Service Mesh" to "Capability Mesh" shifting from technical service contracts to semantic capability integration for autonomous AI.

About Makan
Makan Sepehrifar is a Senior Solutions Architect at Code Nomads, based in Amsterdam.

Additional notes:

• This meetup includes food. Please keep your RSVP status up to date so we do not waste any of our food.
• Some pictures might be made. If you feel uncomfortable about this, please mention this to the organizers (or anyone with a camera).