GraphQL Local at HEMA - Spring Edition

Get ready and sign-up for our spring edition of Amsterdam GraphQL local at HEMA.

We'll announce the talks and speakers soon. Expect great talks on GraphQL, federation, AI related topics.

Agenda:
- 17:30-18:15 Food + drinks
- 18:15-18:30 GraphQL local announcements & Welcome by host
- 18:30-19:00 GraphQL with AWS AppSync — Building a Product API at HEMA by Ivan Jančić
We built our first GraphQL API using AWS AppSync as part of HEMA's composable commerce migration. In this talk we share why we chose AppSync, how we designed our product API, and what we learned along the way.
- 19:00-19:30 Scaling GraphQL at Booking.com: A Look Behind the Scenes by Christian Ernst
Discover how Booking.com implements GraphQL, leveraging Apollo to manage a massive graph. We'll explore the challenges and solutions for operating a graph at scale, handling thousands of developers and hundreds of daily changes, all while continuously improving the developer experience.
- 19:30-20:00 Beyond Introspection: AI and Schema-Aware Embeddings for GraphQL MCP by Thore Koritzius
GraphQL introspection exposes schema structure, but most AI systems struggle to use it effectively because schemas are often too large and noisy for accurate query building in model context. In this talk we explore how schema-aware embedding models can capture GraphQL’s type system to enable semantic search and better tooling while also discussing proposals from the GraphQL AI Working Group for spec extensions for the MCP standard.
- 20:00-21:00 Network + drinks

About our host
HEMA is a Dutch retail icon celebrating 100 years this year, known for making well-designed everyday products accessible to everyone. Behind the familiar storefronts, HEMA has a growing engineering organization working with a modern tech stack to power both its physical and digital channels.