For our May meetup, we're delighted to be back at the fabulous Accurx offices. We have two amazing talks lined up and the agenda will be:
- 6:30pm - arrive, drinks, networking
- 7:00pm - Welcome & Housekeeping
- 7:15pm - Talk 1: "A practical guide to inner sourcing your IDP"
Bridging the gap between developers and platform teams is hard.
Scattered documentation, fragmented language and hidden knowledge leave developers frustrated, while platform teams struggle to understand what devs really need. Treating platforms as products is a start, but treating them like open source projects unlocks real collaboration, allowing developers to contribute and maintain features.
In her roles as Developer Advocate and platform engineer, Lian has years of experience working with highly bureaucratic organisations helping to improve developer experience and adoption.
In this talk, she’ll share concrete steps to identify contribution opportunities, set up maintainable processes, and measure engagement. You’ll leave inspired with ideas to boost adoption, reduce friction, and turn your platform into a collaborative, thriving ecosystem.
Speaker: Lian Li, Cloud Native Human
Lian always wanted to save the world. After leaving law school, she decided to work with computers instead. While in Web Dev, she started attending tech events, and soon fell in love with the community. In her roles as Consultant and DevRel, Lian combined technical knowledge with a focus on the human side.
Currently, Lian works as freelance Platform Engineer in Amsterdam and is the Chief Karaoke Officer for Kuberoke, the first and only Kubernetes Karaoke Community. She also enjoys performing in musical improvisation theatre and standup comedy shows.
- 7.45pm - food, more drinks & networking
- 8.00pm - Talk 2: "The Humans Behind the Platform: Structuring Teams for Culture and Capability"
It’s easy to focus on the tech when building a Platform team, and that’s tremendously important, but it’s often the people and how they work together that determine success. Over the past couple of years, Claire has led a Platform Engineering Team through different formations, migrations, and tooling adoptions. Whatever shape the team has taken, whatever they're working on, the constants have been a need for clear purpose and a culture where people can thrive, this takes work, and has sometimes been tricky to get right. In this talk, she’ll share what she's learned from shaping and supporting platform teams: what’s worked (and what hasn’t) when it comes to team composition, balancing seniority, and supporting career growth. Collaboration is central to how to operate, so she’ll talk about how her team works with and supports internal customers, and what’s helped to navigate complex, knotty migration projects. She’ll also cover how they built a culture that gives engineers space to lead. We want engineers at every level to feel confident taking ownership, and that takes deliberate effort. If you’re figuring out how to shape your platform teams to enable others as well as deliver, this talk will offer practical ideas, and maybe a few things to rethink.
Speaker: Claire Reckless, Engineering Manager
Claire is an Engineering Manager and leads a Platform Engineering Team. With a background spanning Tech Support, Testing, and QA across sectors like Finance and Security, she brings a deep appreciation for resilient systems and collaborative teams. Claire is passionate about learning and development, and she’s especially proud of her past work coordinating an apprentice programme, an initiative that’s helped build a more diverse and sustainable pipeline of engineering talent. She’s energised by helping engineers at all levels grow their confidence, take ownership, and shape the future of their teams.
- 8.30pm onwards - drinks and networking.
So, please come and join us, we look forward to seeing you there.
The LOPUG team.
- Food and drinks provided
- Good time will be had by all
