Optimizing Developer Efficiency

Welcome back to the Belgian Developer Experience Network!

After a fantastic kick-off event in November where we explored the foundations of our community, we're diving deep into a topic that's transforming the way we develop and deploy software: Platform Engineering.

This time, we'll be tackling the crucial intersection of security, developer responsibilities, and platform engineering, with a focus on practical strategies and real-world challenges.

Get ready for insightful talks from experienced professionals, lively discussions, and the opportunity to connect with fellow developers passionate about building software.

Schedule:
- 17:00 - 18:00 - Doors open
- 18:00 - 18:15 - Intro
- 18:15 - 19:00 - Bypassing Security Controls in the K8s Ecosystem

• Speaker:
  Philippe Bogaerts (Public Cloud System Engineer and Co-Founder of BruCON)
• Description:
  Let’s be real: Kubernetes security is a mess. Developers are expected to ship fast, scale seamlessly, and somehow keep attackers out while juggling a ton of other responsibilities. Meanwhile, threats like data theft, cryptojacking, and cluster takeovers are looking around every corner. And let’s not even start on AI workloads: they bring a whole new level of chaos to the (application) security game.
  The attack surface is vast. Many security controls fail to provide an acceptable level of protection and are often easily bypassed. By examining the problem from various angles, this talk will explore where and how to effectively secure applications, workloads, and clusters.
  To conclude, we’ll examine how AI and its associated frameworks further complicate the security landscape. This session aims to shed light on how collective awareness of these security challenges can lead to better protection for everyone.

- 19:00 - 19:15 - Break
- 19:15 - 20:00 - Monitoring Applications Running on K8s with openTelemetry

• Speaker:
  Evelien Schellekens (Senior Solutions Architect at Elastic)
• Description:
  Kubernetes makes scaling applications easy, but monitoring them can be a challenge. OpenTelemetry helps by providing a standard way to collect metrics, logs, and traces—but how do you actually use it in real-world applications?
  In this talk, we’ll break down how the OpenTelemetry Operator simplifies observability in Kubernetes and why it’s a game-changer for developers and platform engineers. We’ll also explore how to send OpenTelemetry data to Elastic where powerful search and analytics capabilities help you quickly detect issues, find root causes, and optimize performance. To wrap things up, I’ll demo a complete setup, from deploying the OpenTelemetry Operator to monitoring an application in Elastic.

- 20:00 - 22:00: Network Event & Food

After the talks you will be able to share your valuable insights and ideas with everyone, while sharing some food and drinks.

Additional note: This meetup includes food and an activity. Please keep your RSVP status up to date so we do not waste any of our food. In case you're doubting the feasibility to join in person, you can always join remote.