Secure your development process & Build your own fun and absurd pair programmer

We are excited to announce our first Utrecht JUG meetup in 2026, featuring talks from Soroosh Khodami and Alexander Chatzizacharias.

First we will explore whether we’re prepared for the next Log4Shell-scale cyber security crisis, learning practical strategies to defend against supply chain attacks, modern AI-era threats, and CI/CD vulnerabilities through DevSecOps and SBOM-driven security practices.

After the break you’ll learn how to build a playful, sarcastic, and deliberately absurd AI pair programmer while gaining practical insights into agentic LLM workflows, RAG, vector search, and deep integrations that let your assistant mischievously meddle with your code and environment.

Join us for an evening of practical insights, real-world lessons, and community connection!

The meetup will be hosted by adesso, Jaarbeursboulevard 294, Utrecht.

Please join us and RSVP!

Because of the limited number of seats, please keep your RSVP up-to-date, so we can welcome someone else of you can't make it.

Timeschedule:

17:30 Doors open
18:00 Food & Drinks
19:00 Are We Ready For The Next Cyber Security Crisis Like Log4Shell? by Soroosh Khodami
20:00 Break
20:15 How to build your own fun and absurd pair programmer by Alexander Chatzizacharias
21:15 Drinks

Giveaway
1 JetBrains licence

Talks

Are We Ready For The Next Cyber Security Crisis Like Log4Shell?

"AI era is bright, but full of terrors!"

In a world where vulnerabilities like Log4Shell, Spring4Shell, and the XZ Backdoor make headlines, securing our software ecosystem has never been more critical. In this session, Soroosh, a hands-on architect with experience working on security platform services for large enterprises like Rabobank, will share practical strategies and best practices for securing the software development process, applicable to both small startups and large organizations.

Key takeaways and questions that will be answered in this session:

• [Live Demo] What is a "Supply Chain Attack," and how dangerous can it be?
• An example of lateral movement that begins with a basic SQL injection attack and escalates to gaining root access to a Kubernetes cluster
• Exploring new attack vectors in the AI era and the defense strategies to detect, prevent and mitigate them
• Most effective practices to secure your CI/CD process
• Practical strategies on how Software Bill of Materials (SBOM) help us prepare for the next Log4Shell crisis?
• What does DevSecOps mean, and what is its main objective?

How to build your own fun and absurd pair programmer

Tired of AI assistants that are always so boring and soulless? Alexander was. So, he decided to build his own. An AI assistant with personality, flair, and a healthy dose of sarcasm. Imagine a pair programmer that offers sarcastic feedback, makes absurd suggestions, and threatens to blow up your code when it disagrees with your changes. And when things get too quiet, it might even challenge you to a game of tic-tac-toe.

This session is for anyone who believes the best way to learn new technologies is by playfully breaking them. If you’re curious about LLMs and agents beyond the typical use cases, this talk is for you. You’ll leave with practical insights into building your own agentic LLM workflows using Spring Boot, vector databases, and locally running models. Alexander will talk about Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) flows that feed LLMs the right context, multi-vector search for fast context retrieval, and Model Context Protocol (MCP) integrations that let the assistant directly meddle with your file system.

Come to learn, chuckle, and get inspired to create your own dysfunctional digital sidekick.

Speakers

Soroosh Khodami

Soroosh is a software engineer and software architecture enthusiast, passionate about building simple but impactful solutions. With over 10 years of experience in diverse domains, including Telecom, Media & Entertainment, and E-Commerce. He has worked with small startups and large enterprises serving 80 million active subscribers. Currently working as a Solution Architect at Rabobank via Code Nomads. Soroosh strongly believes in the power of collaborative learning and enjoys sharing his experiences and insights with other developers.

Alexander Chatzizacharias

Alexander, a 35-year-old Software Engineer at JDriven, holds dual Dutch and Greek nationality. He earned his master’s degree in Game Studies from the University of Amsterdam, where he discovered his passion for gamification and software engineering. Alexander aims to bridge the gap between game development and software engineering, believing that both industries have much to learn from each other. He is dedicated to integrating technologies and methodologies from both fields. Additionally, he enjoys experimenting with new technologies and cutting-edge sdk's.