What we’re about
At OBI we empower people to design their homes creatively and individually. We digitalize the DIY market and develope a comprehensive service ecosystem. Whether in our online store, in the heyOBI app or in the store - we ensure that our customers have the best experience everywhere.
As developers, we see ourselves at OBI as the driving force on the path to the DIY store of the future. Our innovative solutions for Europe's largest DIY retailer are created in an agile environment and rely on state-of-the-art technologies.
With the OBI Tech Talks we want to establish a knowledge and best practices exchange platform for all people who enjoy modern technologies like AWS, Kafka, Spring, Kotlin, Vue.js, Nuxt as much as we do. Hot topics from the fields of Machine Learning, Data Science and AI will also be covered in our tech talk sessions.
We would also be glad to welcome external speakers at our modern location in Cologne (Carlswerk). Just talk to us at one of our events or write us an email techtalks_meetup(at)obi.de
In addition to exciting talks, free drinks and food are waiting for you!
You can find more information about OBI at https://jobs.obi.de/
Follow us on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/obi
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Parking
Since some gates around the OBI building are locked in the evening, we recommend to park at Schanzenstraße 41, 41b, 41c. If you park directly at OBI, you can leave through the gate at Teltec Köln, Schanzenstraße 29. Here you can find a detailed description of our parking places: parking.
Our OBI parking places are in front of our main entrance (DO NOT PARK NEAR THE E-Werk!): coordinates
Here are the coordinates of the exit gates when leaving our meetup: coordinates
Disclaimer
By attending our meetups you agree that the photos and videos taken during the event can be used in social media platforms like LinkedIn to promote our future events.
Collaboration/Promotional Opportunities
- We are glad to collaborate with other technical meetups and help to build a great tech community in NRW / Germany
- We are also happy to collaborate with small businesses like photography services looking to gain clients, who could e.g. take some photos of our speakers and attendees.
Please send us your proposal to techtalks_meetup(at)obi.de
Upcoming events
1
21. OBI Tech Talk: AI Edition continued
OBI, Schanzenstrasse 39, Cologne, DEJoin us for this month’s OBI Tech Talk featuring Christoph Außem, Software Developer and Data Engineer at yaico as well as AI Engineer at Capgemini, and Maksim Kogan, Solutions Architect at Frends and former OBI solution architect.
⏰ Event Details:
Doors open: 6:00 PM
6:30 PM – Agentic Analytics: LLMs als natürliche Schnittstelle zu Unternehmenskennzahlen - Christoph Außem (yaico/Capgemini)
7:15 PM – Why 40% of AI Projects Fail: Building the "Hallucination Firewall" with Adaptive Orchestration - Maksim Kogan (Frends)
8:00 PM - Open end discussion, socialising & pizza!
Location: In-Person at OBI, Carlswerk, Cologne
Talks Language: English
Cost: Free (but the knowledge is priceless!)
More about the presentations:
Talk 1: Agentic Analytics: LLMs as a Natural Interface to Business Metrics
Accessing corporate KPIs often hits a bottleneck where business departments know exactly what questions to ask but lack the SQL skills to ask them. Conversely, IT teams master the code but may not always fully grasp the specific business logic. While Self-Service BI has tried to bridge this gap, it solves the problem only to a limited extent.
LLMs and AI agents are paving the way for the first true natural language interfaces for data. But to work effectively, they require clearly structured models, rich metadata, and a semantic layer that enables the LLM to generate reliable queries.
In this talk, I will show how AI agents access data, how to build the right semantic layer, and how LLMs can automatically derive correct queries to generate meaningful analysis and interpretations. I will also introduce a YAML query language and an In-Memory Engine capable of analyzing CSV files directly via LLM, completely without a Data Warehouse.
Christoph Außem is a Software Developer and Data Engineer at yaico, while also serving as an AI Engineer at Capgemini. He brings extensive experience in building multidimensional Data Warehouse systems and developing AI chatbots based on RAG architectures. Currently, his focus lies on integrating AI Agents into complex corporate processes to move far beyond traditional chatbot scenarios.
Talk 2: Why 40% of AI Projects Fail: Building the "Hallucination Firewall" with Adaptive Orchestration
Gartner predicts that 40% of agentic AI initiatives will be abandoned by 2027. The reason isn't a lack of intelligence in the models; it is a lack of supervision in the architecture.
Too many organizations treat AI as a "magic tool" - a black box they insert into a workflow and hope for the best. When that box hallucinates or breaks a business rule, the project fails. To succeed, we must shift our mental model: AI is not a tool; it is a Role. And like any junior employee, it requires onboarding, clear boundaries, and a manager who checks its work.
In this session, we will explore Adaptive Process Orchestration (APO) as that manager. We will move beyond simple automation and demonstrate how to build a "Hallucination Firewall" - an architectural pattern that wraps non-deterministic AI agents within rigid, deterministic guardrails.
Maksim Kogan is a Senior Solutions Architect at Frends and a former member of OBI’s architecture team. He specializes in stabilizing stalled digital transformations and modernizing complex integration landscapes into AI-ready data fabrics.
Parking
You can park in front of our main entry (DO NOT PARK NEAR THE E-WERK)
coordinates
Here you can find a photo with a detailed description: Main Entry & Parking
Since some gates around the OBI building are locked in the evening, you can leave through the gate at Teltec Köln, Schanzenstraße 29: coordinates
Disclaimer
By attending our meetups you agree that the photos and videos taken during the event can be used in social media platforms like LinkedIn to promote our future events.64 attendees
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