Name: Monads Explained & Rediscovering Apollo 11: Using Spring AI + Redis OM Spring
Start: 2025-03-12T17:30:00+01:00
End: 2025-03-12T22:00:00+01:00
Location: Open Web

We are happy and very proud to announce our next meetup with Ties van de Ven and Raphael De Lio.

The meetup will be hosted by Open Web.

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.

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17:30 Doors open
18:00 Food & Drinks
19:00 Monads Explained, by Ties van de Ven
20:00 Break
20:15 Rediscovering Apollo 11: Using Spring AI + Redis OM Spring to Explore the trip to the moon! by Raphael De Lio
21:15 Drinks

**Giveaways**
1 JetBrains licence

**Talks**

**Monads Explained**

Functional programming terminology can be quite intimidating, but it does not have to be. Learning this terminology actually helped me in becoming a better problem solver, and therefor better at programming (in any language). In this talk we will go into what all these fancy words like monad, monoid, functor etc. actually mean. We will go into a bit of theory (but not as far as category theory), and there will be a strong focus on practical everyday examples. After this talk you will see that you have been using monads all along, know why the Java Optional is not a monad, and your abstract thinking skills will level up.

**Rediscovering Apollo 11: Using Spring AI + Redis OM Spring to Explore the trip to the moon!**

What happens when you combine the Apollo program’s historical data with modern AI tools? You get a way to interact with one of humanity’s greatest adventures like never before!

In this session, I’ll show you how I used Redis OM Spring and Spring AI to explore Apollo mission data—aligning transcripts, telemetry, and images to uncover hidden connections and insights. We’ll dive into how Semantic Search powered by vector embeddings makes sense of unstructured text, how Redis as a vector database enables lightning-fast retrieval, and why these tools unlock new ways to explore complex datasets.

Don’t know what embeddings or vector databases are? No worries—I’ll break it all down and show you how it works.

Come for the Moon missions, stay for the AI magic, and leave ready to build your own intelligent search experiences!

**Speakers**

**Ties van de Ven**

Ties is a software engineer with passion for concepts, sofware engineering fundamentals and helping others. He combines these passions by doing public speaking, volenteer work for organisations like Devoxx4kids and codingcoach and working as a Software Quality Expert at Alliander.

**Raphael De Lio**

Raphael De Lio is a passionate software engineer who loves to think about solutions and ways to improve anything he touches. With over seven years of experience across multiple roles, industries, and countries, he brings a rich perspective to solving technical challenges and connecting with developer communities.

Born in Brazil, Raphael lived in Portugal for six years before moving to the Netherlands in 2022. His main role was a Software Engineer, with expertise in Java, Kotlin, and scalable systems. He also served as the organizer and host of the Dutch Kotlin User Group, building a community for Kotlin enthusiasts in Amsterdam.

Currently, he serves as a Developer Advocate at Redis, where he combines his love for coding with his enthusiasm for empowering others through education, advocacy, and community engagement.

Teo Bais

Willem van de Griendt

Michel van Dongen

Utrecht Java User Group

Technology

Java

Open Source

Software Development

Web Technology

Cloud Computing

Web Development

Android Development Operating Systems Technology

Agile Project Management

Test Driven Development

J2EE

Java Concurrency

Java Virtual Machine

Java EE

Server Side Javascript