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Build Stuff 2026 · Community Area
The conversation doesn't end when the talk does.
15 years of Build Stuff. 67 Table Talks. One place to meet the people solving the same problems as you.
What it is
The heart of Build Stuff 2026.
The Community Area is a partner wall and ten tables in the main foyer, where developers, speakers and companies meet between sessions to share experience and work through real problems together.
No slides. No stage. Just good people and good questions.
- Years of Build Stuff
- 15
- Table Talks
- 67
- Tables
- 10
- Minutes each
- 30
Table Talks program
67 conversations, three days.
Times are Vilnius local (EET). "Continues from" names the session the talk builds on; warm-ups run just before that session.
| Table | Topic & opening question | Continues from |
|---|---|---|
| 11:45 · Morning coffee | ||
| 1 | Spec to production with AIWhere does AI break between spec and shipped code? | Venkat Subramaniam (keynote) |
| 2 | Could someone steal from your AI?What's the worst prompt injection you've seen? | Artur Naumenko |
| 3 | Encryption you actually shipWhat do teams get wrong about encrypting data? | Ben Dechrai |
| 4 | SQL is backAre you moving back to relational from NoSQL? | Giorgi Dalakishvili |
| 5 | Choosing your agent stackMicrosoft, OpenAI, open source: what are you betting on? | Balazs Horvath |
| 13:15 · Lunch | ||
| 1 | Web3 and decentralized systemsHype or real use cases: where does decentralization actually help? | Eli Holderness, Ben Dechrai |
| 6 | Legacy migration with AI agentsWould you trust an agent with your COBOL or monolith? | Tessel Haagen |
| 7 | LLMs without the internetHow do you run AI where data can't leave? | Mihaela Gheorghe-Roman |
| 8 | Why does every app look the same?Has AI made our UIs bland? | Dean Schuster, Lemon |
| 9 | Accessibility in the AI eraCan AI help, or does it hide problems? | Lemon |
| 10 | Fewer dependenciesWhat did you delete from your stack this year? | Paul Conroy |
| 15:45 · Afternoon coffee | ||
| 1 | Building and running data centersCloud, colocation or your own metal? | Richard Campbell, Kent Alstad |
| 2 | Teams at the speed of AIHow have roles changed in your team this year? | Suzanne Daniels |
| 3 | Agents building agentsWhere do you draw the line on autonomy? | René Nijkamp |
| 4 | Code archaeologyWhat's the oldest code you still maintain? | Arthur Doler |
| 5 | Neurodiversity at workWhat helps neurodivergent devs do their best work? | Dennie Declercq, Christina Aldan |
| 6 | Developers in banksWhat's it really like building software inside a bank? | Tessel Haagen, Arthur Doler |
| 18:00 · Wrap-up | ||
| 6 | What 1983 teaches us about AIIs automation making us worse at our jobs? | Richard Groß |
| 7 | Bad deploysHow do you know a release hurt production? | Ines Panker |
| 8 | Memory for coding agentsHow do you keep context across AI sessions? | Serg Masis (workshop) |
| 9 | Domain knowledge AI can't guessHow do you give AI the context of your business? | Beija Nigl, Tobias Goeschel |
| 10 | Staying focusedWhat actually protects your deep-work time? | Susanne Bach Ladefoged Hou |
| Table | Topic & opening question | Continues from |
|---|---|---|
| 11:45 · Morning coffee | ||
| 1 | How safe is the AI we build?Where should a developer say no? | Dr. Roman V. Yampolskiy (keynote) |
| 2 | Hiring developers in the AI eraWhat do you test for in interviews now? | Denis Stebunov |
| 3 | Testing what agents writeTDD, BDD or nothing: what works with agents? | Almantas Karpavičius |
| 4 | Will we keep our jobs?What can't an LLM do on your team? | Lucía Conde-Moreno |
| 5 | Token billsWhat's eating your LLM budget? | Rimantas Zukaitis |
| 13:15 · Lunch | ||
| 1 | Salaries, negotiation and the job marketIs it harder to find a good job now than a year ago? | Denis Stebunov |
| 3 | We're hiring: meet the teamsWhat's it really like to work at your company? | Community partners |
| 6 | Lessons from data breachesWhat did your last incident teach you? | Lukas Vileikis |
| 7 | Modular code that stays modularHow do you stop modules leaking into each other? | Ian Cooper |
| 8 | Seeing problems before users doWhich alerts actually matter? | Mike Martin |
| 9 | AI for science and researchWhat does AI need from infrastructure to help research? | Glauco Endrigo Moura de Lima |
| 10 | Stop writing software like it's 1999Which old habit should your team drop? | Hannes Lowette |
| 15:45 · Afternoon coffee | ||
| 1 | Private AI assistantsWould you run your own assistant at home? | Emmz Rendle |
| 2 | Observability for AI appsHow do you debug a model in production? | Harry Kimpel |
| 3 | OAuth and login painWhat's the hardest auth bug you've fixed? | Roland Guijt |
| 4 | AI security horror storiesWhat's the scariest AI incident you've seen? | Jiachen Jiang |
| 5 | Data from signals to campaignsWho owns customer data in your company? | Dolores Jovanovic |
| 18:00 · Wrap-up | ||
| 1 | Developer to manager, or stay technical?What made you choose your path, and would you choose it again? | Denis Stebunov, Suzanne Daniels |
| 6 | Kafka and data migrationsHow did your last migration go wrong? | Tom Billiet, Samah Alafeef |
| 7 | Code as craftWhen did you last write code you were proud of? | David Whitney |
| 8 | Reliable AI agentsWhat would make you trust an agent in production? | Hussein Loubani |
| 9 | AI on the phoneWhat runs well on-device today? | Stevan Milovanovic |
| 10 | OpenTelemetry in old systemsWhere do you start instrumenting a brownfield app? | Jimmy Bogard |
No wrap-up slot on Friday: all Table Talks run in the earlier breaks.
| Table | Topic & opening question | Continues from |
|---|---|---|
| 11:45 · Morning coffee | ||
| 1 | Which language next?What would you learn if you started again today? | Kevlin Henney (keynote), Adele Carpenter |
| 2 | AI gatewaysHow do you control which models your company uses? | Johannes Brüderl |
| 3 | Resilient by designWhat failed in production that you never expected? | Chris Ayers |
| 4 | Exactly-once and other liesWhere did "it can't happen twice" bite you? | Chad Green (workshop) |
| 5 | Your system as a timelineEvent sourcing: worth it or overkill? | Einar Ingebrigtsen |
| 6 | 15 years of Build StuffWhat changed in your work since your first Build Stuff? | Community table |
| 13:15 · Lunch | ||
| 1 | Building software for financeWhat's hardest about building where money moves? | Chad Green, Lukas Vileikis, Tessel Haagen |
| 2 | How to become a conference speakerWhat stops you from submitting a talk? | Build Stuff speakers |
| 6 | Testing RAG chatbotsHow do you know your chatbot is right? | Lena Fiedor |
| 7 | Accessible test automationIs accessibility in your pipeline yet? | Ruby Jane Cabagnot |
| 8 | Digital shop floorsWhat does software change in a factory? | Kim Berg |
| 9 | Make art, not busyworkWhat would you build if AI did the boring part? | Olena Borzenko |
| 10 | Women in tech meetupWhat would make more women stay in tech? | Community table |
| 15:45 · Afternoon coffee | ||
| 1 | EU AI sovereigntyShould EU companies avoid US clouds for AI? | Alessandro Stefouli-Vozza |
| 2 | Tech debt: pay or live with it?How do you sell refactoring to management? | Warm-up for Tomas Peluritis |
| 3 | Platform engineering to AI factoryWho owns AI tooling in your company? | Warm-up for Mikalai Huryn |
| 4 | Deterministic AI workflowsWhen should AI ask a human? | Linas Rajackas, Jack Saunders |
| 5 | Data centers in spaceScience fiction or the next cloud? | Richard Campbell, Tyler Benfield |
| 6 | Enterprise AI that worksWhat made an AI project succeed in your company? | Warm-up for Michael Coté |
| 7 | Recovering when AI failsWhat's your plan when the model is wrong? | Warm-up for Tricia Diamond |
| 8 | Memory and experience designWhat makes users remember a product? | Warm-up for Rolando Masís-Obando |
| 9 | No stupid questionsWhat question were you afraid to ask this week? | Amy Norris |
Table Talks
Pick up where the talk left off.
At every break, tables open for 30-minute informal conversations. Just heard a talk on AI agents? Continue it at the table. Wondering how others survived their last legacy migration? Someone at the table did.
- 11:45–12:15Morning coffee
- 13:15–13:45Lunch
- 15:45–16:15Afternoon coffee
- 18:00–18:30Wrap-upWed and Thu only
A few of this year's topics
- AI agents in production: would you trust one?
- Legacy migration with AI: COBOL, monoliths and survival stories
- Developers in banks: building where money moves
- We're hiring: meet the teams
- Salaries, negotiation and the job market
- Developer to manager, or stay technical?
- Web3 and decentralized systems: hype or real use cases?
- How to become a conference speaker
The full program is above. It's also on the board by the partner wall and in the attendee Telegram group each morning.
Bring your perspective
Built by the people in it.
Every topic is open to anyone who wants to join, listen or lead. You don't need to be an expert. You just need a view and a question.
Lead one
Add your name to a topic on the board and open the conversation.
Start your own
Write a topic on the Open Table board. If people care, they'll come.
Meet the community partners
The teams behind the wall.
The partner wall shows the companies that are part of the Build Stuff community this year. Their teams are at the partner tables throughout the conference: developers, engineering leads and people who are hiring. Come say hello.
Looking for your next role? Join "We're hiring: meet the teams" on Thursday at lunch.
For companies · Only 10 partner tables
Become a Community Partner
€2.500 excl. 21% VAT
- Your logo on the shared partner wall
- A partner table as your team's home base for all three days, with 2 high chairs
- Co-host a Table Talk on a topic your team knows
- 2 onsite conference tickets (December 2–4)
- Logo on the website and conference program, 2 social media mentions
- Insert in the attendee bag
- 2 invitations to the Speaker & Partner Dinner
- 5% discount on additional tickets for your team
Nothing to build or ship: no booth, no roll-ups, no printing. Your prep is a vector logo, one line about your company and a link — about 10 minutes.
Questions? info@buildstuff.events
Good to know
Come for the talks. Stay for the people.
Do I need to sign up?
No. The Community Area is open to everyone with an onsite ticket.
When is it open?
All three days, 2–4 December, from registration to the last session.
Where is it?
In the main foyer of the Radisson Blu Hotel Lietuva, Vilnius.
Can I suggest a topic before the conference?
Yes. Post it in the attendee Telegram group.