Amsterdam — Week of 2 Nov 2026

with Peter Marshall (Speaker, Imply) · Lewis Isaac (Speaker, Coralogix)

The Q4 Amsterdam edition of SREday: four parallel tracks of site-reliability and observability talks, hosted in ING's Cedar building in Amsterdam Zuidoost. 09:30 to 18:00 on 2 November, across a main room, an upstairs room and two meeting rooms. The programme opens with an ING keynote on SRE inside the bank, then Peter Marshall of Imply on why agentic observability needs a different storage and compute engine, and Lewis Isaac of Coralogix on measuring whether AI coding agents actually make delivery teams more effective. Much of the day is about operating systems that AI agents are now writing and investigating. Paid; registration through the SREday site. Why go: observability events are usually vendor-led, and this one has practitioners from a large bank and several platform companies arguing about the same problem in the same room. Best for SREs, platform engineers and anyone running production inside a regulated business.

The first summit built specifically around what FMCG brands in the Benelux need from digital commerce. One day at Hotel Jakarta on the Java-eiland, 08:00 to 18:00. Senior retail, FMCG and technology people working through omnichannel, retail media, shopper marketing and revenue growth management. More than three quarters of the room is brand- or retailer-side, which is unusual for a commerce event — most are vendor-heavy. Paid conference; the ticket price is not published on the registration page. Why go: the brand-side majority is the reason to be in this room rather than at a retail-media vendor day. Best for commerce, growth and digital leads at consumer brands selling in the Netherlands and Belgium.

A two-day practitioner conference for the Apache Flink community, billed by the organisers as one day talking and one day doing, with no pitches and no filler. Day one covers real-time AI, Flink architecture at scale, streamhouse systems and migration strategy. Day two is small-group hands-on training with Ververica engineers. From 08:30 on 3 November. Paid; no face price is published. The venue is in Amsterdam and the exact address is confirmed to registered attendees. Why go: Flink expertise is thin on the ground, and this is a rare chance to put architecture questions to the engineers who maintain the runtime, with a training day attached. Best for data and streaming engineers and platform teams running Flink in production.

with Nadia Edwards-Dashti (Spotlight talk: AI-era resilience research, EWPN) · Sam Emery (Spotlight talk: AI-era resilience research, EWPN)

The European Women Payments Network's annual conference, a full day at AI House on keeping AI in financial services human, inclusive and accountable. The programme runs from a keynote on human-centred design as a strategic requirement, through panels on leadership in the AI era, who the real customer is once autonomous agents start making payment decisions, designing for high-stakes life events, and separating AI-native products from AI-washed ones, to a closing session on data dignity and consent. Spotlight talks cover the EU AI Act and UK resilience research from Nadia Edwards-Dashti and Sam Emery. Lunch included, free to attend. Why go: payments people arguing about agent-initiated transactions and AI Act compliance a year before most firms have to. Best for fintech product, risk and compliance leads.

The November meeting of the Dutch Microsoft security community — Entra, Defender, Purview and the rest of the stack, discussed by the people who run it in production. Hosted by Microsoft Security NL, 17:00 to 21:30, with talks and open discussion. The venue is in Amsterdam and the exact address is shared with registered attendees closer to the date. Free. Why go: a practitioner room rather than a vendor briefing — the people presenting are the ones operating these tools day to day. Best for security engineers, identity admins and IT leads running Microsoft estates.

Women in Product NL and Picnic on what AI tooling is actually changing about product management, and which parts of the job it is leaving alone. Held at Picnic's headquarters on Van Marwijk Kooystraat. Doors and networking from 17:30, a talk by Leah Bekkering at 18:10, then a hands-on workshop run by Women in Product NL at 18:40, followed by drinks and bites. It is the second of three workshops in the group's 2026 mentorship cohort, but the organisers are explicit that the session is open to everyone regardless of experience, profession or gender, and that newcomers to the Netherlands are welcome. Free. Why go: most AI-and-product events are speculation; this one is a working session on discovery, spec-writing and prioritisation with people who do the job. Best for product managers and anyone moving into product who wants practice rather than predictions.

The monthly Amsterdam Perl Mongers gathering, hosted at Mintlab on Sint Olofspoort: short talks and informal discussion for Perl and general systems-programming people. From 18:30, free. Amsterdam PM has run long enough that the room is mostly people who maintain production Perl, a narrow but genuinely scarce group. The listing itself is in Dutch. Why go: one of very few places left in Europe where working Perl developers meet in person, and worth knowing about if you maintain anything written in it. Best for Perl developers, sysadmins and systems programmers.

Three-day conference for the international Progress OpenEdge community: technical sessions, hands-on workshops, best practices and modernisation strategies, with AI, cloud and DevOps tracks and networking. Aimed at developers, architects, IT leaders, partners and OpenEdge experts. Held at Van der Valk Hotel Schiphol (Hoofddorp).

The day before Meet Magento Netherlands, Mage-OS runs a contribution hackathon at Bold Commerce in Amsterdam: core fixes, extensions and documentation with maintainers on hand. From 10:00, free. Mage-OS is the community-governed Magento distribution, so work done here lands in the codebase rather than in a sandbox. It is a natural add-on for anyone already travelling in for the conference on 5 November. Why go: the most direct route into the Magento and Mage-OS codebase if you work in Dutch e-commerce, and the one day the maintainers are sitting next to you while you do it. Best for Magento developers and agency engineers who want to contribute rather than consume.

The RE-Source Platform's annual two-day event connecting corporate renewable-energy buyers with developers and suppliers, with sessions on power-purchase agreements and energy procurement across Europe.

with Willem Veelenturf (Software Engineer and co-founder, Flock.community) · Jerre van Veluw (Software Engineer, creator of Wirespec, Flock.community) · Alejandro Serrano Mena (Researcher, JetBrains)

Two talks on contracts, from opposite ends: the integration kind and the compiler kind. Willem Veelenturf and Jerre van Veluw of Flock.community walk through Flock's architecture and Wirespec, their tool that turns an API contract into type-safe code on both sides of an integration, then build contract-based integration tests from scratch live with Kotest. Alejandro Serrano Mena of JetBrains follows on in-place, return and flow contracts in Kotlin, what the compiler does with them, and how they are turning into new language features. Free, at Xebia on Wibautstraat. Doors 17:45 with food and drinks, talks at 18:40 and 19:40, drinks from 20:30. Hosted by the Dutch Kotlin User Group with Flock Community and Sourcelabs. Why go: a JetBrains engineer explaining contracts in person, and a live-coded testing demo you can copy on Monday. Best for JVM and Kotlin developers and anyone maintaining API integrations.

An evening summit in the Zuiderkerk on where AI adoption actually stands in Dutch companies, bringing together around 500 business and technology leaders. Talks and panels first, then open networking. From 18:00, tickets 34.99 euro. Run by Startup Network Europe, which also runs the Amsterdam Startup Meetup and the European CDAO conference, so expect a mixed commercial audience rather than a research one. Why go: a useful read on what mid-market Dutch firms are really doing with AI, which is a different picture from the one you get at engineering meetups. Best for commercial and technology leaders, consultants, and anyone selling into Dutch enterprises.

Appsterdam's long-running weekly social at Cafe Bax on Ten Katestraat: developers, designers and makers from across the Amsterdam app and web scene. From 19:00, free, no agenda and no tickets. Turn up and find a table. Appsterdam has run this every week for years, which is why it works as a default. There is always someone there, and the crowd rotates enough that it is not a closed circle. Why go: the reliable one. If you are new to the city or between jobs, this is the cheapest standing introduction to Amsterdam's software community. Best for developers and designers who want conversation rather than a programme.

The weekly Wednesday social evening at Technologia Incognita, Amsterdam's volunteer-run hackerspace in the ACTA building on Louwesweg. Open house from 19:00, free, no ticket. People bring whatever they are working on: hardware, electronics, firmware, 3D printing, software side projects. Members are around to show you the space and the machines, and newcomers are the point rather than a tolerated extra. Why go: the lowest-friction way into Amsterdam's maker and hardware scene, and the fastest way to find out whether a hackerspace membership would be worth it to you. Best for hardware tinkerers, electronics people, and anyone with a project that needs tools they do not own.

The fifth Bitcoin Amsterdam, published by BTC Inc: a two-day conference bringing capital allocators, founders, builders and legislators together across a main stage and an expo floor. 5-6 November 2026 at the SugarFactory. Two-day conference passes from EUR 189.50.

The Dutch edition of the global Meet Magento conference: a full day of e-commerce engineering, platform architecture and merchant strategy for the Magento and Adobe Commerce community, closing with an evening social. At LIEF Amsterdam on Basisweg, from 08:00. Run by Mage-OS Netherlands, the Dutch arm of the community-governed Mage-OS distribution, and paired with a contribution hackathon the day before at Bold Commerce. Tickets are 200 euro. Why go: it is the one day a year the Dutch Magento ecosystem is in a single building, agencies and merchants together, and the talks are pitched at the people who maintain the platform rather than the people evaluating it. Best for e-commerce developers, technical leads at agencies, and merchants running Adobe Commerce.

A two-day business-growth summit at the World Trade Center on Strawinskylaan, aimed at founders and commercial leaders looking for partnerships, investment and distribution. The programme mixes stage content with structured matchmaking. From 09:00, tickets 210 euro. Why go: the matchmaking is the product here rather than the talks, so it earns its place if you arrive with a specific ask - a distribution partner, a first enterprise customer, an investor conversation. Best for founders and commercial leads actively selling or raising; skip it if you want technical content.

8th edition of NXT Commerce Summit at Felix Meritis: 700+ commerce leaders, founders, marketers and retail professionals across seven stages, two of them on boats on the canals. Themes: AI, technology, retail, e-commerce and building next-generation brands. Brands on the programme include OpenAI, Shopify, Suitsupply, Swapfiets and Hunkemoller.

One-day event for professionals in AI, marketing, technology and digital business, with more than 30 sessions on the future of marketing, digital customer experience, commerce, branding and technology. About 2,000 attendees expected. The Eventbrite listing says 10:00 to 17:00 while the description says 09:00 to 18:00. Ticket price was not listed.

A matchmaking afternoon for life-sciences and health founders looking for funding: pre-matched one-to-one meetings with more than thirty investors, open to e-health, medtech and biotech startups seeking equity, funding expertise and introductions. At Matrix ONE on Amsterdam Science Park, 12:30 to 17:30 on 5 November. Free but invite-only - applications go through the b2match platform.

DDMA's annual afternoon on experimentation and conversion optimisation at Hotel Casa on Eerste Ringdijkstraat, with practitioners from Dutch digital teams presenting the tests that worked and the ones that did not. From 12:30, tickets 164.79 euro. DDMA is the Dutch data and marketing association, so the room is in-house growth and CRO teams rather than agencies pitching. Why go: the failed tests are the reason to come. Published case studies rarely include them, and this is a room where people present them in front of peers who will question the method. Best for growth, product and CRO people who run experiments for a living.

with Hisko Hulsing (Animator and director, Independent) · Daan Archer (Copyright specialist, Copyright Delta)

An hour on what AI is doing to animation and visual storytelling, and on who owns what comes out. Hisko Hulsing - the Amsterdam animator and director behind Montage of Heck, Undone and Junkyard, and one of the few people using AI inside a traditional animation pipeline - talks about the craft side and about the backlash he has had from the creative community. Daan Archer of Copyright Delta takes the copyright and authorship side. Talks and discussion 16:00 to 17:00 in room L3.36 on the third floor of LAB42, then drinks, snacks and networking. Free, registration through Luma. Run by LAB42, the University of Amsterdam's AI hub, as a co-creation with HAVA-Lab, the Data Science Center and Zeta Alpha. Why go: the AI-and-copyright argument usually happens either among lawyers or among artists, rarely in the same room, and this hour has a working animator and a copyright specialist in it. Best for people building creative tools and anyone whose product touches generated images or video.

with Sako Arts (CTO Netherlands, Wonderful) · Joris Dekker (Leading Deployment, Duna)

A fireside chat on forward deployed engineering: embedding engineers inside customers to make AI work in production, rather than shipping one-size-fits-all SaaS and hoping. Sako Arts, CTO Netherlands at Wonderful, talks with Joris Dekker, who leads deployment at Duna. Wonderful raised a $550 million Series C in September led by Insight Partners, more than doubling its valuation to $5 billion, and operates in more than 35 countries. They cover what marks out a good forward deployed engineer, why embedding with customers beats generic SaaS in an AI-first environment, the tension between white-glove service and scale, managing executives alongside day-to-day stakeholders, and how to structure change management. Doors 17:00, fireside chat and Q&A 17:15, drinks and bites 18:00 to 19:00, at Keizersgracht 127. Free, registration subject to host approval. Why go: forward deployed engineering is the role everyone is hiring for and almost nobody has defined. Best for engineering leaders and founders selling AI into enterprise accounts.

BitDevs Amsterdam's Socratic seminar, held in the Bitcoin Amsterdam conference venue at SugarFactory in Halfweg. Doors 17:00, starts at 17:30 and runs to 19:30. No ticket and no conference pass is required. The agenda is published a few days beforehand; donations cover external costs only.

The Amsterdam Java User Group's regular evening meetup, hosted this edition at Atlassian's office on Singel. 18:00 to 21:00, free to attend. The programme has not been announced; the group takes speaker proposals by email up to shortly before the date.

The Dutch Bitcoin podcast Satoshi Radio holds its Amsterdam meetup at Cafe de Roemer on Roemer Visscherstraat: an evening of protocol and market talk with the show's listeners, developers and the wider Dutch crypto community. From 18:00, free. Mostly conducted in Dutch. Why go: one of the few reliably recurring Web3 rooms in the city, and a distinctly different crowd from the AI-heavy rest of the Amsterdam calendar. Best for Bitcoin and protocol developers, and anyone who wants the Dutch crypto conversation without a conference badge.

A recurring evening meetup for people in the Dutch startup ecosystem at Mulligans on the Amstel: founders, early employees and the investor-curious. Low-key, with no pitches from the stage, just introductions over a drink. From 18:30, tickets 12.10 euro. Run by Startup Network Europe, which also runs the Amsterdam AI Summit the night before. Why go: cheap, central and predictable, which makes it a reasonable first stop if you have just arrived in the Amsterdam startup scene and want faces rather than content. Best for new founders and early employees; experienced operators will find the signal thinner than at the smaller community evenings.

The November edition of Amsterdam's longest-running founders meetup, at Café de Muurbloem. Free, informal, and reliably full of people actually building companies — the default room for anyone new to the Amsterdam startup scene.

Hands-on masterclass from the Looker Netherlands community at Google Amsterdam on building a governed data layer that AI answers can trust. Small teams build an app on a shared retail dataset in under an hour, choosing between a performance cockpit, an operations app or a customer 360 view. Bring a laptop. Registration through Google's RSVP page is required first, and seats are first come, first served.

with Romy Goedhart (Co-founder, VYNX) · Grace O'Brien (Co-founder, Pink Chip) · Stephanie Robles (Co-founder and CEO, Saint)

Capital C's morning brunch for female founders, entrepreneurs and investors, held at its Bloemenmarkt space on the Singel. The conversation is about starting, funding and growing a company, and the hard parts of each. Speakers: Romy Goedhart, co-founder of VYNX, which recently raised 1.5 million euros; Grace O'Brien, co-founder of Pink Chip, whose work with UN Women won three Gold and two Silver Lions at Cannes Lions; and Stephanie Robles, co-founder and CEO of AI company Saint. 09:00 to 11:30. Seats are limited, register on Luma. Why go: founder-to-founder talk with people who have raised money and shipped, in a small room. Best for early-stage female founders looking for peers and investor introductions.

Two-hour practical workshop at Equals for women in finance, legal and compliance roles on using AI for document work: contract analysis, invoices, reporting and compliance checklists, with humans making the final decisions. Part of the Prosus x Equals AI Nights series. Bring a laptop and a document-heavy task.

Appsterdam's Saturday morning co-working session at The Coffee Room on Bilderdijkstraat: bring a laptop and whatever you are stuck on, and work alongside other programmers who can unblock you. Runs 09:30 to 11:30 sharp, so arriving near the start matters if you want help. Maike and Daniel host, and the regulars cover Android, iOS, Flutter, C++, JavaScript, Python, Rust and UX tooling including Figma and Sketch. All levels explicitly welcome; free, no ticket. Why go: the cheapest way in Amsterdam to get a second pair of eyes on your own project rather than listening to someone else's talk. Best for solo developers, learners and anyone whose side project has stalled.