Tech Events at Epicenter Amsterdam, Amsterdam

with Ian Zhai (, TiDB) · Mattias Jonsson (, TiDB) · Daniël van Eeden (, TiDB) + 1 more

AMS DB's November meetup is hosted by TiDB (PingCAP) in the Disruption Hall at Epicenter Amsterdam. The theme is distributed, scalable transactional databases. Ian Zhai of TiDB talks about db9, a PostgreSQL-compatible database written in Rust with autonomous AI agents. Mattias Jonsson and Daniël van Eeden of TiDB cover running transactions on an object store. Rohit Nayak, a core Vitess engineer now at PlanetScale, covers sharding PostgreSQL with Neki. Doors at 18:00, talks from 18:20, food and networking until 21:00. Free, with about 40 spots left when we checked. Why go: three database builders in one evening, including a core Vitess engineer on sharding Postgres. Best for backend engineers and data infrastructure leads comparing ways to scale.

A panel plus a hands-on simulation on putting AI agents to work across a company, hosted by NovaLex and Epicenter. The panel brings legal, technical and business voices together on AI fluency across departments, who sets an agent's authority and owns its mistakes, spotting duplicated tools and rising token spend, and fitting AI Act requirements into daily operations. Then small groups work a deployment decision: what the agent may do alone, how to test and pause it, what budget is acceptable, and whether to launch. Everyone gets a printed deployment pack with a risk checklist and an oversight worksheet. Joining in is optional; you can just watch. 17:30 to 22:00 at Epicenter, Piet Heinkade 99. Free on Eventbrite. Panellists not yet named. Why go: legal, product and engineering in the same exercise on agent governance, which most companies still skip. Best for product leads and in-house counsel rolling out agents.

with Karl Horky (Technical Founder, UpLeveled) · John Clancy (Co-founder, UpLeveled Netherlands)

Live code review for AI-built apps. UpLeveled, the coding school, and buildathon.eu put attendees' vibe-coded apps on a big screen and go through what works, what breaks under load and what to fix first. Six people get a Hot Seat: apply at registration with your live app and GitHub repo, and UpLeveled approves submissions before the event. Hosts are Karl Horky, technical founder of UpLeveled, and John Clancy, co-founder of UpLeveled Netherlands. Thursday 29 October, 17:30 to 20:00 at Epicenter Amsterdam (Blue Building, Piet Heinkade 99). Free, limited spots. Why go: one of the few rooms where a senior engineer tears into a real shipped vibe-coded app. Best for non-engineers and early founders who built with AI tools and want to know what falls over first.

Climate Canals (formerly ClimateHack Amsterdam) takes over Epicenter for an evening on how AI, robotics and next-generation sensing are actually being used against the climate crisis — AI-powered climate models, autonomous ecological monitoring, sensor networks, machine learning for renewables, and the uncomfortable question of AI's own footprint. Speaker talks are followed by community pitches and drinks. Hosted in partnership with World AI Week and Epicenter, so expect a crowd that spans climatetech founders, researchers and engineers.