Conference

Codecamp_Cluj-Napoca

16 October 2025

Software Architect and Author

Hands-On Software Architect, Independent Consultant, Author

Software Architect & Meme Wrangler, ThoughtWorks

Regional AI Evangelist, Endava

Chief Artificial Intelligence Officer

Machine learning engineer

The speakers

Masterclasses

These high-end workshops allow you to dive deeper into specific topics related to software development. The masterclasses are taught by experts in the field and offer a more personalized and interactive learning experience. You get to work closely with the instructor and other colleagues in a small-group setting and ask questions and get feedback in real time. Overall, they are a unique and valuable opportunity for anyone looking to expand their knowledge and expertise in software development and IT.
9:45 – 10:00

Hello, Cluj!

10:00 – 10:45

Software Architecture by Example

While many attendees learn from abstract concepts, others prefer to see concepts in action. This session eschews software architecture theory and instead illustrates the process of architecture design using two concrete examples: Silicon Sandwiches and Going, Going, Gone. For each of these problems, Neal shows how:
* to determine architecture characteristics
* to find architecture quanta
* to scope architecture characteristics
* to create and iterate on component design
* architecture characteristics & component design lead to architecture style selection
* to document important architecture decisions
Each step of the way, the two example problems illuminate the stages of architectural design and the considerations architects must make at each stage.

11:00 – 11:45

Inside the Belly of the Beast: How LLMs Work

In 2017, a landmark paper entitled “Attention is All You Need” turned the deep-learning world on its head and laid the foundation for today’s Large Language Models. In the paper, we learned about the transformer architecture and its unparalleled ability to understand, and even to generate, human language. Yet the inner workers of transformers are a mystery to most.

This session takes a deep dive into natural-language processing, starting with simple word embeddings and text classifiers, moving to Recurrent Neural Networks (RNNs), and ultimately landing on transformers. You’ll come away understanding what a transformer is, how it works, and what happens as words flow through a transformer and are converted from static embeddings with low information density into rich, context-aware embeddings that capture the meaning of the words around them. You’ll also learn what context windows really are and why GPUs are so crucial to a transformer’s operation. It will give you a new appreciation for the brilliance of the transformer architecture. And it might make you a better engineer.

12:00 – 12:45

GenAI reaches Trough of Disillusionment, Now What?

Now, the real engineering starts.

The next wave isn’t another demo; it’s turning one business workflow into a dependable system. That means cleaner, better-labelled data; repeatable evaluations you can run in CI; human review where it matters; always-on monitoring for drift, cost, latency, and nonsense answers; guardrails and red-teaming; and staged rollouts from shadow to supervised to limited autonomy.

Workforce shifts follow. Developers become AI application engineers who design prompts, tools and tests together. Architects evolve into platform builders — owning data access, retrieval, and runtime safety. New specialisms appear: model evaluators, AI security engineers, red-teamers, compliance partners, and reliability engineers for AI. Product managers focus on outcomes, not features; analysts and subject matter experts become teachers in the loop.

 Infrastructure grows up: shared data pipelines, search and retrieval stores, evaluation clusters, observability built for prompts and tokens, policy and secrets management, and safe sandboxes where software agents can act. Budgets tilt toward data curation, evaluation compute, and training the people who will operate these systems daily.

 The promise hasn’t faded—it’s just moved. Build the muscle to measure, secure, and operate GenAI, and those flashy proofs quietly turn into valuable products that your organization can trust.

12:45 – 14:00

Lunch Break

14:00 – 14:45

Every Event, Everywhere, All at Once

Domain events, integration events, pivotal events, boundary events… What are these and how do they differ? But it doesn’t stop there: event-driven, event sourcing, event streaming… Are these part of DDD and how do they fit in?

As more and more teams move towards using event-driven architectures, how do you see the big picture without details obscuring your view? In this talk Jacqui will provide a tour of all things “events” – with some terms originating from within the domain-driven design community and others originating elsewhere. Which terms are synonymous? What are the nuances? You will come away with a clear understanding which will help you know when and why to use each of the integration patterns.

15:00 – 15:45

Beyond the Prompt: Building with Agentic AI

AI isn’t just generating text anymore, but entire workflows.

In this session, Mihai will walk through the current state of the art across AI modalities (speech, video, language, and agentic frameworks) with real examples. From open-source projects to emerging tools, you’ll see what’s actually shaping how we build today.

Through a live coding demo, he will demonstrate how agentic systems reason, fail, recover, and ultimately get things done in real time.

Whether you’re a builder, architect, or just AI-curious, this talk will help you think beyond the prompt.

Join this session to see what’s possible today and how you can start building with agentic AI yourself.

16:00 – 16:45

Seeing The Architecture Through Source Code

Many architects and developers see architecture and implementation as two separate things, thus failing to realize the important connection between the two. It turns out that the way source code is structured directly reflects (and impacts) the architecture of a system. In this session, Hands-on Software Architect and Author Mark Richards shows you how to “see” the architecture through source code, and demonstrates the importance of this alignment. He then shows you how to apply source code refactorings to create an effective software architecture for your system that is more maintainable, testable, deployable, reliable, adaptable, and extensible.

16:45 – 17:00

Till next time, Cluj!

All times listed in EET

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Main Partner

Endava

For over 20 years, we’ve used technology to drive meaningful change. By combining world-class engineering, deep industry expertise, and a people-centric mindset, we create digital solutions that drive innovation and transform businesses.
With more than 11,800 Endavans in 70+ cities in 29 countries, we partner with some of the world’s leading companies in payments, financial services, mobility, healthcare, media, and more – helping them evolve, grow, and thrive in a digital-first world.

Expo Partners

Siemens

Siemens is a leading technology company that transforms the everyday of billions of people, with around 311,000 employees worldwide in 190 countries, and a revenue of €72.0 billion in 2022. Siemens helps its customers to increase production and resource efficiency by merging the real and the digital worlds in a continuous flow of data using cutting-edge technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI), edge computing, cloud technologies, additive manufacturing, and industrial 5G technology.
Backed by a 175-year legacy, together with universities, research institutes, academic startups, and tech incubators, our experts conduct excellent research in our Siemens Research and Innovation Ecosystem.
Located in Brașov, Cluj-Napoca and Bucharest, Siemens’ Research & Development activity is represented by Advanta Development and Technology teams. Our experienced scientists, engineers, and software developers work together with PHD students, post docs and partners to shape the future and address today’s challenges with future technologies in a collaborative way, for #DigitalTransformation.
Siemens Advanta Development is involved in the development of hardware, software and automation products and solutions that #TransformTheEveryday.
Our colleagues in the IT Services & Solutions teams provide internal support services for various Siemens platforms. They are also involved in the automated testing and development of applications on Web, mobile or SAP platforms.
Our research and development top-notch colleagues are active in the fields of Electronic Design & Integrated Circuits, Data Analytics & Artificial Intelligence, Software Systems & Processes Innovation and Cybersecurity & Trust.
Our Technology teams are focused on new design methodologies and advanced verification of the implementations made in ASIC and FPGA, analytics and Big Data, IT, Security Software and Systems Innovation, applied research based on computational models and artificial intelligence.
In our research sites in Europe, America and Asia experienced scientists– a sustainable future in which the digital transformation enables us to sustain and enhance the standard of living.
As the most desired employer in the engineering industry in Romania (Catalyst), we look forward to enabling the best future colleagues to shape the future. #BestPlaceToWork #TomorrowWithUs #TeamSiemens

8×8

8×8, Inc. (NASDAQ: EGHT) believes that CX limits were meant to be shattered. We connect people and organizations through seamless communication on the industry’s most integrated platform for Customer Experience—combining Contact Center, Unified Communications, and CPaaS APIs. The 8×8 Platform for CX integrates AI at every level to enable personalized customer journeys, drive operational excellence and insights, and facilitate team collaboration.

We help customer experience and IT leaders become the heartbeat of their organizations, empowering them to unlock the potential of every interaction. With one platform, one ecosystem, and one data model, you can turn every team into a customer-facing team and unify your CX to conquer the complexity.

OpenText

OpenText is a world leader in Information Management, helping companies securely capture, govern and exchange information on a global scale. OpenText solves digital business challenges for customers, ranging from small and mid-sized businesses to the largest and most complex organizations in the world. With the world’s most complete and integrated Information Management platform, we empower our customers to organize, integrate and protect data and content as it flows through business processes inside and outside their organization.

Accesa

Accesa is a leading technology company headquartered in Cluj-Napoca, with offices in Oradea and 20 years of experience in turning business challenges into opportunities and growth.

A value-driven organisation, it has established itself as a partner of choice for major brands in Retail, Manufacturing, Finance, and Banking. It covers the complete digital evolution journey of its customers, from ideation and requirements setup to software development and managed services solutions.

With more than 1,200 IT professionals, Accesa also has a fast-growing footprint, establishing itself as an employer of choice for IT professionals who are passionate about problem-solving through technology. Coming together in strong tech teams with a customer-centric approach, they enable businesses to grow, delivering value for our clients, partners, industry, and community.

Ravers

RWS

Take global content and ideas further. Create meaningful connections with customers through global content and idea management.

Yopeso

Yopeso empowers businesses with tailor-made software solutions and exceptional service. With over 20 years of expertise and 300+ successful projects, we specialize in web and mobile development, UX/UI design, marketing, DevOps & Cloud, quality assurance and BPO services. Our customized approach ensures support from ideation to execution and beyond.

O’Reilly

O’Reilly Media is a leading provider of tech and business learning resources. Their platform offers over 60,000 titles (own publications plus partner content), more than 30,000 hours of video, live virtual events, interactive courses, labs, and sandboxes — all aimed at helping individuals and teams stay ahead in fields like AI, cloud computing, software architecture, security, and more.

Community Partners

Transilvania IT Cluster

Transilvania IT Cluster works at the intersection between entrepreneurship, researchers, innovators, and public administration, pushing forward discussion and action around digital transformation and thus enhancing community development through digitisation.

Founded in 2013 by Aries Transilvania, Transilvania IT Cluster was originally aimed to support employees of member companies in the acquisition process of technical and soft skills, as well as offer a platform of knowledge and training for the implementation of collaborative projects. While this continues to remain an important focus, Transilvania IT Cluster further developed to match the sector development in Cluj – Napoca.

Cluj Startups

IT School

IT career accelerator!
Develop your potential and step into the IT universe!

Juniors

IT jobs for beginners

Innovation Labs

Are you a young visionary that aims to build a tech start-up?
Join us to turn your tech vision into a product through fine-tuned mentorship, access to bleeding-edge technologies and interaction with top companies, mentors and angel investors.

Are you an innovative company looking to connect with the most vibrant innovation ecosystems?
Join the main university-based tech start-up accelerator program in Romania – and be part of a network that fosters innovation, collaboration and digital transformation.

.NET Romania

Community group events (meetups, workshops, bootcamps) focused on Microsoft Technology Stack like .NET Framework, C#, ASP.NET, ASP.NET MVC, ASP.NET Core, Azure, Xamarin, IoT and more.

Media Partners

DevJob.ro

DevJob.ro is the first Romanian IT job board built with Software Engineers in mind.

Our goal is to bring more transparency, openness and diversity to the Romanian IT market.

We want to make the job search process for Software Engineers more enjoyable by gathering all job postings in Romania and presenting them in an informative way.

Our portal is not only for Developers but for everyone working in the IT industry: Engineers, SAP and System Admins, Product Managers, QAs and UX/UI Designers!

Romania Pozitiva

Good things about Romania.

Welcome to the positive information and education platform, RomâniaPozitiva.ro!

TechEvents

TechEvents is a free mobile app that brings together all the important tech events in the industry, with the aim of supporting the harmonious development of the IT community in Romania.

How About Tech

Welcome to How About Tech, your go-to source of valuable insights and innovative ideas in the world of technology. Our mission is simple: to deliver insightful tech news with unwavering objectivity and lightning speed. We understand the need for timely and impartial information in today’s fast-paced tech landscape, and we’re here to meet that demand.

Architecture as Code: Making Architecture Work

Architects often describe their work in diagrams and other visual artifacts, but how can they test to see if the implementation is aligned with the architecture? Architects are expected to not only design new systems, but continuously govern what they’ve already built and ensure that their architecture is aligned with the technical and business environment. This session uncovers a new way to think about architecture—as code. Architecture as Code is a new concept that allows you to describe an architecture through executable source code, therefore allowing you to govern the architecture as well. In this session we discuss numerous intersections of software architecture with all the tendrils of the organization, including implementation, infrastructure, engineering practices, team topologies, data topologies, systems integration, the enterprise, the business environment, and generative AI, defining each intersection using architecture-as-code to verify that the architecture is properly aligned.

The Intersection of Architecture and Implementation

A common saying by software architects is “that’s an implementation detail”. All too often we treat software architecture and implementation as two separate things, where implementation is something that happens once a software architecture is defined. In fact, it’s the other way around: software architecture should be viewed as a first draft, where implementation reveals more details and refinements. In this session Mark Richards discusses the intersection of architecture and implementation and how the two must be in constant alignment to achieve success, demonstrating along the way why architecture is a critical element of any system. Through real-world examples, he shows how implementation can easily get out of alignment with the architecture, causing the system to fail to achieve its desired goals. He then shows some techniques and tools to help ensure the alignment between architecture and implementation.

Old School Still Wins: Engineering Agentic AI from First Principles

Production agentic AI needs more than agents.
It needs structure. It needs boring stuff: observability, modularity, data profiling, and monitoring.
Otherwise, it becomes chaos with a personality, fancy demos that fail silently in production.
In this talk, we’ll show you how old-school software and MLOps principles are the secret weapon for building real, scalable, and reliable agentic systems.
No hype. No buzzword bingo.
Just field-tested thinking and hard-learned lessons from production AI deployments.
What you’ll take home:
* A framework to cut through the noise and think clearly about agentic architecture
* How to debug, observe, and monitor agents like real software systems
* How to avoid the trap of shiny tools and focus on system design that actually works
* A checklist for building agentic AI that doesn’t crash after your first user touches it

Product Lifecycle Management in the Digital Age

In today’s fast-paced, global market, companies must be agile, responsive, and interconnected. A connected Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) environment is no longer a luxury but a necessity. This transformation is powered by advanced technologies such as cloud computing, the Internet of Things (IoT), Artificial Intelligence/Machine Learning (AI/ML), digital twins, and digital threads.

These technologies offer unprecedented opportunities to enhance efficiency, collaboration, and innovation across the entire product lifecycle. However, they also present significant challenges, particularly in terms of system integration and data management. Properly managed, these tools can revolutionize your operations, breaking down data silos and streamlining processes from product conception to retirement.

By integrating these digital tools, experts can transform their PLM systems into robust, dynamic platforms that not only meet but exceed the demands of the digital age.
Join us in exploring how these technologies can revolutionize your PLM strategy and drive a company’s success.

Old Code, New Tricks: AI-Powered Development

AI is transforming the way software is built and maintained, offering new possibilities for understanding, improving, and evolving existing codebases. From code analysis to automated refactoring, AI tools are becoming valuable assistants in the development process.

Whether working with legacy systems or modern applications, developers can use AI to boost productivity, reduce manual effort, and tackle complex coding challenges more efficiently.

Granularity and Communication in Microservices Architectures

When teams adopt Microservices with an understanding of the structure of the architecture, but not of how to get all the pieces to communicate, it is all too easy to accidentally create a distributed Big Ball of Mud. Neal introduces a new measure, the architecture quantum, to help analyze and identify communication boundaries and define static and dynamic coupling. Then, the session provides tools – integrators and disintegrators – to help architects iterate towards the correct granularity for their Microservices for static coupling. Next, for dynamic coupling, architects must understand when to choose synchronous versus asynchronous communication between services, consistency, and coordination to ultimately analyze transactional sagas; this talk describes eight possible sagas and when each is applicable.

Mastering the Madness: Essential Skills for Turbulent Times

Leadership Coach and author Andrei Postolache talks about the attitudes, behaviours and skills that high performance Individual Contributors and Leaders need to succeed in today’s world. Based on his work with hundreds of teams and individuals, he narrows down the essential organizational, communicational and inter-relational skills that truly make the difference.

QA transformation in AI era

During this session, you’ll discover how GenAI is transforming Quality Engineering efficiently and cost-effectively. From summarizing specifications to designing manual test cases, GenAI streamlines early QA activities. It also revolutionizes automation code and test framework architecture.
Join us to see how GenAI makes Quality Engineering faster and easier!

The AI Renaissance: Reframing How We Build Software

Coding has always been more than just writing lines of code; it’s about solving puzzles, creating solutions, and adapting to challenges. But what happens when AI begins to tackle those puzzles as well? How will your role evolve in this new landscape?

As AI integrates deeper into our toolsets and workflows, the real revolution isn’t about simply learning new technologies. It’s about fundamentally changing the way we think, how we architect solutions, and our entire approach to software development. This talk cuts through the AI hype and zeroes in on your growth as a developer.

Discover practical strategies to leverage AI beyond mere automation, unlock untapped creativity, strategic thinking, and problem-solving. It’s time to not just write code, but to reforge it, leveraging AI as a powerful ally in your journey towards mastery.

The Principle Behind Principles

As our industry has evolved through various paradigm shifts, certain fundamental patterns continually emerge despite changing technologies and methodologies. In this keynote, Michael Feathers examines why we repeatedly rediscover similar solutions across decades and propose that there may be one deeper universal principle governing effective software design. Though this singular principle might appear to be an over-generalization, it provides surprisingly good guidance across contexts. Drawing connections between biological scaling laws, human cognitive limitations, and software architecture patterns, I challenge you to look beyond surface-level best practices to understand the underlying forces that shape successful systems. This perspective—discovering the fundamental principle that underlies all principles—could transform how we approach software design challenges at any scale, helping us make more intentional design decisions that withstand the test of time.