Connecting web development enthusiasts to share cutting-edge projects

Han van der Veen (Sqills) – Building a Route Planner

Han walked the audience through the challenges of creating a public transport route planner for Swedish Rail. He explained that their system has to handle enormous amounts of data — around 88,000 departures per day and 50 million possible connections — all while keeping performance fast and memory use efficient. His talk dove into the technical side: optimizing memory with clever data structures, reducing object allocations, and using techniques like object pooling. By breaking down these problems, Han showed how engineering decisions at a very low level can make or break the usability of an app that millions rely on for everyday travel.

Filip Ivanov – Weird Flex, But Ok: A Bit About Flexbox Layouts

Filip talked about a subject that frustrates many developers: CSS flexbox. He began with a quick history on how web layouts evolved from simple table-based pages to the complex, responsive designs we expect today. Then he broke down the fundamentals of flexbox, explaining key concepts like flex containers, items, axes, and properties. Using simple visuals, he showed how to align, justify, and reorder items easily. His message was clear: flexbox may look intimidating, but once you understand the basics, it becomes a powerful tool to simplify layout challenges.

Joris Blaak (MoveLab) – Running the Leading Indoor Rowing Championship

Joris offered an interesting behind-the-scenes look at how technology powers major sports events — in this case, a massive indoor rowing championship. With 60+ rowing machines and over 2,500 participants in a single day, the tech challenges are huge. His team’s job was to orchestrate tablets, servers, and sensors to capture race data in real time, stream it to media, and guarantee fair results with millisecond precision. He explained the orchestration system they built using Node.js, Docker, and React, and how they ensured 100% uptime without external dependencies. The talk combined sports and tech, showing how software can turn physical effort into a smooth digital experience.