Signal · two days on what actually shipped
6-7 January Rotterdam
Sixteen talks from people describing systems they built and run, including the parts that went wrong. No keynotes from anybody selling anything, and every talk published free a fortnight afterwards.
Day one
The full programme, published before you are asked to pay for anything. Day two runs the same shape.
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09:00
Doors, coffee
The foyer opens an hour before the first talk, deliberately. Nobody has ever complained about a conference that started slowly.
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10:00
What we got wrong migrating 40 billion rows
Ilse Bergkamp, Alto Freight
A migration that took three attempts, with the timeline and the invoice for each one.
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11:15
Observability that somebody actually reads
Tomás Ferreira, Ostara
Cutting four hundred dashboards to nine, and what happened to time-to-detect afterwards.
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12:30
Lunch
Included in every pass, eaten at long tables rather than standing up with a plate in one hand.
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14:00
Running a database you did not choose
Marta Kowalczyk, Verity Health
Inheriting a system nobody documented, and the eighteen months of making it safe.
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15:15
The cost of a millisecond
Sanne de Wit, Northbank
What latency is worth in money, measured on a real payment flow rather than modelled.
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16:30
Open floor
Speakers stay in the hall and take questions properly, rather than in a corridor while packing a laptop.
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18:00
Dinner, for anybody who wants it
At cost, booked separately so nobody pays for a dinner they will not attend.
What you will leave with
Three things, and none of them is "networking opportunities".
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Numbers you can quote
Every speaker brings the figures from their own system — latency, cost, failure rate — and the slides are published with them. You can take those to your own review on Monday.
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The failures, in detail
Half of the programme is post-mortems. We ask for them explicitly, and a talk that is only successes does not get a slot.
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Four people worth knowing
Two hundred attendees, not two thousand. Small enough that you will actually speak to the person whose talk you liked.
Speaking
Eight of the sixteen. The rest are announced as they confirm — we do not list a name until it is signed.
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Ilse Bergkamp
Alto Freight
Head of data. Migrated the same system three times.
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Tomás Ferreira
Ostara
Engineering lead. Deleted four hundred dashboards.
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Marta Kowalczyk
Verity Health
CTO. Inherited a system nobody had documented.
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Sanne de Wit
Northbank
Payments. Measures latency in currency.
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Otto Lindgren
Fieldmark
Platform. Runs the on-call rota he designed.
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Priya Raman
Independent
Writes post-mortems for companies that will not publish them.
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Bram Jansen
Maritime Data
Twenty years of shipping telemetry, mostly offline.
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Lea Fournier
Ostara
Reliability. Believes most alerts should be deleted.
Passes
The price rises six weeks out and again two weeks out, and that is the whole of the urgency. The clock in the bar counts down to a date that is printed on the ticket; nothing on this page pretends the last twelve seats are going.
Standard
Both days, everything included.
€340
Enquire about a pass- Both days, all sixteen talks
- Lunch and coffee included
- Recordings a fortnight afterwards
- €390 six weeks before the doors
Usually sells first
Standard plus workshop
And the Thursday morning session, limited to thirty.
€520
Enquire about the workshop- Everything in Standard
- The pre-conference workshop
- Thirty places, first come
- Materials to take away
- €580 six weeks before the doors
Supported
Free, funded by the other two and by sponsors.
Free
Ask about a supported place- Forty places every year
- Travel covered up to €200
- No means test and no interview
- Applications close a month before
The Maritime Hall
Fifteen minutes from the station, and step-free
Two halls, a foyer wide enough to have a conversation in, and a tram stop at the door. Step-free throughout including the stage, with a hearing loop in both rooms. Three hotels nearby hold rooms for us until four weeks before at their own rate — we take no commission and the link is not an affiliate one.
Getting there