SaaScraft Cologne. . . wunderbar!

Thursday. October 10, 2024 - 2 mins

Earlier this evening, I attended the inaugural SaaScraft event at the ilert office in Cologne. It was the first event on this German stretch of the 2024 Autumn business bumble, and the farthest from home. . . by ~200 meters. After 813 miles of travel over two weeks, an evening of Generative AI, pizza, and conversation was warmly welcomed. . . as was I by the lovely folks in attendance.

The evening started with an introduction to Generative AI for software engineers by Juri Wiens. It was much deeper than a high level overview, and a superb introduction, which was a relief. Sometimes sessions like these are too high level to be useful, but in this instance it was well judged. There were lots of tidbits to layer on to existing knowledge, and I’m looking forward to working through the references within the slides on my return journey.

The second session came from Chris Fröhlingsdorf, ilert’s very own CTO. He took the audience through the journey that the team have been on over the past 18 months in incorporating generative AI into their product. I’d have liked to learn more about the transition period from low context window models into todays large context windows, however I ended up chatting with other attendees and didn’t get to ask the question. Regardless, the talk really showed the benefits of the product, and I came away with a good understanding of when to reach for it.

If I’m honest, the go to reaction when I’m told this kind of AI is incorporated into a product is to balk at the idea. More often than, it’s done very poorly.

Not this time.

Here the integration is really well considered, gracefully executed, and clearly a value add. Whilst this isn’t an area of development I’ve ever needed to worry about, many of the people around me at the event had and they were also very complementary. I feel like many other companies have a few things to learn from this implementation, and the team should be shouting from the rooftops about it.

Overall it was a great meetup, and given it was the first in the series, there’s lots of potential here. If you’re in the area, you should check it out. And if you need straight forward uptime monitoring, but with a built in helping hand, ilert offers a product you should seriously consider.

10/10. Würde ich empfehlen.