· de makersfabriek, zwolle, overijssel
Meetup No. 6
pastFrontier Experience
- Rio Kierkelswhat-s-in-the-boxabout this talk
What really happens inside an AI agent, and how to start experimenting with one yourself, with practical tools that extend what it can do.
In this talk, we’ll open the box and explore what it takes to experiment with AI agents, understand how they work, and extend what you can do with them through practical tools.
The session will unpack the building blocks behind agentic workflows and reveal what is really happening “inside the box.” Whether you’re curious about AI agents or eager to start experimenting yourself, you’ll leave with a practical introduction, fresh insights, and plenty of ideas to build on. What’s powering it all? You’ll have to attend to find out.
programme - Marc Buma & Susanne Pieterseback-to-the-future-building-a-rag-powered-vr-time-machineabout this talk
Walk through Utrecht in 1528 in VR and ask a guide about the monuments around you. How the RAG pipeline behind it answers from archaeologists’ texts without making things up.
Imagine stepping into the streets of Utrecht in the 1500s. Now imagine having an all-knowing guide who can answer any question about the monuments around you.
We built a browser based VR application that gives users a 360-degree historical view of Utrecht on their phone or in a VR headset, where they can ask questions about the monuments around them. The answers are generated using Retrieval Augmented Generation, combining spatial context from the 3D environment with historical texts written by archaeologists.
In this session we will show how we built this time machine using Spring Boot, Ollama, Docling, LangChain4J, React, Typescript, cloud based LLM and LangChainJS. More importantly, we share what we learned while building the RAG pipeline: extracting text from archaeological reports, chunking sources in meaningful ways, improving retrieval quality, preventing hallucinations, and engineering context-aware prompts in the frontend.
After the presentation you can visit Utrecht in 1528 and the following centuries yourself and talk to our guide!
programme
Programme
$ devpulse meetup --no 6
thu 3 sep 2026 · de makersfabriek, zwolle · 2 talks · this evening has passed
Two talks from the frontier: what goes on inside AI agents, and a RAG-powered VR time machine of Utrecht in 1528.
- doors opende makersfabriek, zwolle
- dinner
- talkwhat-s-in-the-box --speaker "Rio Kierkels"
- talkback-to-the-future-building-a-rag-powered-vr-time-machine --speaker "Marc Buma" --speaker "Susanne Pieterse"
- drinks
The talks.
· talk
What’s in the Box?
Rio Kierkels · Head of Infrastructure Engineering at Tribe AI
What really happens inside an AI agent, and how to start experimenting with one yourself, with practical tools that extend what it can do.
In this talk, we’ll open the box and explore what it takes to experiment with AI agents, understand how they work, and extend what you can do with them through practical tools.
The session will unpack the building blocks behind agentic workflows and reveal what is really happening “inside the box.” Whether you’re curious about AI agents or eager to start experimenting yourself, you’ll leave with a practical introduction, fresh insights, and plenty of ideas to build on. What’s powering it all? You’ll have to attend to find out.
· talk
Back to the Future: Building a RAG-Powered VR Time Machine
Marc Buma · Industrial, IoT and blockchain application development
Susanne Pieterse · Java Engineer specializing in GenAI & AI-Driven Systems | iSAQB Certified Software Architect | Microsoft MVP
Walk through Utrecht in 1528 in VR and ask a guide about the monuments around you. How the RAG pipeline behind it answers from archaeologists’ texts without making things up.
Imagine stepping into the streets of Utrecht in the 1500s. Now imagine having an all-knowing guide who can answer any question about the monuments around you.
We built a browser based VR application that gives users a 360-degree historical view of Utrecht on their phone or in a VR headset, where they can ask questions about the monuments around them. The answers are generated using Retrieval Augmented Generation, combining spatial context from the 3D environment with historical texts written by archaeologists.
In this session we will show how we built this time machine using Spring Boot, Ollama, Docling, LangChain4J, React, Typescript, cloud based LLM and LangChainJS. More importantly, we share what we learned while building the RAG pipeline: extracting text from archaeological reports, chunking sources in meaningful ways, improving retrieval quality, preventing hallucinations, and engineering context-aware prompts in the frontend.
After the presentation you can visit Utrecht in 1528 and the following centuries yourself and talk to our guide!
Where.
- venue
- De MakersfabriekCeintuurbaan 15, building ZF (Het Ketelhuis)Zwolle, Overijssel
- getting there
- Park on the De Makersfabriek grounds: enter the old Philips terrain via the McDonald’s. Walk to building ZF (Het Ketelhuis), past ZWINC, and turn left at the polar bear. The entrance is at the back of the building.directions
Speak at DevPulse
$ pwd /devpulse
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