Shows
TechLab by BolPerformance Testing & Chaos EngineeringJoin us as we explore performance testing with experts Nithya and Marcel from bol. They share insights on ensuring system reliability during peak seasons through chaos engineering and isolated testing. Discover best practices, tools, and strategies to tackle performance challenges and enhance user experience. Tune in for valuable tips from industry professionals!GuestsConnect with Nithya Thirugnanasundaram LinkedIn Connect with Marcel Blok LinkedInConnect with Tim Beeren: Blog TwitterConnect with Anthony Moendir: Twitter LinkedIn Notes2024-10-1528 minTechLab by BolEnd to End ObservabilityOn this episode we're joined by Bart Enkelaar and Rob Klein Gunnewiek as the experts on SRE! This talk will cover lots of SRE principles, insights and innovations within the teams at Bol. Next to that, we've had a lovely chat with lots of laughter. So enough reasons to grab a nice drinks and enjoy the episode!GuestsConnect with Bart Enkelaar:LinkedIn Connect with Rob Klein Gunnewiek:LinkedInConnect with Tim Beeren:Blog TwitterConnect with Anthony Moendir:Twitter Notes2024-10-0340 minTechLab by BolNeurodivergent by Nature, Leader by ChoiceWhat this episode coversOn this episode, Lee September joins us to tell his inspiring story on Neurodiversity and Leadership. He shares his personal journey from engineer to management and how being neurodivergent played a role within this story. From personal growth to being inclusive to anyone. Knowing when to read the room and adjusting accordingly to put everyone in their strengths.GuestsConnect with Lee September:LinkedIn InstagramConnect with Tim Beeren:Blog TwitterConnect with Anthony Moendir:Twitter Notes2024-09-1635 minTechLab by BolDistributed Tracing at ScaleToday we're joined by Rogier Lommers, a Space Tech Lead within Bol who has been working on the roll-out of Distributed Tracing at scale. We'll dive into the initiative and how this currently works in production. Next to this, Rogier shares some insightful tips on how to start.What this episode coversIn this episode, we explore distributed tracing in microservices architecture, covering how it enhances observability and helps quickly identify issues in large-scale systems. We discuss the basics of distributed tracing, practical tips for implementation, and the benefits of tools like Google Cloud...2024-09-0336 minTechLab by BolThe Journey of a Google Developer ExpertEver wondered what it's like being a Google Developer Expert? What does this title mean, and how do you achieve being in this position? What do you day from day-to-day and what are the responsibilities coming with the title?
Today we have a really inspiring guest joining us! Ahmed Tikiwa is a Google Developer Expert for Android and a seasoned full-stack developer with over 10 years of experience and possesses a strong passion for developing world-class applications that can help make a difference.
Next to being an extremely good engineer, he loves sharing knowledge through blogs, talks and podcasts. This episode...2024-08-2058 minTechLab by BolWho are Tim & Tony?Time to kick off the new season of TechLab! Before we dive into cool topics with all our guests, we'd love to introduce ourselves to all of you.
This episode will dive into the introduction of the two new hosts. What is the reason of continuing the podcast, and what is on our minds?
As always, we're super curious on hearing your thoughts! Let us know if you like the new format, or have some cool ideas.
GuestsConnect with Tim Beeren: BlogX (Formally Twitter)Connect with Anthony...2024-08-0621 min
TechLab by BolWelcome to our new hostsIt has been a while, we are back with a very special episode. One we never had before. One we knew one day would come. People were already asking on X “Will there be new episodes of Techlab”. And the answer is: Yes!
As initiators of the Techlab Podcast we produced 118 episodes. Started in 2019 so 5 years ago. And the good news is, Techlab Podcast will continue!!!! In this episode we will explain more about this.
GuestsAnthony Moendir ; Principal Tech Lead • IT - Tech Enabling – TEMaybe you know him from the episode: Tech Radar...2024-04-2229 minTechLab by BolTech Radar - hard discussions lead to transparencyThe Tech Radar is a tool to inspire and support Engineering teams at Bol.com to pick the best technologies for new projects; it provides a platform to share knowledge and experience in technologies, to reflect on technology decisions and continuously evolve our technology landscape. Based on the pioneering work of ThoughtWorks, our Tech Radar sets out the changes in technologies that are interesting in software development — changes that we think our engineering teams should pay attention to and use in their projects.What this episode coversWe will answer questions like:What is...2023-03-0954 minTechLab by BolTech Culture Month and the Tech Culture ManifestoIn the introduction mail, it said: “Having a culture in which we all can thrive, is one of our most valuable assets. To celebrate and cherish our unique tech culture, we are organizing events throughout the month of June. ”
From Meetups to Games, from Tech talks to sessions with the IT management and most important of all, interactions. That's in brief Tech Culture Month.
We hope to inspire you to have one yourself or participate in these tech community-building events.
What this episode coversWe discuss Tech Culture Month.What is Tech Culture Mont...2022-08-2638 min
TechLab by BolEngineering Productivity and BackstageEngineering Productivity
With the growth of our engineering community, the need for more focus on engineering productivity is clear. We invited two experts to discuss this topic with us. We actually got to this point when one of our listeners pointed out one of the products we are using for this and how awesome a topic that would be for our podcast.
Backstage
The product he was referring to, is Backstage.What this episode coversBackstage is a platform for developer portals that is used as an app store for tools for software engineers...2021-08-2347 minTechLab by BolOutside perspective on the edges of autonomyHow interaction resulted in a guest appearance
“We like interactions and feedback”, that’s what we say in our outro. The guest of our show reacted to one of our podcasts earlier this year. We reached out to him and invited him to the podcast.What this episode coversWhy? Because it’s good to look in the mirror. Check our stories with the outside in view. And that’s exactly what we are going to do in this show. Getting the outside perspective on the edges of autonomy.Discussed Items on the edges...2021-07-2355 minTechLab by BolPredict the UnpredictableHow Data Science supports us to predict the unpredictable
Just like for any store, forecasting is an important tool to support the business and its profitability. At bol.com we have worked on several major iterations of our forecast. One of the hosts worked on a large leap in forecast performance over 8 years ago. You can check some another leap we have made while listening to our podcast episode from May 2019 - nom more crystal ball for forecasting, Data Science it is.
In this episode, we explore how we have improved on that one.What this episode...2021-07-1548 minTechLab by BolWhy would you build an open source FTP server in Rust?Why build an open-source FTP server in Rust?
Sometimes, I must admit I’m a little dazzled by all the languages, frameworks and stuff our engineers work with. So, when our guest of today explained to me some of the intriguing aspects of the language we will be discussing in this episode I had to stretch my mind a little. I managed and could follow his explanation.What this episode coversAnd I found a great topic for this podcast.In the episode, we explore the Rust programming language and our first op...2021-07-1145 minTechLab by BolThe Podcast GuestWho is the Podcast
.Guests?This will be a bonus episode. Maybe not that tech-related but instead you will listen to a very energetic, passionate and inspiring person: The PodcastNotes2021-07-0150 minTechLab by BolCuriosity is the common denominator for our Business AnalystsWhat is the key competence of our business analysts (BA)
We talked about domain knowledge, tech affinity and building bridges between stakeholders and software engineers. Sometimes the business analyst is almost seen as a project manager. Aligning with product owners is key in this role.What this episode coversEvery business analysts within bol.com fills in this role differently but about one thing they are very clear; for our business analysts curiosity is key.Time to dive into this BA role. We see this role as a key to success in...2021-06-2546 minTechLab by BolMaximize cloud benefits
Next level leveraging cloud computing
We moved 70% of our services to the cloud and new services start in the cloud unless... Time to dive into a topic brought up by our tech leads. Want to know how you can maximize your cloud benefits?
Alexandra wrote a blog post on Horizontal Pod Auto-scaling, HPA.What this episode coversIt triggered us for this episode.Maximizing cloud benefits can be done in many different ways. For this episode, we dive into auto-scaling. Cloud computing brings great features for scaling up and down based on...2021-06-1643 minTechLab by BolA lot of tech people are leadersWriting an article is reflection, publishing it is getting feedback
Learning from our colleagues. That is important to us. So, we were delighted when we found another great piece of this on LinkedIn, Elinore shared.
to inspire others who are thinking of transitioning from tech into a leadership role or are just curious about my experiences and thoughts.
The transition from tech into a leadership role is actually a very hot topic and not only within bol.com.What this episode coversWe learn this from the job interviews when candidates ask us about...2021-06-0348 minTechLab by BolThe 5th anniversary of the Spaces SummitFrom how it was born to what it is now in 45 minutes
One of the things that make us really proud about working in Tech at bol.com is our annual Space Summit. Our internal tech conference by developers for developers. And maybe you can recall we had quite some interesting episodes, blogs and videos about it and some of the talks given there in the last 2 years.
This year is a special edition! We celebrate our 5th anniversary!!
In June 2018 Peter published an article on Linkedin with the subject: “What happened to me today? After the Spaces Summit of th...2021-05-2746 minTechLab by BolData Maturity and Data LiteracyData Maturity Model as common ground, Data Literacy Model to measure the level of speaking, writing and reading data
To state as a company we want to become more data-driven is the first step. To truly understand what this means and define a common ground to discuss the progress is the second.
Back in the eighties, the Capability Maturity Model was defined to develop and refine software development processes. Later on, many more Maturity Models were introduced like the Business Maturity Model, the Lean Maturity Model and Agile Maturity Model.What this episode covers...2021-05-0545 minTechLab by BolThe data-driven approach to supporting products with KPIs and OKRsSupporting products with KPI's and OKR's
We had previous episodes on how bol.com is moving to a product organization. In this one, we’ll dive into how to measure the success of these products and set objectives for them. Including measuring whether we are getting the desired results.What this episode coversBeing the data-driven company that we want to be we asked our data people to help us to get the right KPI’s for all our product and support the products in defining proper OKR's.Data availability should never be an e...2021-04-2246 minTechLab by BolFather & Son into ITEvery time I look at you. I see myself.I'm so proud of you.For you help make me what I am.A better man.I'm just so proud of you.~ Lyrics by Alain Clark
A special episode comes with a special opening. In February we had an extraordinary occasion during our onboarding.What this episode coversFather and Son in the same 'virtual room. Father started as Software Engineer in the bol.com security department and son started as... Software Engineer in the security department, doing his final intern assignment.We...2021-04-1634 minTechLab by BolSoftware engineers on Duty - so you sleep well at nightThe why and what of our Software engineers on Duty
Let's be honest about this, nobody likes to be woken up at night to react to an alert whether it's a text- or whatsapp message, (automated) phone call or traditional pager. But every company taking his 24/7 run seriously has to organize their on call duty in a scalable and sustainable way. Initially bol.com organized it in a traditional way, meaning a team of system engineers with different specialism took care of the duty.What this episode coversOnly a couple of years ago...2021-04-0144 minTechLab by BolWhat you should know building a Tech Lead communityDon't miss our story of the introduction of the Tech Leads
During the podcast, you will find out what Tech Leads are and why we need to build this community of Tech Leads at bol.com. You will learn how we approached this and avoid hiding the Tech Leads in ivory towers. The two tech leads and an IT director share best practices and pitfalls (and what we learned from them).
The Why and What of our Tech Lead Community
Tech Lead Community
Why did we start to define the role?
What is the Tech Lead for bol.com,
Responsibilities
...2021-03-2644 minTechLab by BolApplied Improv in BusinessIntroduction
Peter is very honest in this episode (the stage is not the place he is really comfortable at) and Peter Paul is sharing his first experience with Improv (is it a small trauma Peter Paul?).
So time to talk about Improv, Improvisation Theatre and applied Improv because we do want to learn about it and we are really curious how this relates to our Tech Community.
Our guest Burgert prepared this along with these main topics Mindset, Skills, Culture, Structures and Who benefits.
Mindset - Relates to the Improv Manifesto
Making your partner look good over making yourself look...2021-03-0243 minTechLab by BolGoogle Assistant - The potential of brand recognitionIntroduction
In July 2019 we had our first podcast episode on voice and Google Assistant. Back then Marieke and Marvin introduced us to the future of interaction by voice. In this episode, we dive into the potential of brand recognition.
Many people in The Netherlands will recognize the voice we use in our commercials on radio, television and social media as the voice of bol.com.What this episode coversThe value of this brand recognition is the starting point of the journey to get this voice into the Google Assistant. By doing so we...2021-02-1843 minTechLab by BolThe YP Bookclub - Never Split the Difference
Introduction
Another week another book discussion. Maybe we can start a second Techlab Podcast dedicated to interesting books? We got some great responses on the last week’s episode about team topologies and we had a good opportunity. So it is time for the Never Split the Difference - Podcast.
In earlier episodes, we talked with YP’s about their side projects (behind the mask - platform for the hospital to share experiences and Real-time sales dashboard), about the YP program itself and participating in competitions, the BAPC2020.
This time we sit together with representatives of the YP program because they...2021-02-0444 minTechLab by BolTeam Topologies a DSL for organizational design
Introduction
A lot of people involved in the design and structuring of organizations could learn a lot from the book Team Topologies. Our guest describes it in the episode a Domain Specific Language (DSL) for organizational design and evolution. The header of the website and the subtitle of the suggest that it is the way for organizing business and technology teams for fast flow.
In the episode, we discuss the 4 kind of teams and the 3 ways of interactions between these teams that are at the core of Team Topologies.What this episode coversBesides...2021-01-2650 minTechLab by BolTypeScript, where we love strict
Introduction
It sparked in the episode Interactive heavy applications we should record a podcast episode on TypeScript. Around the same time, we came in contact with Hackages. A company focusing on learning tech.What this episode coversTime to bring the engineers together and dive deeper into TypeScript.Typescript is mentioned amongst the 5 most promising languages in 2020.We talk about:What is typescript and how do you benefit?What are good implementation strategies?Bol.com examplesExamples from HackagesMaturity in the usage of TypescriptGuests...2021-01-2253 minTechLab by BolGraphQL - start but start small
Introduction
We want to share our approach to IT to learn and entertain you. In this episode, we are happy to have an external guest at the table discussing with our internal guest.
GraphQL stands for Graph Query Language and is used for interacting with services from the frontend. We are talking about API's here.What this episode coversExplore with us the possibilities this approach has to offer and how it could even help you to speeds up innovation in the front-end.Like our guest mentions:GraphQL is a specification...2021-01-1343 minTechLab by BolBAPC2020 - Olympic spirit or serious business?Introduction
No rhythm like algorithms. We have been talking in the podcast about programming contest before. For example, about our own Spaces Championship and Advent of code, which also takes place at the end of the year.What this episode coversToday we’ll be talking to some participants in the BAPC - The Benelux Algorithm Programming Contest.Like stated on the website of BAPC, it is a contest in which about 90 teams from leading universities in Luxemburg, Belgium and The Netherlands participate. The teams have to solve a series of algorithmic pr...2021-01-0431 minTechLab by BolThe Storybook storyIntroduction
It happens a lot that listening to a podcast sparks new questions. So, after our episode on Front-End quality, we wanted to know more about Storybook. This coincided with some people reaching out to us to collaborate in the podcast.What this episode coversAnd look where we are now: creating a new podcast on this subject. We asked our selves the question: Could it be the holy grail for front end development?Topics discussed:What is Storybook?What problems does it solve?How does it support app development?What...2020-12-1846 minTechLab by BolService Mesh - a must have for a dynamic infrastructureIntroduction
Weaving a Service Mesh for Multiple Clusters at bol.com - that was the title for the presentation our guests gave during the virtual KubeCon and CloudNativeCon 2020 earlier this year. This triggered our curiosity. We have questions like what is this service mesh about? Why do we need it? How did we implement it?.GuestsRemco Overdijk; Tech Lead Provisioning Fleet / Expert System Engineer at bol.com. You might know him from the episode where we spoke about Kubernetes.James Brook; Cloud Solutions Architect at GoogleNotes2020-12-0351 minTechLab by BolReal Time Sales - In 100ms from sales to dashboardIntroduction
One of the purposes of this podcast is to share our unique bol.com culture with you. Traditions play an important part in culture. So, in this episode, we share a view on the evolution of a tradition.What this episode coversA tradition that underlines our focus on data. In this sales season, everybody in bol.com wants to know how we are doing, preferably Real-Time. With the latest version of the Real-Time Sales dashboard, our guests managed to get the information within 100ms from sales to the dashboard.If...2020-11-2534 minTechLab by BolTo become official F/OSS committer and eventually PMC memberIntroduction
In this episode we are sharing something that is unique at least in the Tech Community here at bol.com. To become official F/OSS committer and eventually PMC member. Without spoiling too much, I think this contribution will make a positive impact far beyond the bol.com Tech landscape and serve in an enormous number of companies. Helping engineers all over the planet.What this episode coversHoping to inspire you as well to become official F/OSS committer and eventually PMC member.Our guest is the first bol.com...2020-11-1945 minTechLab by BolProof data consistency in a micro service landscapeIntroduction
Even if it doesn't appeal to you, you might want to think about it when you work in a larger microservice landscape or have a serious big data platform...Proof data consistency in a microservice landscape. When we google this subject I already get 1.2 MLN results so there’s something going on here.
To ensure data consistency several practices are available:
Saga Pattern
Reconciliation
Event Log
Orchestration vs. ChoreographySingle-Write With EventsChange-First
Event-First
Consistency by Design
Accepting Inconsistency
But in this episode, we won't go over these practices.What this episode coversWe will di...2020-11-0648 minTechLab by BolFront End Quality in an interactive-heavy applicationIntroduction
In this episode, we show a little of our front-end love. And our love for testing and enjoying the quality of a good front-end. It was time for that because the last time we talked about front end related stuff was quit some episodes ago.What this episode coversWe are going to talk about Front End Quality in an interactive-heavy application.First, we discuss two statements/dilemmas:Testing is always balancing. Time vs. Quality: How much time to spent on getting all the cases (interactions) and edge cases clear...2020-10-2841 minTechLab by BolBehind the Mask - Young Professionals contributing to the online platform for healthcareToday we take a look behind the mask. The moment we recorded this podcast episode the 2nd wave of Corona is hitting The Netherlands. In the first wave, the Corona crisis was causing a lot of pressure and stress on our healthcare system and nurses & caretakers specifically.
With a couple of IT Young Professionals, we are helping a great project called “Behind The Mask”. It is a joint effort of UMC Utrecht, TU Delft and Erasmus MC.What this episode coversThe project aims to help nurses maintain mental and physical health by providing an online...2020-10-1931 minTechLab by BolLet's get Ethical"This is how we do IT", is the slogan of our Techlab site and podcast. Every now and then we reach out to external guests to learn from them and exchange ideas. We are really happy to have this external guest in our show to talk about "Let's get ethical".What this episode coversThis multi-talent released her book ‘De bubbel’ mid 2019 after 15 years at Google, Spotify and Booking.com. She writes columns for the Dutch newspaper FD. One of those was the reason for me to reach out and invite her to the show...2020-10-1256 minTechLab by BolSociotechnical Architecture to maximize impactIn this episode, we touch a field that we don’t explore that much, Architecture. To be more precise: Sociotechnical Architecture to maximize impact. In a way, it's strange since Peter Paul has worked as an architect for quite a while.What this episode coversOn the website of our guest, esilva.net, it's called “co-design organizational and technical systems to maximize impact”. We think there is so much to explore in these words Sociotechnical Architecture so we asked Eduardo to join this show.(Image: https://cdn.sanity.io/images/qxrxmo3r/tech...2020-09-2453 minTechLab by BolMoving to multilingual, first step WalloniaBonjour ! Félicitations messieurs, il y a seulement deux semaines, que le bol.com application multilingue est disponible dans les app-stores.That's how we started this episode. Congratulate our guests with the launch of the multilingual bol.com app. It was launched in the French-speaking part of Belgium, Wallonia.What this episode coversWith this launch, over 5 million French-speaking Belgians were able to shop in their native language.In this episode, we dive into this move to multilingual that started two years ago. After the 'why' and 'when' we go into the...2020-09-1646 minTechLab by BolSite Reliability Engineering; that's music to my ears!Site Reliability Engineering, or SRE, is seen by a lot of people as the next logical step in developing DevOps capabilities. SRE takes concepts from software engineering and puts them to use in an operations context. Over the last 3 years, we have been experimenting with SRE approaches and gradually integrating them into our DevOps way of working.What this episode coversIn this episode, we share the experience we gained on our journey.GuestsBart Enkelaar; Software Engineer and SRE advocate in bol.com and external speaker and...2020-09-1047 minTechLab by BolShifting gears to maximize your personal productivityWelcome back after the summer holidays! Hope you were able to enjoy an awesome break. We took some time to prepare some great podcast episodes for you.
Holidays, always a nice moment to reflect on things. One of the things might be your personal development and productivity.What this episode coversSaying yes to too many things, do these things add to my personal development, how do you keep track on all these commitments, how do you ensure you don’t drown and eventually don’t be productive at all. Sounds familiar to you thes...2020-09-0351 minTechLab by BolSimulation, building the digital twin of our warehouse on experimentsIn this episode, we take another look, a fresh perspective on Data Science for Logistics. In earlier episodes, we talked about related topics like Forecasting and crafting a Picking Algorithm using Data Science.
With the guests of this episode, we dive into two specific challenges in the warehousing domain, the cost-based selection is the first one and the second is put-away with simulation as the red line.
During the recording, we found out that our guests have a big dream: realizing the Digital Twin of the bol.com fulfilment centre. But at the same time, they are very practical and...2020-07-2943 minTechLab by BolLooking back at 55 episodesWe changed roles for this unique episode. And why is that? We are going to look back on the first 55 episodes. So, Peter Paul and Peter will be the guests of this show and Niels Kuiper and Bruno Lauwers will be your host.
Our motto is 'sharing is caring'.What this episode coversSo, practise what you preach and share the podcast journey as well. That was what we had in mind. We share how it all started over a year ago. We dive into the learnings and memorable moments. We were asked about...2020-07-1638 minTechLab by BolLove your loggingWhen it comes to developing software we use the adagio: You built it, You run it, You love it. Same should hold for all the -ilities or non-functional requirements. So, one should love their logging.
One of the subjects that we did not really touch yet in our podcast is non-functionals.What this episode coversToday we take a closer look at logging. An aspect that typically fills some of the non-functionals or -ilities. Love your logs and Love the people after you.For the first time in the history of the...2020-07-0949 minTechLab by BolGreat products are build on a great Product ArchitectureToday we explore our product architecture. We have been talking with Jim van de Waal about product organizations. We spoke to our Agile at Scale friends about product organisations and Agile at Scale. Now it is time to talk about the foundation to build these on.What this episode coversWe call this the product architecture.We believe that a lot of companies are in the same transformation. Years ago we dealt with a 'monolith architecture'. We transformed this architecture in a 'microservices architecture'. And now it's time for the next logical...2020-07-0248 minTechLab by BolWomen in tech encourage inclusion in techUpdate 11th march 2021
This week started with the International Womens Day. #ChooseToChallenge #IWD2021
We wanted to start a new experiment so that's why we started the experiment with this episode.We want to add automated transcription to our posts. Podcasts are a great way to share knowledge but unfortunately people who are deaf or hearing impaired are excluded.What this episode coversThat is not what we want.IntroductionOnce again we are sharing our diversity and inclusion stories. We discuss how women in tech at bol.com encourage inclusion...2020-06-2445 minTechLab by BolInnovation Rhythm - How to drink less coffee and achieve moreEver since we recorded the podcast about Agile @ Scale, we wanted some of the people involved again in our show. We care about the topic. Think there is a lot to tell and learn.What this episode coversAnd it is of interest to a lot of our listeners. That is why at least we think it is awesome that this episode is about Innovation Rhythm - How to drink less coffee and achieve more.In the first Agile@Scale episode we talked about the 'Why' of Agile@Scale, the flight levels...2020-06-1740 minTechLab by BolHow is life with Jim van der Waal - Product Manager at OnefootballAlmost a year ago we spoke to Jim van der Waal, a former colleague and now working as a Product Manager at OneFootball. Back then he had just delivered his presentation: “Scary close to autonomous teams” during the Spaces Summit 2019.
Recently Jim posted a range of blog posts, with topics like:
Product Owner vs. Product Manager: what is the difference?
Making SLO’s fast
Product Teams: striving for Autonomy & reaching for Business Agility
Which triggered questions like: Would the teams be fully autonomous now? How are things with Jim? What did Onefootball discover and learn this year?.G...2020-06-1038 minTechLab by BolDealing with stress in the tech sectorIn this episode, we are exploring a topic that is definitely work-related but not that tech-related: Dealing with stress in the tech sector. At bol.com we have at least twice a year an employee engagement survey. Some of the questions are about how the workload is perceived.What this episode coversIf you look at the results they differ per domain. So, context is very important. As is being pressured by deadlines.Our guest reached out to us with the following message:"For all of us working in the tech sector...2020-06-0341 minTechLab by BolSpaces Summit goes virtual - Organising our internal tech conferenceSpaces Summit in corona time means Spaces Summit goes virtual. Maybe you remember from last year that we have an annual internal tech conference at bol.com. Given the measures, in place, we can’t come together.What this episode coversSo, we go for a digital online equivalent. We wanted to know what it takes to organise an event like this?But we found out there's an even more important step before. It's getting the answer to the question "what are we going to do?" Many people and organisations who are or...2020-05-2832 minTechLab by BolUsing Data Science for Marketing AttributionThe topic of this show is exactly why we like to be the hosts of this podcast. We learn a lot about all areas in our business. In this show, we dive into the marketing domain.What this episode coversWe will learn about models like multi-touch, lift studies, time decay, and more. We talk about Data Science for Marketing Attribution.Put simply, marketing attribution is the analytical science of determining which marketing tactics are contributing to sales or conversions. And then there is a Data Science twist to this.2020-05-2047 minTechLab by BolOpening our Data Treasure Chest with TableauTurning to business analytics this episode, we discover it’s a broad field. Business Intelligence hasn't been discussed that much yet in our podcast. So, we are excited to learn more.What this episode coversIn an earlier episode, we discussed moving our Big Data platform to the cloud. This blog is described how we move our data platform into the cloud.What tools do we need to get the data out and have all our users use it to their advantage? One of the tools is Tableau and together with our gu...2020-04-2344 minTechLab by BolPython for Tools, Data Science and moreLet’s look at another programming language we use at bol.com: Python. At bol.com we use Python for Tools, Data Science and more. It has been around since 1991.What this episode coversIt was created by a Dutch guy: Guido van Rossum. Its design philosophy emphasizes code readability. The language's core philosophy is summarized in the document The Zen of Python (PEP 20), which includes aphorisms such as:Beautiful is better than ugly.Explicit is better than implicit.Simple is better than complex.Complex is better than complicated.Readability counts.All we...2020-04-1540 minTechLab by BolCovid-19 Trilogy Part III - Adapting our way of workingCovid-19 rules the world, so it determines the subjects for our podcast. Just like others, we moved from studio recording to home recording. Basically working from home (WFH) and adapting our way of working.What this episode coversSo we think it’s time to spent three smaller episodes on this subject as well and share our experiences.We build up a trilogy which will cover the following subjects:Episode Office Automation: creating the prerequisites for WFH. A peek behind the screen of our Office Automation hero’s. Sharing how they prep...2020-04-0833 minTechLab by BolCovid-19 Trilogy Part II - Season Load and season mindsetCovid-19 rules the world, so it determines the subjects for our podcast. Just like others, we moved from studio recording to home recording. Basically working from home (WFH).What this episode coversSo we think it’s time to spent three smaller episodes on this subject as well and share our experiences.We build up a trilogy which will cover the following subjects:Episode Office Automation: creating the prerequisites for WFH. A peek behind the screen of our Office Automation hero’s. Sharing how they prepared and showed their contribution in thes...2020-04-0629 minTechLab by BolCovid-19 Trilogy-part I - How Office Automation set the prerequisites for WFHCovid-19 rules the world, so it determines the subjects for our podcast. Just like others, we moved from studio recording to home recording. Basically working from home (WFH).What this episode coversSo we think it’s time to spent three smaller episodes on this subject as well and share our experiences.We build up a trilogy which will cover the following subjects:Episode Office Automation: creating the prerequisites for WFH. A peek behind the screen of our Office Automation hero’s. Sharing how they prepared and showed their contribution in thes...2020-04-0223 minTechLab by BolChaos Engineering - every incident is a missed experimentChaos engineering... mostly in IT we are focused on structure and order. So, what is it and what can it bring?
We go over the steps:
Start by defining ‘steady state’ as some measurable output of a system that indicates normal behaviour
Hypothesize that this steady-state will continue in both the control group and the experimental group
Introduce variables that reflect real-world events like servers that crash, hard drives that malfunction, network connections that are severed, etc.
Try to disprove the hypothesis by looking for a difference in steady-state between the control group and the experimental group.
....2020-03-0434 minTechLab by BolCrossfit - fit for life and fit for purposeLike the Romans already said: Mens sana in corpore sano. A healthy mind in a healthy body. One sentence in an article from one of our colleagues triggered us: "Prepare for the unknown and unknowable". We really wondered, how does this help him in his daily job? We talk about crossfit.What this episode coversAbout ring musle-up or a handstand push-up. Of course we relate it to our daily practise. How do you benefit from it in your job and even in making career decisions. We talk about the value of the community an...2020-02-2736 minTechLab by BolUtrecht JUG - Test Architectures & Hacking into Java web appsWe take a sneak peek into the Utrecht JAVA User Group (JUG) Meetup next week, February 24th. Topics will be: are End-to-End test architectures a Dead End road? And there will be some live hacking: Breaking into your Java web app. This will really give a feel for the importance of security.What this episode coversBesides that, we discuss with one of the founders of the Utrecht JUG why it's so great to be part of a community. He explains the great initiatives like for instance the Speaker Incubator the JUG...2020-02-1932 minTechLab by BolPerformance testing the chat appWith only a few weeks to go to our peak season, we wanted to ensure that the chat app on our webshop was performing up to par. An important part of our customers' questions is answered via this chat app. You can feel the importance of it to be able to handle a load of questions during our peak season.What this episode coversBoth our customers and our customer service experts couldn't be let down.Given the short notice, we asked Ymor to help us with their knowledge and experience to...2020-02-1237 minTechLab by BolPostgreSQL - Migration and PerformanceThis episode has 2 subjects: PostgreSQL migration and performance. The two guests of our show will present during the PostgreSQL User group meetup at bol.com which started shortly after this recording. The topic of the meetup is introduced as PG ConfEU - The Dutch talks..GuestsMartijn Dashorst – a software engineer for over 20 years and has worked with various databases over the years, including DB2, Oracle, Sqlserver, SABDB and PostgreSQL. As a Java (enterprise) developer, he has worked in the education sector for over 12 years and developed student information systems for each of th...2020-02-0537 minTechLab by BolExperimentation - it starts with courage and curiosityThe two guests of our show work in our experimentation team. They set a target at the beginning of 2019: Our goal is to help hundreds of people at bol.com to run experiments (more effectively). So after a year of experimenting, we are very curious about what they learned and achieved.What this episode coversLet’s find out!GuestsDenise Visser; Product Manager and Experiment evangelistMaarten Zwart; Software Architect and data enthusiastNotesMeasuring 2.0 podcastMeasuring 2.0 at Berlin Buzzwords2020-01-2935 minTechLab by BolThe Spaces Championship - our code competitionIt was briefly mentioned in our episode on Advent of Code. We also started an internal Coding Championship. Spaces Championship.What this episode coversLet’s dive into this and find out what it is all about.From our personal experience, we know that is easier to train and improve when we are in a competition. Could it be that the same mechanism is here at work too?Let us know when you think we should open-up this competition externally as well, goto Linkedin, mailto: techlab@bol.com or twitter us...2020-01-2329 minTechLab by BolEverybody is a UX ResearcherIn this episode, we talk to Marieke and Tadeusz since we were intrigued by the title of their meetup presentation: Everybody is a UX Researcher. Since we didn't consider ourselves a UX Researcher before we wanted to know more about the subject. And we wanted to find out if being a UX Researcher could also improve our daily professional lives.What this episode coversAnd in the end, we actually think it can. Hope you enjoy the talk too.GuestsIn an earlier...2020-01-1732 minTechLab by Bol10 takeaways from KotlinConfA group of Kotlin enthusiast joined KotlinConf back in December last year in Copenhagen. We invited this group to share their learnings for this conference. Two of the participants are sharing their takeaways from KotlinConf with you.
Our first podcast was about the adoption of Kotlin at bol.com.What this episode coversHope you will also enjoy this episode and our second season.GuestsCas Plattel; Software Engineer in the Fintech domainOscar Spruit; Software Engineer in the Apps domain2020-01-0834 minTechLab by BolAdvent of Code 2019The subject of this podcast episode is totally in line with the holiday season. Time for the advent calendars in many different formats. One of these formats is the Advent of Code 2019!
The bol.com Tech Community is participating in this event.What this episode coversIn this episode, we talk with 2 participants and discover what it is all about. We explore what it could do. Our software engineers see it as a good way to sharpen their problem solving and a good exercise for the upcoming bol.com spaces programming championship. Some become real...2019-12-1926 minTechLab by BolDealing with Technical Debt - an experimentOne of the aspects that keep popping up in software development: Technical Debt. Some created on purpose, for example, to get features into production fast. Some just came into existence...
So, what is Technical Debt? And how to fight it. According to the definition* it can be compared to monetary debt.What this episode coversIf technical debt is not repaid, it can accumulate 'interest', making it harder to implement changes later on. A couple of weeks ago George approached us and said, it might be an interesting topic to discuss because in...2019-12-1032 minTechLab by BolHow we tame Google Cloud resources with R2D2How we tame Google Cloud resources with R2D2. We had some episodes on the cloud already. Now it’s time to discuss how bol.com combines the promises of the cloud and their requirements for Reproducibility and Reliability.What this episode coversFor instance, balance infinite resources and ultimate autonomy with security.Within bol.com we developed R2D2. R2D2 stands for our Reproducible Resource Deployment Definition tool which combines the functions of Terraform, Cloud SDK and Puppet Labs.It helps us to ensure Recovery, Security, Self-service, Stability an...2019-12-0441 minTechLab by BolHackathonThe angle for this episode of our podcast is hackathons. At the time of the recording, there was one going on in our headquarters in Utrecht. What is a hackathon? Why do we organise them? And we talk about some of the initiatives at the current hackathon.
The results of the hackathon were showed during the demotime a week after the hackathon.What this episode coversOut of the 20 projects the jury came up with a top 3 and handed over the cup.Demo Time - Jury handing over the First Price!...2019-11-2728 minTechLab by BolYoung Professional ProgramIn this episode, we talk about growing talent. We dive into how we approach this as bol.com in our Young Professional Program. Also called YPs.What this episode coversOn our recruitment web site, we call this “the IT journey of a lifetime”. Is that just marketing or is there more to it?GuestsBojan Filipovic; software engineer in team Bond, in the content fleet. Just graduated from the young professional program.Martin Cekodhima; software engineer in 4B – financial processing – even sexier than Bond. It's FinTech in an e-com...2019-11-2034 minTechLab by BolThe state of Reactive StreamsThe state of Reactive Streams - watch the presentation and listen to the podcast. International Keynote speaker Oleh Dokuka gave a presentation on the state of Reactive Streams at bol.com. We took advantage of this opportunity and interviewed him for the podcast.What this episode coversThe Reactive Streams specification is state of the art for asynchronous, non-blocking data streams with the fine-grained flow control. Clearly, that was done for a good future... but, does it have any future nowadays? How other programming ecosystems reacted to the appearance of the reactive-streams standard and di...2019-11-1437 minTechLab by BolWomen in TechThis episode is on women in tech. Our guests are two speakers at the upcoming European Women in Tech Conference later this month in Amsterdam. To be honest, if we look at the hosts of this podcast and if we look at our guest list of the past episodes...What this episode coversIt is still a subject that requires attention.In an earlier episode we talked about diversity in terms of cultural aspects and in this episode we might find out what the women/men diversity brings into tech. At least that...2019-11-0732 minTechLab by BolUX Research to support the partners on our platformIn this episode, we talk about User Interfaces (UI) and User Experience(UX). Since this is a very visible topic, everybody has an opinion on it. Even though I’m not working on our webshop I get unsolicited feedback on a regular basis.
Where a lot of the UX Design discussion focuses on our webshop.What this episode coversWe choose another focus for this episode. The UI that is not common to most of our users but is very much needed for a large part of our 23.000 plaza partners. The Seller DashboarD or SDD in...2019-11-0132 minTechLab by BolThe Road to DevoxxIn this episode, we talk about a way to be inspired and inspiring others, learn from each other and grow your network: Conferences! And more in detail our colleague's road to Devoxx Belgium 2019.
At bol.com we are challenged to present our stories inside and outside bol.com. Inside bol.com we have our great Spaces Summit and meetups, Outside we speak at several conferences. That seems more challenging to a lot of colleagues.What this episode coversEspecially if it is a conference of 5 days, over 200 speakers and sessions and over 3200 attendees. And ou...2019-10-2335 minTechLab by BolPrepare for the most wonderful time of the year - Season ReadinessIn this episode we dive deeper into the IT aspects of a business topic. How to prepare for the peak load of the season – Black Friday, Sinterklaas, Christmas and even Singles Day is included. That is traditional a period where the load of basically everything increases dramatically.What this episode coversThe slogan of the Season Readiness project that is preparing for all this is “Deliver careless holidays for our customer”.During this period every piece of the puzzle must fit. When load triples items like scaling, reliability, page load-times, predictability, up-times and se...2019-10-1634 minTechLab by BolSmall Web AppsOur Small Web Apps or SWAPs, in short, are something like the SOA for Front-End. We aim for separate deployable parts of the Front-End we have available for our Plaza partners, suppliers and internal users.
In the Front-End we also encountered that we had teams waiting for each other before they could bring functionality to Pro. Basically, because the Front-End became a monolith.
Besides that, people realized that we needed to deliver the same functionality in different Front-Ends.What this episode coversFor instance content management for our internal product managers and for our ex...2019-10-1037 minTechLab by BolAPI development for the retail platformIn this episode of the podcast, we talk about API development for the retail platform. A very important subject for a retail platform like bol.com. Given that we are a platform we have a lot of partners to interact with.What this episode coversTo do that in a neat way we need APIs. And as a platform, we are multi-sided so we have to offer different APIs for different groups of users. So a lot of interesting aspects to cover.Guests...2019-10-0340 minTechLab by BolRedesign for the cloud – horizontal scalingWe think "the Cloud" is to broad a subject to handle in one episode of the podcast. That is why we break down our cloud journey in small pieces and go over them in separate episodes. This time we dive into "Redesign for the cloud – horizontal scaling".What this episode coversIn an earlier episode we discussed how we moved our Big Data to the Cloud, in the Cloud as an enabler to becoming more data-driven.When moving applications and services to the Cloud we think about redesigning them, like in this ca...2019-09-2633 minTechLab by BolCoaching - more impact with Human Systems EngineeringIn this podcast, we talk with two of our coaches in tech about making an impact on the performance of teams and people. The reference they use to do this is called Human System Engineering.
In bol.com we have different types of coaches with different focus areas. Outside tech, or bol.com wide so to say, we have coaches for careers, personal coaches and SPARK coaches.What this episode coversSPARK is our holocracy/network way of working.Burgert joined bol.com recently and was asked to reflect on what he...2019-09-1133 minTechLab by BolMeasuring 2.0 - Streaming measurementsThe big question in this episode is “How can we create 10 million personalized webshops? Tailormade for every one of our customers so it suites their needs best?” In short, the answering is Measuring 2.0.
This enables us to measure more accurately how customers are behaving in our webshop. This enables to give them a more personalized experience.What this episode coversWe are aiming for a feedback loop of 1 second. So 1 second after and action was performed by a customer in our webshop the data is available for service that handles personalization and recommendations. These service...2019-09-0633 minTechLab by BolFormule X - Accelerate your organisationIn this episode of the podcast, we talk about accelerating organisations. We invited Jurriaan Kamer and Rini van Solingen to our studio. They recently launched their book - Formule X - Hoe zorg je voor extreme versnelling in je organisatie - at bol.com. The English version, How to reach extreme acceleration in your organization, will be available before the holiday season.What this episode coversThe subject of the book how to accelerate your organization is closely related to many subjects we talked about in our podcast series. For instance Agile at Scale...2019-08-2939 minTechLab by BolInteraction Design - Celebrate FailureWhere do we learn most in our lives? When things that we do succeed, or when we do stuff and they don't turn out how we expected? They "fail". Exactly, we can learn a lot from our failures. How does this relate to Tech? Or, to be more precise, how does that relate to the design of the webshop? And how do we know if we succeed or fail, is it a gut feeling or do we learn through structured research?
In this episode, we explore the theme of success, failure and learning together with Tadéusz Siudak.What...2019-08-2137 minTechLab by BolTesting in autonomous teams - speed is everythingTesting in autonomous teams - speed is everything
The role of testers has evolved in the last decade. Test automation has become the norm. So, testers have grown more towards developers.What this episode coversWhat are the skills they need to succeed? With the rise of autonomous teams and product teams, more and more tasks of testers moved to other roles like developers. What knowledge must be spread over these roles to ensure that we can release to PRO without fearing what will happen?And there have been other evolutions like...2019-08-1435 minTechLab by BolCloud as Enabler to become more data drivenCloud as Enabler to become more data-driven. The adjective data-driven means that progress in an activity is compelled by data, rather than by intuition, personal experience or a gut feeling.
Googling data-driven gives you over 637 mln. results so time to add an extra result to this with this episode.
But we wanted to make it more specific.What this episode coversWe moved our big data into the cloud and we got some nice insights that we wanted to share. We asked our two guests of this episode to do so.It...2019-08-0734 minTechLab by Bol'OK Google.....' - the future of voice is here'OK Google.....' - the future of voice is here. Everybody with a Google Assistant on their phone or with Google Speakers installed uses this command more and more. It’s even used by radio DJ’s to make fun and just shout out commands to see what’s happening.What this episode coversAnd you know when people start making jokes with it, it’s becoming a success. There is a future for interaction by voice. Time to talk about this success with our two guests who were part of the team that introduc...2019-07-3130 minTechLab by BolAgile at Scale - Reality is complex, don't expect simple solutionsAgile at Scale. Ever since we started our journey into Agile and scrum, we have been wondering whether we were on the right path for business and IT agility. Way back when we were with 7 scrum teams scaling wasn’t the most important issue.What this episode coversWith our growth came challenges for scaling our agile way of working. We have been on a few plateaus where we were searching for the next step, as have been other companies on the same venture. Today we talk about some of the things we learned al...2019-07-2433 minTechLab by BolAudiobooks - How to introduce the Netflix for reading?As podcast makers, we are very happy that we can talk about a subject that is very close to ours. In this episode, we talk about one of the recent product launches. The launch of audiobooks.What this episode coversBesides the already existing “all you can read subscription” we developed an Audiobook subscription together with Rakuten Kobo.In the world that is dominated by pictures and movies the book itself and reading are under pressure. But we also see that the audience for listening on demand is growing if you look at t...2019-07-1729 minTechLab by BolSoftware Parade; the fun way to create an overview of hundreds of applications in Neo4JOne of the challenges in a (micro-)service landscape is to keep track of all capabilities in the services. Another is to keep track of the consumers of your service and the consumers beyond. Taking our IT landscape as an example: we work with over 120 teams on over 850 different applications varying from services, GUI’s, services, data builders and other types of applications.
In an environment like ours, it’s crucial to understand what applications we have, what functionality they offer and who are working on them.What this episode coversIn the past, the...2019-07-1033 minTechLab by BolScary close to fully autonomous teams at OnefootballThis is a special episode of the bol.com Techlab Podcast. It’s recorded on at our own Tech Conference the bol.com spaces summit. Directly after Jim gave his presentation about 'scary close to fully autonomous teams at Onefootball' we interviewed him.
We had a great presentation at Spaces Summit with the Title: “scary close to fully autonomous teams”.What this episode coversWithin bol.com we strive for autonomous teams because we believe that we will go faster, are more agile and we have more fun. But it is also great to hear f...2019-07-0326 minTechLab by BolSpaces Summit 2019 - Part IIThree years ago, a group of enthusiastic engineers gathered together during the Friday drinks. They wanted to interact more in the growing organization. Learn more from each other by sharing cool stories.What this episode coversThe plan for a bol.com tech summit was born, they called it Spaces Summit.Three years later the 3rd edition in succession is organized by a dedicated team of committed engineers. It’s the 13th of June and the Techlab Podcast team is on the Spaces Summit 2019 location to give you an impression of the Spaces...2019-06-2731 minTechLab by BolSpaces Summit 2019 - Part IThree years ago a group of enthusiastic engineers gathered together during the Friday drinks. They wanted to interact more in the growing organization. Learn more from each other by sharing cool stories.What this episode coversThe plan for a bol.com tech summit was born, they called it Spaces Summit.Three years later the 3rd edition in succession is organized by a dedicated team of committed engineers. It’s the 13th of June and the Techlab Podcast team is on the Spaces Summit location to give you an impression of the Spaces Summ...2019-06-2021 minTechLab by BolCultural Diversity - It all starts with yourselfIn this episode, we touch upon a cultural aspect of Tech within bol.com, Cultural Diversity. Over the last couple of years, our international community especially in IT in bol.com grew from 5 in 2014 to 120 in 2019 out of a total of 450 people in Tech. As a former Dutch company, you can imagine that this brings a lot of potential and it also has its challenges.
In the week of the 21st of May, the World Day of Cultural Diversity, bol.com celebrated this with Cultural Diversity Week.What this episode coversFor us a...2019-06-1235 minTechLab by BolAxle the opinionated support for bol.com scrum teamsIn this episode, we talk about Axle. Axle is our internal framework for building Java-based applications. Well actually as you will learn in this episode it is not a framework.What this episode coversIt is an opinionated approach to building Java applications like Spring Boot is an opinionated view of the Spring platform and third-party libraries so you can get started with a minimum of hassle.Since internally we use the same thing for cross-cutting concerns like logging and metrics these all come out of the box when using Axle. Besides...2019-06-0634 minTechLab by BolPerformance boost the pick algorithm in the warehouseIn this episode we dive into the world were e-commerce becomes physical. We talk about the bol.com Fulfilment Center (BFC). Within these centres, we have several challenges and one of these challenges has to do with the picking algorithm.What this episode coversThe pick algorithm determines the route in a warehouse that is performed to pick all the products for a set of customers.As bol.com we have very high volumes of products that we must send from our warehouses to customers every day. So, it makes sense to...2019-05-2935 minTechLab by BolImprove the customer journey with Intent Recognition and Conversational AnalyticsIn this episode, we talk with Daniel and Emiel, software engineer and product owner in the customer support domain. In this domain, the focus is to help our customers in the best way possible. But what if we can prevent the customer to feel the need to contact bol.com in the first place, they asked themselves.What this episode coversThey realized this can be possible using the analyses of the various customer interactions we have via the Chatbot "Billie", live chat, phone and email.For these analyses, they introduced techniques...2019-05-2333 minTechLab by BolFrom zero to PRO: Using GO @ bol.comIn this episode we talk about GO. Go is not a language that is used the most at bol.com. That’s is Java, together with Kotlin.What this episode coversIn 2014 it was introduced for the first time and reached a steady but not so big user group. Recently, along with the move to the cloud, we experience a second wave of adoption. When you listen to the stories our two enthusiastic guests share in this episode, you might even believe Go is the future.Guests2019-05-0732 minTechLab by BolNo more crystal ball for forecasting, data science it isAs long as retail exists, people tried to predict the future. An accurate forecast makes it much easier to buy the correct amount of products from suppliers, know what you need to keep on stock and even know what the sales will do with specific promotions.
Over the last couple of years, this domain changed dramatically because of the introduction of Data Science and Artificial Intelligence. In this episode, we chat about this changing playing field to share our experiences with you.
.GuestsHarmen PrinsErick Webbe2019-05-0731 minTechLab by BolOur Kotlin adoption journeyKotlin was first used by our teams a couple of years ago. It had an interesting start that shows how we adopt technology in general. In different feature teams a group of software engineers explored their own use cases for Kotlin.What this episode coversSome very enthusiastic, some a bit more skeptical and eventually they found each other. A new community in bol.com was born, the Kotlin community. In this episode we talk about this journey, the use cases, the adaption and the impact on frameworks that we use in our feature t...2019-05-0223 minTechLab by BolIntroduction to our upcoming bol.com Techlab podcast episodes"Welcome to the bol.com Tech Podcast. In this podcast we share our experience with you to learn and entertain. Peeking behind the screens of IT and Tech in general at bol.com. Showing you our approach to IT, e-commerce and retail platforms."
This is our opening sentence of the upcoming episodes of the bol.com Tech podcast.In this introduction episode we like to share with you:What is this podcast about, why did we start it and why should you listen to it?
We hope that you enjoy the podcasts as much as we enjoy the creation of...2019-05-0112 min