Devoxx France 2026: Prioritizing People Over Talks

I know, I'm a little late to the party on this one. But since I now do this for most conferences I attend, I wanted to share some of my notes and thoughts about Devoxx France 2026.

Devoxx France is a very different conference because of its size. With 4,500 attendees, 3 days, 14 tracks, and more than 250 talks, it goes far beyond any other technical conference in France. Some speakers only speak at Devoxx, making it the only opportunity to see them.

At the same time, and that's my personal opinion, the size of the conference makes it very difficult to fully appreciate. Once a talk is over, you're running, literally, to the next one, hoping to find a seat. You're always in a rush. You always have FOMO because of the number of tracks, and you can't just take the time to slow down, talk with people, and enjoy the conference. You can quickly fall into the trap of wanting to see as many talks as possible.

This year, I really took the time to chat with people. There were some talks I didn't attend to free up some time. For example, I wanted to go to the Dev with AI meetup on Tuesday night, but I was chatting with some friends, didn't see the time pass, and missed it. That's the law of the conference: you have to make choices.

Please, don't ask me about the food at Devoxx. Just know that I always have some biscuits in my bag.

My Schedule ​

This year, for the first time, I looked at the schedule before the conference. I wanted to get an overview of the general atmosphere of the event. These days, everything is about AI. I open X, I see AI. I talk with friends, we talk about AI. I go to work, we push AI even further. Even with my date, my family, or with people I don't know during a carpool, I talk about AI. This topic is everywhere. Devoxx is no exception.

On top of that, I've spent the last four months writing a talk about the future of developers with Julie.

AI saturates so much of our lives, and I wanted a little break from it. So I decided to focus on human-centric talks.

Here is my schedule for the conference:

1. Wednesday, April 15, 2026
   • L'IA au service du bien commun : Agir avec raison dans l'incertain by Laurence Devillers
   • Les échecs à l'ère de l'intelligence artificielle by Laurent Fressinet
   • Neurodiversité & Tech : vos “profils atypiques” sont votre plus grande force by Amélie Rigano
   • The evolution of Software engineering by Theophane Gregoir
   • La transactionalité expliquée by Benjamin Cavy
   • Et si on débuguait notre rapport au temps ? by Albane Fagot-Veyron
   • De zéro à des milliards de traces, le tracing distribué chez Winamax by Anthony Maffert and Nicolas Fidel
   • Kafka 4, fantastique ? by Damien Lucas
   • CLI-Driven Developer Experience : L'ingrédient secret d'une équipe alignée by Julien Briault
2. Thursday, April 16, 2026
   • Le développeur face à l'IA : du prototypage rapide à la fin des intermédiaires ? by Nicolas Grenié
   • L'IA sur le terrain : l'humain au cœur de la valeur by Marjory Canonne
   • L'ampoule qui en savait trop : voyage au cœur de la sécurité des objets connecté by Paul Pinault
   • Top 10 Event-Driven Architecture Pitfalls by Victor Rentea
   • Transformer son API Doc en levier de conversion : best practices by Anne-Flore Bernard
   • Clean Code Matters by Marc LECANU
   • Les gardiens du Prompt: menaces et recettes de sécurité pour une production zen. by Philippe Laumay and Loïc Gudet
   • Au cœur d'une pipeline: démystifions Vite et ses plugins by Estéban Soubiran
   • Debugging with IntelliJ IDEA by Anton Arhipov
3. Friday, April 17, 2026
   • L'IA au défi de la condition humaine by Jean-Gabriel Ganascia
   • La course à l'IA : La France risque-t-elle de devenir un "territoire servant"? by Loup Cellard
   • Et si on ouvrait le capot de PostgreSQL ? by Benjamin Coenen
   • Et si écrire du SQL redevenait cool ? by Sébastien Ferrer
   • Kubernetes et la JVM by Jean-Michel Doudoux and Alain Regnier
   • Éloge de la simplicité by Frédéric Leguédois
   • Performance de backend Spring : les techniques que tout dev devrait connaître by Florian Beaufumé

I must confess. I could have slept a little during one of the talks. Sorry!

Yes! It's a lot. That could explain why I finished the conference with a headache, feeling tired, and needing to rest alone. But it was worth it.

All replays will be available on the Devoxx France YouTube channel, and I highly encourage you to watch them!

Talks I Loved ​

As usual, some talks really stood out to me, and I wanted to highlight them here.

1. Éloge de la simplicité by Frédéric Leguédois

   That might be the best talk I've seen at Devoxx, all editions included. It's a 45-minute talk, but honestly, it doesn't feel like it. Frédéric doesn't use any slides, and he builds the talk like a theater play, with a lot of humor. Despite the feeling of lightness, the talk goes deep into the current state of agility, the overuse of planning, and the importance of rebuilding our relationship with simplicity. Honestly, you should just watch it.

   

2. Et si on débuguait notre rapport au temps ? by Albane Fagot-Veyron

   It's a deeply human-centered talk, and I loved it. Albane talks about our relationship with time, how we perceive it, and how it affects our daily lives and work. "I don't have time" is a phrase we often hear, or even say, but have we ever taken the time to dive into it? It's really well written and pleasant to listen to. It's already on my watch list.

   

3. L'ampoule qui en savait trop : voyage au cœur de la sécurité des objets connecté by Paul Pinault

   I came to this talk without any expectations, and I had a wonderful time. At first, Paul shows that turning on a light can be just 50 lines of code, before explaining all the prerequisites imposed by the EU in terms of security, privacy, and maintenance, which makes the task much more complex, and therefore much more interesting. The real complexity isn't in the bulb itself, but in the surrounding ecosystem needed to make it compliant. This concrete talk can easily serve as an analogy for any project.

   

My Talk ​

This year, I gave a talk about Vite and its pipeline at a conference called "Au cœur d'une pipeline : démystifions Vite et ses plugins".

It's a 45-minute talk where I explain how Vite works, what its pipeline looks like, and how to write a plugin for it. Through various concrete examples, I try to demystify the inner workings of Vite and show how powerful, yet approachable, it can be when you start writing plugins for it.

I had already given the same talk at MiXiT 2026, and I didn't find the time to improve it for Devoxx. Less than a week is really short to improve a talk. However, a lot of improvements are coming in June, and I'll share more about it on LinkedIn.

You can find the slides of the talk on talks.soubiran.dev.

People First ​

For the first time at a conference, I prioritized people over talks.

I'm convinced that the most valuable part of a conference isn't the conference itself. You can always find talks later on YouTube, so the content isn't exclusive to the event. But I understand the value of attending a talk live: it's a different experience, and it forces you to be more present and focused.

But people, from the speakers who make the conference possible to curious attendees eager to learn, and even to the ones who are just there to discover new things, are the real value of a conference. With the recent rise of AI, where we all tend to interact mostly with machines, it makes it even more important to prioritize human interactions.

So, from the speakers' dinner to the Meet and Greet party, and from sponsors to attendees, I've spent a lot of time chatting. I've discovered their stories, how they got into Devoxx, why they speak at conferences or appreciate the company they work for, the latest news from companies, or simply talking about life. It's also a great opportunity to put a face to the name of people you only know from LinkedIn. And to experience the awkwardness of parasocial interactions.

Through this section, I wanted to thank all the people I had the chance to talk with during the conference. It was a true pleasure, and I hope to see you again soon.

• Lorenzo,
• Octavie and Alexandre,
• Julien,
• Fanny,
• Denis,
• Philippe and Loïc,
• Benjamin,
• Stephen,
• Joan,
• Damien,
• Albane,
• Christophe,
• the Clever Cloud team I had the chance to talk with,
• and many more that I can't remember right now. Sorry, my memory isn't the best.

If you see me at a conference, feel free to come and say hi!

Takima, the company I work for, wasn't a sponsor this year, but they sent three reporters per day to cover the conference. They also sent an engineering manager and a dedicated person to supervise the team, as for some of them it was their first time at a conference, and Devoxx France can be very intimidating.

What's Next ​

May is a relatively quiet month for me, but June is going to be really busy. Gosh, what have I gotten myself into?

On June 11 and 12, I'm going to Lille for the DevLille conference. It will be my first time there, and everyone tells me it's a great conference, so I'm really looking forward to it. I'm going to speak about Vite again, and I saw that I'll be in the grand theater. That's a little intimidating. Similar to MiXiT, I'm going to DevLille with Marion, Elise, and Victoire. Laurine will also join us for the conference! It's good to know that I won't be alone and that I can share this experience with them.

Then, on June 16, I have my talk at Natural Change Leaders Days. I'll talk about agency in a moving world. It's a 100% online conference, so I won't have to travel for this one. This won't be a technical talk, and it will be a new one I have to write. Oh, and you should definitely join us for this 20-day conference. I've never seen a program as good as this one!

Two days later, on June 18 and 19, I'm going to Luxembourg for Voxxed Days Luxembourg. Once again, I'll speak about Vite. It's also a conference I've never attended, so I'm really curious to discover it! I hope to see new faces there! Let's not change a winning team: Marion, Elise, and Victoire will also be there. Damn, are you everywhere?

Finally, on June 27, I'm going to La Défense for the Asynconf conference, organized by Lorenzo. I'll have two talks there, one about Vite and another about signals and frontend reactivity. Looking at the schedule, I'm really asking myself what I'm doing there. Mathieu Nebra, co-founder of OpenClassrooms, Anis Ayari, content creator, AI engineer, and author, are also speaking at this conference. Oh boy, the impostor syndrome is real for this one.

And that's it for June! Once it's done, you won't hear from me for at least a couple of days. I'll need to recover from all of this.

Then, I'll start working on the second part of the year, attending more conferences and on a new big project that I can't talk about yet. Sorry, where do I buy some sleep?

Have I told you about Mirakl?

For now, all lights are green, so slowing down isn't part of the plan.