Last week I had the chance to be in Athens as a speaker at CityJS Athens 2026. Three months after my first English talk in Berlin, this one felt different — the nerves were still there, but this time they had company: confidence.
The talk
I brought the same session I premiered at WeAreDevelopers — microfrontends at scale: the real lessons from growing a design system and shared libraries across more than twenty engineering teams. Team autonomy versus consistency, evolving components without breaking dozens of codebases, semantic versioning as a contract, coordinated releases, and the governance models that actually work.
Not a perfect success story — a practical look at the failures, trade-offs, and wins of scaling shared frontend infrastructure. The kind of talk built from real experience, which is the only kind I know how to give. If you want the long technical version, I wrote it in this post about engineering at scale.
But the trip didn't stop at the conference
We also organized a Devin x CityJS Athens meetup on October 22 — fully in English — where I got to run a session on agentic development with Devin for the local community. And thanks to an invitation from CodeRabbit, I gave yet another talk during the trip. After Madrid, Berlin, and now Athens, the pattern of this European run is clear: every event opens the door to two more conversations.
The people
Meeting Maximilian Schwarzmüller — one of the most inspiring content creators out there — was a highlight. And sharing again with friends like Néstor López, Francesco Ciulla, Tejas Kumar, and Dan Neciu made the whole experience even better. Conferences give you a stage, but the hallway conversations are what you take home.
Athens itself
And I can't skip this part: being in one of the cradles of civilization was magical. For someone as obsessed with history as I am, walking through Athens and visiting places I had only seen in books is something that's hard to describe.
I left with new friendships, great conversations, a lot of memories — and a few photos I was really looking forward to sharing.
Thank you, Athens.