TechLab by Bol

By Anthony Moendir & Tim BeerenTechnology

TechLab by Bol episodes

October 03, 2024End to End Observability
On 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!

Guests
Connect with Bart Enkelaar:
LinkedIn
Connect with Rob Klein Gunnewiek:
LinkedIn
Connect with Tim Beeren:
Blog
Twitter
Connect with Anthony Moendir:
Twitter

Notes
41 min
September 16, 2024Neurodivergent by Nature, Leader by Choice
What this episode covers
On 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.

Guests
Connect with Lee September:
LinkedIn
Instagram
Connect with Tim Beeren:
Blog
Twitter
Connect with Anthony Moendir:
Twitter

Notes
More information on Neurodiversity:
https://www.instagram.com/neurodivers.show
https://www.instagram.com/youthneurocoach
https://www.instagram.com/hsp_world
https://www.instagram.com/hsptools
https://youtube.com/@psych2go
36 min
September 03, 2024 Distributed Tracing at Scale
Today 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 covers
In 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 Trace. Perfect for developers looking to improve system performance and streamline their debugging process.

Guests
Connect with Rogier Lommers:
• Website
• Linkedin
Connect with Tim Beeren:
• Blog
• Twitter
Connect with Anthony Moendir:
• Twitter

Notes
37 min
August 20, 2024 The Journey of a Google Developer Expert
Ever 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 dives deep into his journey, and will explain lots about the process or preparing for your first talk.
Time for a good coffee, some nice headphones and get ready to feel inspired by the lessons from Ahmed. We loved this one, so we're curious what you think of it! 🎧

Guests
Connect with Ahmed Tikiwa:
• Medium
• Twitter
• Linkedin
• Google Developer Experts Program
• Google Developer Groups
• Upnext: TV Series Manager (Ahmeds Open Source App)
Connect with Tim Beeren:
• Blog
• Twitter
Connect with Anthony Moendir:
• Twitter

Notes
59 min
August 06, 2024Who 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.
Guests
Connect with Tim Beeren:
Blog
X (Formally Twitter)
Connect with Anthony Moendir:
LinkedIn
X (Formally Twitter)

Notes
22 min
April 22, 2024Welcome to our new hosts
It 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.
Guests
Anthony Moendir ; Principal Tech Lead • IT - Tech Enabling – TE
Maybe you know him from the episode: Tech Radar - hard discussions lead to transparency
Tim Beeren ; Software Engineer in IT - Buying Shop Core - S&A Products
Maybe you read his blog on techlab about FrontMania

Notes
The Youtube channel of Anthony for his director experience
The Spotify channel of Tim for his music production experience
30 min
July 15, 2023Discovery for Technical Platform Teams
There are two pillars in this episode. We start with the Technical Platform at bol.com. We'll explore what type of software engineering these teams are working on and what they are trying to achieve for the rest of our engineering community.
The other part is Product Discovery. We try to figure out what problems we are solving in the discovery phase. While doing this we keep our focus on the Technical Platform and try to uncover how these specific challenges are solved.

What this episode covers
The Technical Platform:
What are we trying to achieve by having Technical Platform teams?
Which product are they working on?
How differs their setup from product teams?
Are there other things that are different?
Product Discovery:
What – in general – are we trying to achieve during Product Discovery?
Which problems are we solving?
What roles should be involved to do this well?
How to document those?
What are the questions we ask ourselves during this phase?
How to keep a good pace? The “customers” are facing a problem now and also expect an instant solution.
Is this different for Platform Products?
What aspects need additional attention?
How well do engineers in the Platform Space know the challenges engineers in product teams are facing?
How to get a common understanding of their problems?
We wanted to stay away from discovery techniques as Double Diamond, Triple Diamond, Opportunity Solution Tree, Hypothesis Prioritization Canvas. Let us know if you want a specific episode on these techniques.

Guests
Taco Bakker – Head of Product in our Technical Platform
Onno Ceelen – Group Product Manager Engineering Productivity
You might recall him from his appearance in the episode on engineering productivity roughly 2 years ago.

Notes
The Axle framework is one of the products our platform teams work on.
We use Backstage as our Developer Portal
The Axle framework is one of the products our platform teams work on.
53 min
June 05, 2023Elastic Search to the Cloud
Moving Elastic Search to the Cloud. Elastic is one of the core components of the eCommerce Tech Platform. It powers the search engine as well as other trivial functions. In our own data center it has the biggest footprint.
Time to discuss how the team approached this cloud journey.
What this episode covers
In this episode we want to answer these questions:
How do I transfer my Elastic Search data?
What is Elastic Search migration?
How do I set up Elastic Search on Google Cloud?
Does Google Cloud have Elastic Search?
Is Elastic Search cloud free?
How do I change my Elastic Search storage location?
How do I upload data to the elastic cloud?
How do I back up my Elastic Search data?

Guests
Egbert van der Wal ; Software Engineer in the Buying Domain
Rasjaad Basarat ; Software Engineer in the Buying Domain

Notes
Our Episode on building an FTP server on Rust is mentioned by one of our listeners Colin McAllister in reaction to a post about What are the advantages and disadvantages of using C for FTP server development?
46 min
April 11, 2023DDoS - specific attacks require AI powered washing solutions
If you look at the title of this episode, you might think that we are going to unveil our details about how we protect the bol.com platform against DDoS attacks. We should be clear about this, we just can’t in the current world we live in. But we wanted to talk about this because the solution used is worthwhile sharing. So we double-checked with our security department and verified what aspects we can share; they are interesting enough.

What this episode covers
DDOS protection
For an ecommerce site like bol.com, is this a large problem?
With DDOS protection in place, what did we still miss? What needed to be improved?
Could you give an overview of the solution you came up with?
What sets it apart from solutions that are available in the market?
Let’s look at the data science part
How do we train the model?
Is there a way to validate the model besides just using it in production?
How do we deploy the model?
Or how do we get the configuration for the servers from the model?
How do cloud and DC (data centre) servers work together?
How do we leverage for example the scalability of the cloud?
Cloud load balancer
Cloud armour
Looking back what did we learn about Cloud that can be used in other innovations?
What did we learn about Data Science that can be used in other innovations?

Guests
Barrie Kersbergen – Principal Research Scientist – Data Scientist Recommendations
Was on the episode on the Artificial Research Lab ~Recommendations
Frank Kootte – Product Tech Lead in Shopping/Buying

Notes
Pythorg
AI Platform (Please check)
49 min
March 30, 2023The Buying Drip - A scoop of the 2nd book of Chantal Schinkels
Chantal is on a mission. To make people aware of the buying drip or in Dutch "Koopinfuus". Together with Chantal we dive into this phenomenon and discuss what it is. We find out what the three pillars are that contribute to this drip. We make the connection with Tech. Tech empowers platforms like bol.com to use for the good and bad. Never before it was so important to be aware of this phenomenon and ask ourselves the question how we contribute to this.
And just like her first book, it backed by a lot of research.
The book will be released on the 17th of May and can be pre-ordered.
What this episode covers
We dive into the buying drip (koopinfuus) by asking ourselves the questions:
What is the buying drip? (Koopinfuus)
Is there something in the tech culture in general that's amplifying this?
What are the three pillars:
Marketing Tactics
Brain manipulation
Hyper personalization
How this is used for the good and bad

Guests
Chantal Schinkels - Social tech & e-commerce | Auteur "Het Koopinfuus" & “De IT Girl" | Professioneel Spreker | Columnist | LinkedIn Top Voice

Notes
7 principles of persuasion Robert Cialdini
influence is your superpower
Dark patterns
Earlier Episode/Blog posts:
Women in Tech
Women in tech encourage inclusion in tech
59 min