2026 / After the seminar
What people took away from SDLCAI.
Participant reflections, speaker posts, company follow-through and constructive criticism from the conversation around the seminar on 13 October at Marsio, Aalto University.
Compiled through
These are English paraphrases of selected LinkedIn and Bluesky posts, comments and follow-ups, with links to the originals. Finnish material is summarized in English. Some LinkedIn discussions may require sign-in; links to a parent post or containing thread are labeled accordingly.
The collection is a qualitative sample of visible reactions. Authors can appear more than once, and speaker, sponsor and institutional relationships are stated alongside their contributions. It is not a satisfaction survey or a count of independent endorsements. Reported experiments and discussions do not establish measured business impact.
Follow-up discussion and website feedback have their own categories; they do not establish seminar attendance or programme feedback.
01 / Social mentions
What participants took away, from testing and human understanding to organizational change.
Participant; no speaker/sponsor relationship established
Post
Detailed Finnish reflection on organizational settings, documentation, acceptance criteria and enforced agent boundaries; advocates measuring idea-to-production time, rework, quality and customer impact; recommends the recording.
Participant reflection, summarized from Finnish.
MuniFin; participant
Post
Highlights autonomy between human approval gates, clear problem descriptions, validation and automated testing; thanks speakers and organizers.
Participant reflection on quality and accountability.
SOK; participant
Post
Appreciated testing and quality throughout the talks; took several pages of notes back to his team and organization; valued discussions and networking.
Reports plans to apply the learning; implementation and resulting benefits have not been established.
Participant; no speaker/sponsor relationship established
Post
Compares AI adoption with remote work: individual efficiency can harm organizational outcomes when implemented poorly; appreciates academic perspectives.
Participant reflection on organizational effects and the research–practice mix.
CTO and AI transformation advisor; participant
Post
Praises the programme from business intent through production and maintenance; discusses moving bottlenecks, broader contributions, code understanding, discovery and leadership.
Participant reflection. A further comment on curation appears below.
Participant
Post
Praises the talks and Sini's message that software development fundamentals matter more with AI.
Event-day reaction. Mikko Vaha adds a qualification about engineering fundamentals below.
Participant
Edited post
Adds reflections about decentralized AI, people as creators, care for people and human understanding of code.
This summary covers the addition made after the seminar; the opening of the post was written before it.
Participant
Edited post
Highlights Mo's automotive analogy and the need to rethink processes through Lean principles.
Event-related reflection. The discussion also includes comments from Anna Kholina and Ville Takanen.
Poster presenter / participant
Post
Praises organization, presentations and conversations; describes his recommender-systems poster and shares its materials.
Participation as a poster presenter is explicit.
SOK; participant
Post
Reports insights and ideas to develop at SOK.
His reported 20+ pages of notes cover both SDLCAI and SOK’s AI conference. His slide criticism is included below.
Fractional agentic engineering CTO; participant
Post
Praises organization, conversations and Mo's presentation, but reports no new ideas for an experienced practitioner; criticizes text-heavy slides and AI-factory hype; discusses costs, verification, review queues and changing roles.
A mixed assessment from an attendee. His praise of one talk coexists with criticism of the programme; his impressions of other attendees are a personal account.
ModernPath; participant
Post and linked interactive synthesis
Created a thematic synthesis of the ten presentations with Claude, mapping agreement and possible points of debate; praises the presentations and discussions and reports useful ideas for the ModernPath team.
A participant-created interpretation made with Claude, rather than a speaker-approved transcript. Measured business outcomes have not been established.
Participant with Wonna; technology-sponsor connection disclosed
Post
Would choose SDLCAI over WeAreDevelopers after attending both; values the research–practice mix, varied talks matching their descriptions, absence of unexpected sponsor pitches, manageable scale, food, networking and a ticket under €100; hopes the seminar returns.
Participant assessment with a sponsor connection. The conference comparison reflects her personal experience. Summarized from Finnish.
02 / Social mentions
Speakers and their institutions reflect on their contributions and the discussions around them.
Theodo; keynote speaker
Post
Uses Lean and automotive lessons to discuss bottlenecks; advocates observing real work and measuring flow, outcomes and customer value; thanks organizers and audience.
A speaker’s own reflection. The discussion by Theodo colleagues is listed separately below.
Nokia; speaker
Post
Appreciates talks without unnecessary hype; highlights Kaizen, Five Whys, AI communities, plan reviews and developer oversight of broader contributions.
A speaker’s own reflection.
Speaker
Post
Describes challenging Q&A about non-engineers contributing to a production codebase; praises the seminar, panel and several other talks.
A speaker’s account of audience debate; it does not by itself validate the approach presented.
Elisa; speaker
Post
Praises talks, discussions and organization after presenting regulated-domain adoption; hopes the event becomes annual.
A speaker’s own reflection.
Aimbition cofounder; speaker; brand-sponsor affiliation
Post
Praises sharp audience questions and conversations.
A speaker’s own reflection, alongside a related post by her company Aimbition.
Siili Solutions; speaker
Post
Connects his presentation to the Agentic Probe paper and thanks participants for discussions of agentic discovery and engineering.
A speaker’s research-to-practice follow-up.
GPT-Lab, Tampere University; keynote speaker
Post
Describes valuable industry–academia conversations and ideas to bring back to GPT-Lab.
A speaker’s personal account, covering the same contribution as GPT-Lab’s institutional recap.
Tampere University; speaker's institution
Institutional recap
Summarizes Waseem's keynote on understanding, review, system safety, architecture and learning as code generation becomes cheaper.
An institutional account of its own speaker’s contribution.
Seminar speaker
Post
Praises the organization and fellow speakers; reflects on shipping changes to large brownfield production systems at agent speed while preserving quality, and reports that other teams converged on similar foundational principles.
Speaker reflection. The post does not establish measured evidence of unchanged incident rates.
Theodo; keynote speaker; author of the reflection above
Video post
Publishes the first excerpt from “1978: The Last Good Year”, contrasting automation investment with improvements to the production system and relating the analogy to AI adoption in software; announces further excerpts.
Content follow-through from the speaker already represented here. Further excerpts were announced but have not been verified.
03 / Social mentions
Company accounts, event-day notes and reported activity after the seminar. Sponsor relationships are stated with each author.
Main / epic sponsor
Company post
Says the event delivered grounded, practical and honest discussion; highlights controlled non-engineer contributions, plan reviews and measured productivity; hopes for another edition.
The company was the event’s main sponsor.
Technology sponsor; participating company
Company post
Reports two skills under development the following day: quiz-me helps developers maintain application understanding; review-index identifies material for human review. Praises curation, conversations and free content.
The company reports that most of its staff attended. These are reported experiments; measured long-term benefits have not been established.
Brand sponsor; Sini's company
Company post
Emphasizes independent checks, accountability, lead time, change failure rate and cost per accepted change.
A company post related to cofounder and speaker Sini Tistelgrén’s reflection.
Wunderdog CEO; main-sponsor affiliation
Post / live notes
Discusses measured versus perceived productivity and plan reviews.
Event-day notes from the main sponsor’s CEO; the afternoon notes are a separate entry by the same author.
Wunderdog CEO; main-sponsor affiliation
Post / live notes
Discusses production validation and engineering controls enabling non-engineers to contribute.
A continuation of the morning notes by the same author.
Wunderdog technology lead; main-sponsor affiliation
Post
Says Mo's and Ohans's talks resonated with daily work, solutions and hurdles; mentions meeting people and the sponsor table.
Event-day presence is explicit; the author works for the main sponsor.
Wunderdog CEO; main-sponsor affiliation
Post
Reports a facilitated Friday discussion of SDLCAI findings: abstraction in pull requests and technical-design / architecture quality. Recommends continuous adjustment as tools change.
Reports a company discussion after the seminar. Measured delivery improvements have not been established.
04 / Social mentions
Questions about the examples, terminology and engineering assumptions discussed during the day. Sachin Kundu’s mixed overall review is also included in participant reflections.
No event affiliation established
Comment
Questions a slide's portrayal of roles, sequential work, late testing and output tracking rather than shared outcomes.
Attendance is unverified. The photographed slide presented a simplified current-practice baseline, rather than recommending late testing.
SOK
Reply
Agrees with Anssi's concerns and says the slide's problems were why he photographed it.
This specific criticism coexists with his positive overall reflection. The slide presented a simplified current-practice baseline, rather than recommending late testing.
SOK
Comment
Observes that engineering fundamentals have always been challenging.
A participant’s qualification about longstanding engineering challenges.
No event affiliation established
Comment and author reply
Jokes about a refund / false advertising because deployment checks mean the example was not really vibe coding; Viljami replies about code the author cannot read.
Attendance is unverified. The exchange reads as humour; no actual refund complaint was established.
05 / Social mentions
Responses to individual talks, including feedback from a confirmed remote viewer. Attendance is qualified where it could not be established.
Professional viewer; no event affiliation established
Comment
Recommends Mo's session after watching through YouTube.
Explicitly describes watching the session through YouTube.
Vaisala
Comment
Praises Mo's energy and insight; Mo confirms they spoke afterwards.
Mo’s reply corroborates that they spoke after the talk.
Aalto University
Comment
Praises Mo's perspective; Mo confirms meeting him.
Mo’s reply corroborates that they met at the event.
No event affiliation established
Comment
No event affiliation established
Reply
Singles out the visuals in the discussion under Anna's comment.
Attendance has not been independently established. The link opens the containing comment thread.
Iiwari
Comment and follow-up
Praises Viljami's examples and internal communication excerpts; suggests a longer version.
Feedback on the talk; the link opens the parent post.
No event affiliation established
Comment
Briefly praises Sini's talk.
Attendance has not been independently established. The link opens the parent post.
Speaker
Comment
Says Viljami's presentation provoked questions and that people listened carefully.
A speaker’s observation of audience discussion; the link opens the parent post.
Participant
Comment and reply
Praises Mo's message and slides; thanks him for answering questions and keeping the talk entertaining.
This praise of Mo’s talk coexists with the author’s mixed overall assessment. The link opens the parent post.
SOK; Head of Developer Experience; seminar attendance unverified
Post
Uses Joongi Shin’s talk on generative interfaces to ask whether future services should prioritize humans or AI agents; connects it with a separate SOK AI Conf presentation and considers changes to service interaction.
Reflection on a programme topic. Attendance and recording viewing are unverified. The SOK AI Conf material comes from a separate event.
Organizing team; thanked in Ohans’s post
Comment
06 / Social mentions
Ideas offered in the discussion about possible future gatherings.
Lead software engineer; no event affiliation established
Comment
Praises the academic–practitioner mix; asks for teams measuring AI's whole-delivery effects, and expresses interest in meetups.
Seminar attendance is unverified.
Lead software engineer
Follow-up reply
Proposes real codebases, real review queues and numbers at the end of a hands-on day; offers to bring practitioner cases.
Seminar attendance is unverified. This is an offer of a possible contribution, not a confirmed commitment or announced event format.
07 / Social mentions
Short event-day reactions and participation signals.
Wonna; technology-sponsor affiliation
Post
Enthusiastic praise for morning talks and interesting encounters; shares the stream with some event-day humour.
A brief event-day reaction from an affiliated participant.
Sevendos; states group connections to Aimbition and Wunderdog
Post
Praises gathering, talks and discussions; expresses intention to return next year.
An event-day reaction with sponsor-group connections stated in the post.
ModernPath
Post
Announces an intention to livepost seminar insights.
An event-day participation signal. His later thematic synthesis is included among participant reflections.
08 / Social mentions
Comments about the programme, hosting and format.
Participant
Reply
Explicitly praises speaker choices and the organizer's hosting attitude.
A further comment by the author of the participant reflection above.
No event affiliation established
Comment
Brief congratulations under Jussi's recap.
Attendance is unverified. The link opens the parent post.
No event affiliation established
Comment
Brief thanks for organizing under the organizer's retrospective.
Attendance is unverified. The link opens the parent post.
Speakers; Sini also has brand-sponsor affiliation
Comments
Additional thanks in the organizer's retrospective; Mo specifically praises the format and hopes it grows.
Grouped follow-up comments from speakers already represented here. The link opens the parent post.
09 / Social mentions
Requests and interest in watching later, with viewing status kept explicit.
Lowell; no event affiliation established
Comment
Welcomes being able to watch afterwards.
Interest in replay access; subsequent viewing is unconfirmed.
Cloud architect; no event affiliation established
Comment and author reply
Asks for a recording under Viljami's earlier announcement; Viljami supplies a full-day link and talk timestamp.
The author missed the event; subsequent viewing is unconfirmed.
Lead software engineer
Comment
Discusses using AI speed to reveal weaknesses in review, tests and ownership, and says he will watch Sini's recording.
An intention to watch; attendance and recording viewing are unconfirmed. The link opens the parent post.
10 / Social mentions
Contributions by sponsor representatives and a speaker’s colleagues.
Aimbition cofounder; brand-sponsor affiliation
Comment
Agrees with the fundamentals message and emphasizes company reality over hype.
A sponsor-affiliated contribution to the discussion; the link opens the parent post.
Theodo; Mo's colleague
Comment
Reinforces measuring AI through flow, quality and customer value and observing real work.
Discussion by the speaker’s colleague. Attendance is unverified; the link opens the parent post.
Theodo; Mo's colleague
Comment
Notes that AI can expose process weaknesses without removing other bottlenecks.
Discussion by the speaker’s colleague. Attendance is unverified; the link opens the parent post.
Theodo; Mo's colleague
Comment
Discusses why faster individual processes need not increase system throughput and the value of a visual explanation.
Discussion by the speaker’s colleague. Attendance is unverified; the link opens the parent post.
Theodo cofounder; Mo's colleague
Comment
Thanks Mo for presenting the Lean points.
An endorsement by the speaker’s colleague. Attendance is unverified; the link opens the parent post.
11 / Social mentions
Conceptual exchanges prompted by the posts, with seminar attendance and recording viewing unverified.
Antler; no event affiliation established
Comment
Describes accelerating change as difficult to predict even six weeks ahead and appreciates Ohans’s role in shaping perspectives.
Discussion under Ohans’s reflection. Attendance and recording viewing are unverified.
Teamit; Lauri’s SOK AI Conf presentation is cited in Niko’s post
Comment and author reply
Asks whether enabling agents is mainly an implementation challenge or a strategy challenge; Niko agrees that the distinction belongs in the thought process.
One discussion record under Niko Kivelä’s post. Lauri’s presentation was at SOK AI Conf; SDLCAI attendance is unverified. The link opens the containing comment thread.
Hidden Trail; no event affiliation established
Comment and author reply
Distinguishes humans using AI interfaces from agents using system interfaces and expresses concern about direct AI-to-AI interaction. Niko Kivelä questions the boundary between another agent and a system interface, using an MCP endpoint as an example.
One conceptual discussion record including the author’s response. Attendance and recording viewing are unverified. The link opens the containing comment thread.
12 / Social mentions
A reaction to the site’s visual identity, separate from seminar programme feedback.
No event affiliation established
Bluesky reply
Praises SDLCAI’s website design and says any possible AI use was not apparent in its visual language.
Website-design feedback. Attendance and recording viewing are unverified. Source details are carried from the 20 October research; the reply was not independently reverified in the 21 October refresh.
13 / Social mentions
The organizer’s retrospective on the event and its community.
Organizer / author of the planned blog post
Retrospective post
Reflects on the seminar as an experiment in an academic–practitioner community; thanks contributors and sponsors; invites ideas for future events.
The organizer’s own retrospective, included as context.
Revisit the talks and materials behind these conversations, or explore the photo timeline.