CAIML #40 — Cologne AI & ML Meetup
The Cologne AI/ML meetup brought together practitioners working on production systems that combine data pipelines with LLMs — sponsored by PAYBACK, hosted at STARTPLATZ. Nandu contributed the opening technical talk alongside Roberto Russo.
- Location
- STARTPLATZ / Nandu office context, Cologne
- Format
- Meetup · two talks + networking
Agenda highlight: “Teaching LLMs to Work with Data: From Zero to Production with LangGraph & LangSmith” — Billy Kunze (AI Agent Engineer, Nandu) and Roberto Russo (Co-Founder, Nandu). Second talk: PAYBACK on agentic AI in loyalty programmes.
Doors opened at 18:30; the evening closed with networking and refreshments — the kind of room where implementation details actually get debated.
Photos
My take
These evenings work when the audience pushes on failure modes — retries, evals, and what “production” means when a model touches customer data. That is the same bar we use for Nandu’s agent stack.
On-stage takeaway
“Production LLM work is mostly data contracts and review loops — the model is only the last mile.”
Theme from the CAIML #40 technical talk
Workshop, keynote, or sparring?
Tell us what you need — we match format and depth to your team.