Thu 20/11/2025:
VirtualQAEvent
Testing shift left: do or don't?
Thu 18/12/2025:
FunEvent
TBD: voor iedereen wat wils? + Kerstdrink
Itenium: Where Passion Meets Profession
Past Events
03/07/2025
Testing Track: deel 3 - Playwright
e2e Testing with Playwright
by Wouter
In this part of our Testing Track, we explored Playwright – Microsoft’s powerful end-to-end testing framework.
From cross-browser testing to handling flaky tests and CI integration, this session was packed with practical demos, real-world tips and hands-on exercises.
Big thanks to Wouter for guiding us through the good, the bad, and the async.
Missed Part 1 & 2? Check out our earlier deep-dives on the Testing Pyramid and Unit Testing Best Practices.
Last Wednesday, we tackled "Requirements Elicitation" in a hands-on workshop—exploring the what, why, and how of gathering requirements effectively.
Teams evaluated 12 techniques and answered key questions: ✔️ Participants: Who’s involved? ✔️ Preparation & Process: How much effort does it take? ✔️ Outcome & Quality: What’s the ROI of the info? ✔️ Star Rating: 1-5 —how well does it actually work for requirements?
Spoiler: Apprenticing, Contextual inquiry and Prototyping s cored high, while some methods (looking at you, system archaeology) proved… niche.
🐒 The inside joke? "Find the wet monkey"—a.k.a. hunting for that rare business expert who still knows why things are done the way they are. 🛠️ Bonus round: We shared tools we’ve used in the wild—because even the best technique needs the right tech! 💡 Key takeaway? No one-size-fits-all. The best analysts mix methods.
What’s your go-to requirements elicitation technique?
Our Java and .NET consultants joined forces in a hands-on
session around unit testing and Test Driven Development.
They tackled untested code, wrote their own tests, and even
built new features the TDD way! 💡
To make things even more interesting, the exercise was built on a hexagonal architecture – giving everyone a taste of this clean and flexible design pattern.
Great energy, valuable practice, and new insights all around! 👏
We spent a fun day at Efteling with the whole Itenium team — and our families were more than welcome to join. From looping rollercoasters 🎢 and soaked socks after the water rides 🌊, to wide-eyed wonder in the Fairytale Forest 🧚 and just a few too many pancakes... it was all part of the experience. And with the sun shining, the day couldn’t have been better. 😎 ☀️
A perfect moment to enjoy time together and get to know each other outside of work. 😄
Open Space @ itenium – where ideas spark and where people connect!
Last Friday, we turned our office into a playground for knowledge sharing and spontaneous discussions. No set agenda – just passionate consultants diving into topics like AI tools, Domain-Driven Design, learning strategies, and more.
From deep conversations to relaxed summer drinks – it was a perfect mix of brains and vibes.
Want to be part of a team that values curiosity, collaboration, and fun? Let's talk!
Officeday + Testing Track: deel 1 - Testing Pyramid
itenium on the move
by Alexander Ryckeboer
Office Day with Learning Lunch
Last week, we switched things up with an Office Day at Itenium HQ in Mechelen! While continuing our work for clients, it was great to spend the day together in person — a nice break from our usual remote and on-site routines.
Over lunch, we kicked off our Testing Track — a new internal learning series focused on sharpening our testing practices. We explored how to structure tests efficiently across unit, integration, and end-to-end layers. We discussed best practices, trade-offs, and how to avoid common pitfalls like overly relying on UI tests or skipping unit coverage.
A valuable knowledge-sharing moment — and only the beginning!
We dove deep into the evolution of Java with Simon guiding us from Java 17 through to 24 — and not just theory, but hands-on coding too.
From sealed classes to pattern matching, and from records to virtual threads, this session was a goldmine for anyone looking to write cleaner, more modern Java.
Big thanks to Simon for the clear explanations and live demos that helped us try out the latest features right away!
Last time, we tackled an Object-Oriented FileSystem using Composite, Proxy, and Visitor patterns. This week, we leveled up by implementing multi-user security with: 🔹 Template Method to standardize access control logic. 🔹 Singleton for a centralized security manager. 🔹 Mediator to streamline user-permission interactions.
Key takeaway? Patterns aren’t just theory; they’re tools to solve messy design problems elegantly. Shoutout to everyone who joined—your insights made this even richer!
Yesterday, we dove into the world of Blazor with our .NET expert Bert, exploring how this powerful framework is shaping modern web development. And of course, we couldn’t resist giving our infamous Socks Store yet another stylish upgrade!
A big thanks to everyone who joined—hope you enjoyed the hands-on experience! For those who missed it, stay tuned… more Blazor goodness might be coming soon.
This week, we dove into the first chapters of "Pattern Hatching" by John Vlissides (GoF author). We tackled common misconceptions about Design Patterns and explored a real-world OO FileSystem using:
- Composite - Proxy - Visitor (the most intriguing—and potentially dangerous—pattern of the night!)
We compared a C# implementation with Julia’s multiple dispatch, sparking debate: Are design patterns just missing language features?
Smart Socket Soldering + Home Assistant Integration
by Bert Vervaele
The itenium bootcamp this year was all about "Home Automation". We kicked things off, as tradition goes, with breakfast, followed by the legendary "SMART HOUSE - REMA 1000" clip, a perfect reminder that maybe not everything should be automated.
Then it was time to get hands-on: teams like the Burnt Fingers Club and The Sparkonauts brought the heat -- literally, as they went about soldering their own smart sockets.
After dinner, we took things up a notch as we hooked the sockets and our sensor-loaded mini-houses to Home Assistant via one of the Raspberries. From the Cloud Cottage or The Overengineered Hut, everyone got a taste of smart living.
From solder fumes to smart rooms -- fueled by good vibes, snacks, and a closing reception. Till next year!
Image Gallery
The tools we'd be needing during the bootcamp
Back to work after the break
Everyone busy
An assembled smart socket
The final product (and it's working even!)
How Mike made a simple request for tools a whole HR thing
Teaser: one of the houses we'd be using during the bootcamp
Start of the day
Can't go soldering on an empty stomach!
Internet of Things and Home Automation bootcamp intro
One of the houses, The Cloud Cottage
One of the teams, The Burnt Fingers Club
All is still quite, time to prep the room
Aaaaand... everyone has arrived!
The chips we'll be soldering
End of the presentation... Let's get this party started
Team Fried Chips Anonymous got to work on The Overengineered Hut
Itenium BattleKart Madness Recap! Speed, strategy, and some serious drifting skills—our BattleKart event was an epic ride! From power-ups to last-second takeovers, the competition was fierce, but in the end,Thomas claimed 1st place! A huge shoutout to everyone who joined the race—whether you were boosting ahead or getting hit by a well-placed oil patch, it was a night to remember!
We kicked off our very first Itenium Office Day, bringing colleagues together for a mix of work, food, and knowledge-sharing. While the search for our new office continues, we gathered in Gent @ Buro532 to connect and collaborate.
To wrap up the day, we held an open-space session, where everyone voted on and discussed key topics, including SonarQube, Dependabot, Agile in Practice, and Integrating AI in Projects.
A great start to what promises to be an exciting tradition! Shoutout to our competence coaches for putting this day together!
We explored the art of interviewing from both sides of the table. Talisa and Michael Branders shared valuable insights on asking the right questions, identifying top talent, and presenting yourself effectively. A session filled with practical tips and real-world scenarios—thanks to everyone who joined!
At our New Year event at Seminariecentrum Gent, we looked back on Iteniums 2024 achievements and shared our vision for 2025—featuring more tech sessions, exciting events, and engaging projects.
We outlined plans for our Java, .NET, QA, and PO&Analysis Competence Centers, reinforcing our commitment to top-tier IT consultancy. After the speeches, we enjoyed a great dinner before the first-ever Itenium World Championship Oude Volksspelen, where Bert and Wouter showed their competitive edge beyond .NET.
The night wrapped up with drinks, socializing, and a fun challenge—matching wild personal anecdotes to their owners. From WWII bomb discoveries to a secret office soup mafia, some stories were truly explosive.
Here is to another year of achievements and unexpected adventures!
At our latest Itenium event, we dove deep into optimizing Spring Data JPA & Hibernate for high-performance applications. From query efficiency to caching strategies, attendees explored best practices to avoid common pitfalls and boost database performance. Missed out? Keep an eye on our upcoming events—more tech deep dives coming soon!
What's new in C# and how has it evolved over time?
by Bert Vermorgen
During the .NET session *Evolution of C#*, we explored the language’s progression and its latest features in a live code showcase. We covered topics like pattern matching, nullability, records, structs, list initializers, and more—highlighting not just how they worked but why they improved code efficiency and expressiveness.
Great food, drinks, and company made for a warm celebration at the office. From homemade pulled pork to a festive veggie alternative, there was something for everyone. And the Christmas sweaters? A perfect mix of stylish and hilariously questionable!
Thanks to everyone who joined—here is to an amazing 2025!
Itenium team gathered for a focused QA session, diving into real-world challenges, solutions, and war stories from the field. The goal? Exchanging insights and pressing questions to elevate our QA and development practices. Alexander also led a lively brainstorming session where everyone shared their thoughts on all things QA-related—from testing strategies to team collaboration. Key takeaway: When QA professionals and developers come together, the result is a stronger, more aligned approach to building quality software.
What a session! We covered Angular and TypeScript best practices (should you use inheritance for components?), folder structures, Redux (shoutout to the ReduxJS Toolkit Style Guide!), and even the latest Angular 19 updates like the new template syntax and Signals.
We swept our way to victory! Our Curling event in Zemst was an absolute delight! From rookie sliders to seasoned pros, everyone had a fantastic time on the ice.
We laughed, cheered, and embraced some unexpected twists and turns along the way. Who is ready to take on the curling challenge next?
Talking in Front of a Group and Presentation Techniques
by Talisa Orens, Mike Dumportier
The session focused on practical techniques for presenting to groups and structuring ideas clearly. Highlights included managing stage presence, keeping an audience engaged, and conveying complex ideas effectively—key skills for anyone who is ever had to explain code in a meeting or present a project update. Big thanks to Talisa and Mike for sharing insights that are bound to make a difference in our day-to-day!
The next architecture to be covered in our ArchitectureTrack!
Our latest ArchitectureTrack session covered "Microservices Patterns" from Chris Richardson. Highlighting the huge advantages of a Microservice architecture while also being a cautionary tale: there are significant obstacles to overcome before you can be successful with them; and building a monolith with for example a hexagonal architecture could just be much better for your team(s)!
That being said, "if you find yourself in a hole, stop digging", we discussed how it's typically best to start with a monolith but how you can refactor towards microservices using different strategies and what application and infrastructure patterns you need to apply to avoid every outage being like a murder mystery.
Some of the topics covered:
Interprocess communication: to API or to message? How to handle the missing Isolation in your beloved ACID?
Queries: API composition or reporting databases (with EventSourcing)
Getting production ready: security, configurability and observability
Deployment: needs to be highly automated -- what are your options
The game that was the SQL Training started with a hickup, other machines were not discoverable on the guest network so the leaderboard server had to be deployed on an external server -- while everyone was already solving exercises! This messed up our scoreboard considerably, especially the ranking for "solved fastest" 😊
After this it was pretty smooth sailing. Tom found an error in the calculation of the query to calculate the average GDP per capita in South America. That and other small issues were fixed on the spot, on production -- as it should! 😉
Even though we had definitely said "no cheating", Alexander came to the correct amount of penalties by doing COUNT(0)+4 and Mike found the countries with a GDP > Europe by doing WHERE GDP>3425956000000. Straight to jail!
In the end Michael proved too strong and with 63 points, he went home with the title of itenium SQL Master and the gaming cup!
Being big fans of Interstellar, the stellar scifi from Christopher Nolan, we couldn't pass up on the opportunity to watch it in the cinema again (!) for the 10 year anniversary.
It was still as awesome as we remembered!
Image Gallery
Some couldn't make it because of huge accident in Mechelen 😭
FunEvent
25/09/2024
Handige tools &/of frameworks
Welke tools en/of frameworks zijn handig om te kennen?
by Simon Verhoeven
The Java Track: Handige Tool session covered tools to enhance Java development, including debugging, code quality checkers, dependency management, and performance monitoring, with developers sharing practical tips for everyday challenges.
No one knew what to expect from Yeti Prison Island. Turned out you can basically do anything at the Yeti Island but in our formula we were divided into small teams and entered rooms to solve a puzzle, coordinate as a team, climb around to push buttons and other small games.
We had teams called "Leeroy" and "Jenkins" but the Jenkins team ended up performing a bit too good and ended up with a higher score than Leeroy. So close!!
It was still a lot of fun, and in the end everyone did manage to escape 😮💨
Image Gallery
Leeroy and Jenkins, two of our teams at Yeti Island
BBQ + Boardgame Bonanza with Thomas Janssens was a hit! Itenium colleagues came together for an evening of grilling and board gaming. Games were competitive, and the atmosphere was relaxed, creating a fun break from the usual work routine. Whether it was rolling dice or flipping cards, everyone had a great time.
Image Gallery
Thomas wasn't just the BBQ chef but also made delicious tiramisu with a lot of rhum
Just wrapped up an awesome session on GitHub Actions! We explored building & testing Node, .NET, and Java with multi-version matrices , dived into Docker integrations, and mastered reusable workflows to keep things DRY. Plus, we learned how to automate everything from Issues to PRs using GitHub Actions!
A closer look at probably the most used architectures out there
Another great session in our ArchitectureTrack packed with examples, best practices, and real-world applications. We had a great time exploring how to design flexible, maintainable, and scalable systems.
Key takeaways included an exploration of N-tier Architecture, which divides an application into layers (Presentation, Business Logic, Data Access, etc.) to enhance separation of concerns and scalability, and Hexagonal Architecture (Ports and Adapters), which emphasizes the use of ports and adapters to decouple core business logic from external systems, allowing for easy integration and adaptability. Stay tuned for more insightful talks!
Building on the excitement from our kick-off event at Zuiderbad Mechelen, we're thrilled to announce Itenium 2.0! The sunny day was filled with laughter and fun as we redefined our vision, set ambitious goals, and prioritized what truly matters. While embracing our core values and traditions, we continue to build a future rooted in innovation, excellence, and community. Our company dream is to empower professionals and companies to thrive, innovate, and create lasting impact. A huge shout out to Charlotte Ryckeboer for capturing all the amazing moments!
itenium Tech Cafe, where good food and cutting-edge technology collide
We hosted an exclusive Itenium Tech Café exploring OpenAI/Copilot, MicroExpressions, and MindMapping. Participants dived into AI technologies, non-verbal communication, and strategic thinking skills through mind mapping. It was a great opportunity for professional growth and networking with like-minded professionals!
Last week we organized our first full itenium Angular Day: great location & food but also a workshop to upgrade our (in)famous Socks Store with exercises on (standalone) components and templates, including the new control flow syntax, routing and auth, an in-depth look on RXJS, Redux and ReactiveForms as well as on the new zoneless Signals. With over 30 PRs in one day, it was quite the success!
Starting from the FullStackHero template, we did a deep dive into ASP.NET WebApi. Our hands-on workshop included exercises on ModelBinding, custom middleware, compression & caching, JSON configuration, DI and more! We also had a quick look at the new MinimalAPI.
Join us for our inaugural Java Competence Center session featuring Spring Boot 3.X. Discover the latest advancements with Spring Boot 3.X and explore cutting-edge features and enhancements designed to streamline your Java development experience.
Unlock the secrets to writing clean, efficient, and maintainable code with 'Code Complete.' This definitive guide offers practical insights and proven techniques for every stage of software construction. It is an essential resource for developers committed to excellence in their craft.
Our first Product & Analysis Competence Center session kicked off thanks to Sofie! We brainstormed cool ideas, learned how to turn them into actionable user stories, and got to know each other. It was a great opportunity to connect, learn, and enhance our skills! Join the movement for continuous learning!
What to do if you lose your keys?
by David Sverdlov
Itenium had an amazing time delving into the intricacies of lockpicking at our recent workshop! The team delved into the art of unlocking mysteries, honed their skills, and unraveled challenges. It was a blast seeing everyone enjoy the thrill of cracking locks and learning new techniques.
Create your first 3D model / world.
by Tom Pauwaert
Tom introduces us to 3D modelling with the Unreal Engine! A little internal competition to create the most beautiful image using the course material from Email Sleegers to build a landscape inspired by the grandeur of ancient Rome and Greece.
Team Itenium had a blast at the eDirt Bike fun event! From thrilling races to friendly competition, it was an electrifying day full of adrenaline & fun.
Intro session on the worlds most famous NoSql database: Mongo. We learned the MQL query syntax and setup some aggregate pipelines for the more exotic exercises.