Djangocon EU: lightning talks

Tags: django, djangocon

(One of my summaries of the 2026 Djangocon EU in Athens).

Note: “live-blogging lightning talks” means “I missed some names or mis-spelled them” :-)

Faster delivery with feature flags - Miha Zidar

Feature flags are often used for continuous delivery. You need to watch out with tests: do you need to run all of them twice, with and without the feature flag?

And: remember to clean up the feature flags. Make them easy to remove. So only “if FEATURE …. else …..”. Only use them to make deployment safer and faster

Lessons from being an admin at Djangonaut Space - Raphaella Suardini

https://djangonaut.space is a mentorship program to help you get into Django. All volunteers.

There are some communication challenges when working with volunteers. People with different native languages. And you don’t want to communicate too often, but you also want to communicate all that’s necessary…

There’s an invisible workload: if you’re an admin, you’re partially also taking on resposibilities of others that might drop some tasks.

Make decisions. Take care of your work/volunteer/life balance.

Djangonaut space really helps people, which motivates her a lot and helps keep her volunteering her time and effort.

Priming AI with atomic docs - Ronny Vedrilla

He treats his README as an index. Couple of lines to explain the project, the rest are links to other documentation files in the rest of your project.

It is also AI-friendly.

See also the blog post.

How tech hiring has a fraud problem - Jon Gould

(He’s been recruiting Python+Django devs since 2008.)

There are lots of fake profiles showing up. Deepfake videos, AI scripts during video interviews. Hacked accounts of real people of linkedin.

Every recruiter and hiring manager are immediately looking for red flags that might prove you’re not real. So that’s something you have to look at yourself if you’re real and if you’re looking for a job.

Some red flags:

  • No photo.

  • Too generic CV.

  • Broken links.

  • Sparse GitHub. Are you real or is all your stuff private?

  • New linkedin account.

So: do the opposite. Meet real people at meetups and conferences. Take a photo of yourself at a conference. That kind of stuff.

Update: see his blog post at https://foxleytalent.com/blog/fake-candidates-tech-hiring/

Django day in Copenhagen - Benjamin Balder Bach

https://2026.djangoday.dk/ , friday 2 October 2026. Livestreaming.

Why such small events? Max 80 people? They’re awesome. Lower bar for organising and attending. More first-time speakers. It strengthens local communities.

Highly recommended to copy the concept!

See his blog post where he dives into this issue deeper.

AI vs Prek: the floor is linting - Adrien Cossa

He moved completely to vibe coding or “agentic engineering”. The faster you move, the more the tech debt starts to worry you.

He’s experimented with “skills based engineering”, which means he writes “skills” files when he does something for the second time.

With pre-commit (or ‘prek’) hooks, he tries to maintain a minimum level of quality. Automatic checks for code quality (ruff, etc) and for instance to prevent email adresses ending up in the code.

Tip: start with as many pre-commit hooks as possible, right from the start.

Upcoming conferences

https://reinout.vanrees.org/images/2026/ottbergen9.jpeg

Unrelated photo explanation: a recent trip to the “Modellbundesbahn” in Germany. The entire station of Ottbergen fully in 1:87 scale.