On May 5th, we hosted our 31st DevOps & AI Latvia meetup at Workland and somehow it keeps getting better.
Three talks, one surprise co-speaker and a vibe-coded game that, spoiler, actually worked under live stress testing. Not a bad Tuesday evening.
Jānis Rozenblats, product leader with 17+ years in B2B SaaS, founder of Mailigen shared the full, honest story of building a product org from scratch around AI. No hype, no vendor pitches. Just what actually happened when two new roles — Product Builder and Citizen Builder — were introduced to push AI-assisted development beyond the engineering team and into the hands of product managers and domain experts. What worked, what went wrong, and what he would do differently. Jānis was joined on stage by Ivars, his partner through this journey, who shared the technical side of how it all came together.
Vija Kalniņa brought something completely different for the lightning talk — a lawyer with a PhD, a Harvard research affiliation, and a sharp eye for what happens when AI chatbots trap real people in doom loops. 45 login attempts. No human in sight. A real-world case, sharp questions, and a perspective the room doesn’t often hear.
After the break, Māris Švirksts, Lead Systems Engineer at EPAM from EPAM took us into the dark factory. His Dark Factory vision: agents chaining together the full development cycle — planning, coding, testing, delivery — with minimal human intervention. Grounded, technical, and delivered with the dry wit of someone who has actually built this in production.
And yes we stress-tested a live vibe-coded game in front of 40+ people. It held up. The engineers were nervous. The leaderboard was real. Elvis won.
This time, the event is sponsored by:
- EPAM as Event Sponsor
EPAM is a global leader in AI transformation engineering and integrated consulting, helping Forbes Global 2000 companies and ambitious startups to become AI-native enterprises, driving measurable value from innovation and digital investments.
We are proud to be recognized by Forbes, Glassdoor and Great Place to Work as a Most Loved Workplace around the world. Learn more at www.epam.com and follow us on LinkedIn.
- Workland Telegraph as Event Partner
Inspiring private offices and coworking spaces that support your productivity & creativity.
▶️ Missed it or want a replay? Catch the full recording here:
Thank you to everyone who joined us, participated in discussions, and helped make this event a success. Don’t forget to join our Slack channel – Techies of Baltics, and subscribe to our YouTube channel for recordings of past meetups.
See you at the next meetup!
