Silent Figures: The Secret History of Autistics in Tech

In the vast tech landscape, a silent forest conceals a remarkable group of individuals known as the Autistics. We navigate our unique world, driven by an unwavering coding passion.

Once voiceless, some of us have emerged as tech luminaries, vital to the industry's progress. Major tech firms now recognize the Autistics significance.

Then, what connects us to Tech History? Why do exploring code lines appeal more to us than living human experiences?

During this talk, we will explore the untold Autistic narrative in tech and envision a harmonious future where both autistic and tech worlds unite.

This is our unsung history, waiting to be heard.

- Need to play some music
- Preferably: 50min

Firy Passion VS Icy Reason: The Great Developers Divide

Everyone knows this developer, who is super duper passionate about his job. You can easily recognize this developer because he/she spends hours coding, even outside of work; mastering tech watch like no one else; whose topics of conversation often revolve around code.

Even if we are passionate, we sometimes neither feel nor express this passion for the code. And easily, upon this developer's contact, unease can arise if we do not feel this passion.
And this, even if you are a developer yourself.

This discomfort can be a source of worry and doubt about one's skills.

Indeed, if the enthusiast devotes hours to personal projects, perhaps we should?

But then, do you have to be passionate to be a developer?
Does passion truly add value?

Wouldn't the injunction to passion in dev ultimately be a trap?

Is passion THE essential software for anyone wishing to code?

Here, is the whole purpose of this conference!

Bonus: If you like Vikings, this is for you !

Previously given in French at the DevFest Nantes (https://youtu.be/o-2cC8KC2wg?list=PLuZ_sYdawLiUHU4E1i5RrFsRN_lQcgPwT)

Nuka-Cola Breaks: How I Developed A Video Game In A Remote Work Tool

Or should we say "From Remote Work to Game Creation: How I Transformed Gather into a Gaming Platform and Built a Package for Fellow Developers"?

With its flashy, 80s-like, slightly pixelated, Gather is a platform mixing videoconferencing and movement in a 2D virtual universe. It can be presented as a mix between Zoom or Teams and a retro RPG; allowing users to create permanent virtual spaces using existing models.

Join me on my unexpected journey from using Gather as a remote work tool to unlocking its hidden potential for game development.

Discover how my curiosity led me to dig into Gather's game client, sparking the creation of my own video game and inspiring the development of a user-friendly package to help other developers create their own Gather games.

This personal tale of innovation and creativity will show you the surprising possibilities that can emerge from everyday tools. Don't miss this session full of insights, challenges, and breakthroughs!

The Myth of the Rational Developer: How Emotions Influence Technical Decisions (More Than We Admit)

We, as developers love to think we are purely logical beings, making decisions based on clean architecture; lessons learned from previous experiences; best practices; and cold, hard facts.

But let’s be honest—how many of our tech choices are solely based on reason? Why do we cling to bad code like it’s a beloved pet? Why do we chase the latest frameworks like they’re Pokemon? And why does every developer have an irrational hatred for at least one programming language?

This talk dives into the hidden psychology of software development, revealing how cognitive biases, fear of failure, and pure developer stubbornness influence our choices more than we’d like to admit.

From the Sunk Cost Fallacy (aka “I spent two weeks on this refactor, so we have to use it”) to Loss Aversion (aka “I know this function is useless, but what if we need it someday?”), we’ll explore the surprisingly human side of coding.

Expect real-world examples, and hard-hitting truths about why we write, delete, and rewrite code the way we do.

By the end, you’ll walk away with maybe, just maybe, the courage to delete that ancient, commented-out function from 2017, finally!

Help! My Tech Skills Have an Expiration Date

One day, you’re a cutting-edge developer. The next, you blink, and suddenly your favorite framework is “legacy,” job postings demand skills you’ve never heard of, and juniors are asking if you "really used jQuery back in the day."

In a world where tech moves faster than a CI/CD pipeline on caffeine, how do developers keep up without losing their sanity?

This talk takes a humorous dive into the fear of becoming outdated, the questionable ways we try to stay relevant, and the surprising truth about what actually matters in the long run.

Through real stories, developer confessions, and a few existential crises about AI taking our jobs, we’ll uncover how to future-proof yourself, without falling into the trap of learning every new JavaScript framework just because Twitter says so.

If you’ve ever wondered whether you’re “falling behind” or if you (really) need to learn Rust, this talk is for you.

Why Silence Is Not Always Golden

Some developers cannot write a single line of code without music. Others are convinced that absolute silence is the only way to think.

This quiet disagreement shapes how we work more than we admit. It influences focus, collaboration, open office tensions, remote work rituals, and even how teams define “productivity.” Yet, most developers choose their work soundtrack out of habit, not intention.

Here’s the interesting part. Music is not neutral.

What you listen to while coding can directly affect your ability to focus, reason, debug, and create. Rhythm, tempo, and lyrics all interact with the brain in ways that can either support deep work or completely sabotage it.

In this talk, we will look at music the way engineers like to look at systems. What actually happens in the brain when you code with sound? Why do some genres help with flow while others destroy it? When silence works, when it does not, and how to choose intentionally instead of arguing opinions.

We will explore research from neuroscience and cognitive science, test the silence versus soundtrack debate, and run a few live audio experiments.

Expect humor, relatable developer stories, and playlists you will want to steal.

Oops, I Burned Out Again!

I thought I had learned my lesson the first time. I saw the warning signs, ignored them, and told myself I could handle this. Spoiler alert: I couldn’t. Burnout hit me not once but twice, and each time, I found myself running on empty, questioning everything, and wondering if I’d ever enjoy coding again.

In this talk, I’ll take you through my journey of burnout—what led to it, how I ignored the red flags, and what finally made me hit “Force Quit.” We’ll explore why burnout is common in tech, why high performers are often the most vulnerable, and how we can break the cycle.

But this isn’t just a doom-and-gloom session—I’ll share the hard-earned lessons that helped me rise from the ashes (twice), rebuild my energy, and find a sustainable way to thrive in tech.

Expect storytimes, hard truths, and maybe even a laugh or two as we learn how to recognize burnout before it’s too late, recover when we crash, and—most importantly—stop history from repeating itself. Because if you’re anything like me, you don’t want to be singing Oops… I did it again.

Stop Treating Frontend Like a Side Quest

At some point in their career, many backend engineers end up touching the frontend. Not because they want to, but because the team is small, deadlines are tight, or “it’s just a UI change.”

And that’s usually where things start to break.

Frontend work is often seen as less technical, more subjective, or something you can improvise your way through. Until fragile code ships, user behavior becomes unpredictable, support tickets multiply, and the business starts paying for what looked like a small shortcut.

The problem is not that backend engineers cannot do frontend. The problem is that frontend is often approached without understanding its underlying rules.

Because frontend engineering is not magic, it is not vibes. It is a system.

In this talk, we will look at frontend development the way backend engineers are comfortable doing so, through structure, causality, and predictable outcomes. Like chemistry, frontend follows rules. When you know how elements interact, you can anticipate reactions, avoid explosions, and build something stable.

We will break down the mechanics behind UI behavior, reactivity, and styling systems. We will explore how data flows produce deterministic UI updates, how the CSS cascade affects application stability, and how to keep complex component architectures readable and safe under pressure.

You will leave with:

- Clear patterns for building maintainable React interfaces;
- Scalable CSS strategies that reduce regressions;
- Practical debugging approaches that align with backend problem-solving.

This talk is for backend engineers who want to contribute confidently to the frontend without turning the UI into a fragile experiment, and for teams who want full-stack collaboration without sacrificing quality.

Why the Gender Gap in Tech Isn’t What You Think

Ask ten people why there are so few women in tech, and you’ll get ten confident answers.
“Lack of interest.”
“Confidence issues.”
“Pipeline problem.”
“Biology.”

Now look at the data, and watch most of those explanations quietly fall apart.

In this talk, we step away from assumptions and into a data-driven exploration of women’s representation in technology around the world. Because if women can thrive in tech in some countries, at some times, and in some systems, then the problem clearly isn’t women.

Using global statistics, historical trends, and sociological research, we’ll examine why the numbers vary so dramatically. Why does Eastern Europe consistently show higher participation of women in STEM than Western Europe? Why do some developing countries produce more female computer science graduates than Silicon Valley? And how societal expectations start shaping “career choices” long before anyone touches a keyboard.

We’ll also look at what actually moves the needle. Not well-meaning slogans or surface-level initiatives, but policies and structural changes that have proven, measurably, to work.

This isn’t a talk about blame. It’s a talk about systems.
A debugging session for an industry that keeps patching the symptoms instead of fixing the root cause.

If you’re a tech leader, educator, or anyone who wants to build a more inclusive future without relying on myths, this talk offers a clear, evidence-based way forward.