Talks

2026 – Jul 14 | AI-First Engineering: Writing Intent, Reviewing Code

Engineering Day (Invited Guest), Kenya • Slides • Blog Post

I gave a personal account of how my engineering workflow changed when I moved from writing code with AI assistance to writing intent, directing agents and reviewing their output. It covers development, code review, debugging, design and economics, along with the trade-offs that become more important as the tools improve. Presented at DigiTax's Engineering Day. It is not an official Zappi presentation or company position.

2020 – Oct 28 | Pitfalls of Kubernetes Adoption

SREcon, EMEA • Slides • Full Talk

Kubernetes is an amazing piece of technology, though not without its quirks. The team at Zappi has been working with Kubernetes for several years and encountered some snags and surprises along the way. This talk highlights key pitfalls and lessons that can give a heads-up to anyone getting started ... or even those with experience ... looking to adopt Kubernetes more smoothly.

2019 – Sept 6 | Around & After Kubernetes: The Principles and Ideas that Guide Us

DevOps Days, Cape Town • Slides • Full Talk

The team at Zappi began migrating all applications to Kubernetes in late 2015, completing the process over three years. During that journey, we learned a lot about containerisation, distributed systems, complex migrations and scaling infrastructure for a large developer team. This talk shares guiding principles and ideas that improve developer velocity, tooling and infrastructure management ... lessons that are broadly applicable even to teams not using Kubernetes.

2017 – Nov 7 | 5 Things I Wish I Knew Before Moving To Kubernetes

DevOps Days, Cape Town • Slides • Lightning Talk

Kubernetes is exciting, but early adoption comes with challenges. In this lightning talk, I share five key lessons from my early experience, highlighting common pain points and practical advice for teams starting their Kubernetes journey.