For the second year running, I had the privilege of volunteering at NDC London – one of Europe’s premier software development conferences. This year’s event was packed with insights on AI, accessibility, testing automation, and the future of software development. If you’re interested in my first experience, check out my 2025 report.
The volunteer experience was just as rewarding as last year – the team was fantastic, the energy was incredible, and the sense of community was palpable. In this post, I’ll focus on the talks I attended and the key insights I gained from them.
As I mentioned last year, volunteering gave me a superpower : increased confidence to network with speakers, vendors, fellow volunteers, and attendees. The connections you make at conferences like this are invaluable, and being part of the team made it even easier to engage with the community.
Wednesday
Let’s Break Some WCAG Rules (Speaker: Elise Kristiansen)
This eye-opening talk examined how pervasively websites violate Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG). For those unfamiliar, WCAG provides a framework to make web content accessible to everyone, including people with disabilities. The guidelines are organized into three conformance levels:
- Level A - The bare minimum requirements
- Level AA - The legal requirement (what most laws mandate)
- Level AAA - The gold standard, aspirational but not legally required
The statistics Elise shared were sobering: 15-25% of people have some form of disability (whether permanent, temporary, or situational), yet a staggering 94.8% of websites contain at least one WCAG AA violation – meaning they’re actually breaking the law.
One of the most powerful demonstrations was a colour blindness test where only colour blind individuals could read certain numbers. It really drove home how design choices can inadvertently exclude significant portions of our users.
Key Takeaways:
- WCAG compliance isn’t optional – it’s a legal requirement and moral imperative
- Stop using
<div>for everything; HTML is semantically rich for a reason - Consider learning to use a screen reader to understand user experiences better
- Accessibility benefits everyone, not just those with disabilities
Social Engineering: Hacking Humans (Speaker: Pawel Sucholbiak)
A timely reminder that as soon as humans enter the equation, social engineering becomes a significant security risk. This talk explored various tactics malicious actors use to manipulate people into divulging confidential information or performing actions that compromise security.
Pawel demonstrated real-world scenarios like phishing emails that appear to come from trusted colleagues, pretexting phone calls where attackers impersonate IT support, and how seemingly innocent information shared on social media can be weaponized. The human element remains the weakest link in any security chain.
Supercharged Testing: AI-Powered Workflows with Playwright + MCP (Speaker: Debbie O’Brien)
I’d heard Debbie discuss the Playwright MCP (Model Context Protocol) on .NET Rocks, but seeing it demonstrated live was transformative. This session showed how AI can dramatically enhance testing workflows by understanding test intent and generating Playwright test code.
I’ve already started using it to write some tests for this very website!
Key Takeaway:
- Experiment with the Playwright MCP – it’s a game-changer for test automation
The Undersea Cable Network (Speaker: Richard Campbell)
Richard took us on a fascinating journey through the history of undersea telecommunications cables – the literal backbone of the internet. He explored how these cables are laid, maintained, and the significant challenges when they’re damaged (whether accidental or deliberate). It’s humbling to realize that our globally connected world depends on physical cables crossing ocean floors.
Java Sucks (So C# Didn’t Have To) (Speaker: Adele Carpenter)
An entertaining and insightful exploration of Java’s history, examining how its early popularity locked in certain design decisions that became problematic over time. Adele showed how C# learned from Java’s mistakes and made different choices that enabled better evolution. The key lesson: early success can create technical debt that’s nearly impossible to pay down.
Think Like a User: Practical UX Design Tips for Developers (Speaker: Lex Lofthouse)
This session challenged developers to shift perspectives and consider user experience from the ground up. Lex provided practical, actionable advice for creating more intuitive interfaces.
Recommended Reading:
- The Design of Everyday Things by Don Norman
Thursday
OpenTelemetry At Scale 101: Intro to OpAMP (Speakers: Aakansha Priya and Adriana Villela)
This session introduced OpAMP (Open Agent Management Protocol) for managing OpenTelemetry collectors at scale. While the scale discussed was beyond my current needs, it was valuable to understand the challenges and solutions for production observability in large distributed systems.
A Defence of Technical Excellence (Speaker: Chris Simon)
Chris made a compelling argument for maintaining high technical standards even under pressure to deliver quickly. Technical excellence isn’t about perfectionism – it’s about sustainable, maintainable code that serves the business long-term.
How to Git Away with Murder (Speaker: Sergès Goma)
A humorous yet practical look at Git workflows and how to recover from common (and not-so-common) Git disasters. The Q&A session at the end turned into a group therapy session where attendees shared their most spectacular Git mishaps and recovery stories. If you’ve ever accidentally force-pushed to main, this talk was for you!
Code That Writes Code: .NET Source Generators (Speaker: Glenn F. Henriksen)
Source generators are one of .NET’s most powerful yet underutilized features. Glenn demonstrated how they can eliminate boilerplate, improve performance by moving work to compile-time, and create type-safe code generation patterns. This is definitely an area I need to explore more for my own projects.
Warm and Fuzzy: Semantic Search in .NET (Speaker: Jonathan “J.” Tower)
Jonathan delivered an excellent introduction to implementing semantic search using vector databases. He covered several options for .NET developers:
- SQL Server 2025 with native vector support
- Azure Cosmos DB for NoSQL vector storage
- Qdrant as a specialized vector database
The talk also touched on Semantic Kernel , which is now part of the Microsoft Agent Framework – a significant development for building intelligent applications.
Action Items:
- Implement semantic search for my blog to improve content discovery
- Explore the demo code on GitHub
Coding 4 Fun: 8-bit Game Emulation in .NET (Speaker: Alex Thissen)
Pure fun! Alex walked through building an 8-bit game emulator in .NET, demonstrating low-level programming concepts in a modern language. A great reminder that not everything we build needs to be “enterprise-ready” – sometimes coding is just about learning and enjoyment. Lots of shifting bytes around, so a great example of the different things you can do with .NET.
Friday
Keynote: AI-Powered App Development (Speaker: Steve Sanderson)
Steve Sanderson delivered an inspiring keynote on how AI is transforming application development. The GitHub Copilot CLIwas demonstrated, with a new feature added in front of our eyes. Hundreds of Pull Requests can be generated with AI, but they all need reviewing and maintaining by Software Developers and there are no easy answers for managing that.
What in the Hunger Games is Happening with Recruitment? (Speaker: Suzi Edwards-Alexander)
A frank and often amusing look at the current state of tech recruitment. Suzi traced how we arrived at today’s challenging hiring landscape – from the first interview questions created by Thomas Edison, to the rise of LinkedIn and modern recruitment processes. Recruitment is broken, and there are no easy ways of fixing it.
The Great Brain Robbery: Navigating the Dark Future of Online Manipulation (Speaker: Jeff Watkins)
A sobering examination of how online platforms use psychological manipulation and dark patterns to exploit users’ attention and data. Jeff didn’t just highlight the problems – he offered strategies for recognizing and resisting these tactics, both as developers and as users. This talk was rather bleak reinforcing the notion that you can not trust anything you see or read online.
Beyond the AI Hype: What’s Real, What’s Next (Speaker: Richard Campbell)
Richard cut through the AI hype to examine what’s genuinely transformative versus what’s just marketing. He explored current capabilities, realistic near-term developments, and the fundamental limitations we need to understand. A perfect counterbalance to the morning’s optimistic keynote – both perspectives are necessary for making informed decisions about AI adoption.
Resilient by Design (Speaker: Chris Ayers)
The final session I attended focused on building resilient systems in Azure from the ground up. Chris covered how much downtime you can have if your SLA is 99.99% (8.6s a day see uptime.is) – but more importantly, the mindset shift required to design for failure rather than just success. In production, it’s not if things will fail, but when and how gracefully.
Networking Break: JetBrains Rider Team
I skipped one session to have an extended conversation with the JetBrains Riderteam at their booth. These unstructured conversations are often where you get the most value at conferences – I am a big fan of Visual Studio, but I have never tried Rider, this informal chat has encouraged me to download Rider and give it a try.
Final Thoughts
NDC London 2026 was another incredible experience. The breadth of topics – from accessibility and UX to AI, observability, and system resilience – reflects the diverse skills modern developers need.
My key takeaways from this year:
- Accessibility is non-negotiable – both legally and morally
- AI tools are here to stay – learn to leverage them effectively
- Technical excellence matters – shortcuts today become tomorrow’s technical debt
- Community is everything – the conversations between sessions were as valuable as the talks themselves
Huge thanks to the NDC organizing team, my fellow volunteers, all the speakers who shared their knowledge, and the attendees who made this such an engaging event. If you get the chance to attend (or volunteer at) NDC Conferences, I highly recommend it.
Interested in attending NDC London 2027? Follow @NDC_Conferencesfor updates!
See you at NDC London 2027! 🚀
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