A look in the rearview mirror - 2025

Published on December 12, 2025 - Tags : Human Personal Recap 2025

That’s it, here we are at the end of the year 2025! A year that has been very rich in technical and human experiences for me; notably following my change of job: new colleagues, new work techniques, new challenges. But above all, 2025 was for me the opportunity to realize many projects and desires that had been hanging around in my head for several years already. We are of course going to talk about conferences, but also about teaching, my job, Clermont’ech, and above all, the beautiful projects in mind for 2026.

Usually, I write this document every year-end for myself; a sort of exit inventory of the past year. But this time, I decided it was time to open my thoughts to others; to talk about my victories, but also my doubts, and my failures. Because it is important to allow people still discovering the IT world to know that the world does not look like LinkedIn, and that behind a victory often lie a bunch of failures. If I’m writing this blog post in public, today, it’s notably for them. Because, in a fully connected era, where AI gives us as many reasons to dream as to be afraid of the future, it’s important to be able to have honest and complete feedback.

Important point of attention before continuing reading: This blog post will very probably go a bit in all directions: summarizing a year is always complicated.

Second important note: I will talk about several companies and/or technologies in this talk. None of these entities sponsor and/or have proofread this blog post before publication. There is therefore no hidden advertising, no corporatism or other.

From BeYs to Zenika - Fears and doubts

After almost 6 years of good and loyal service, I made the decision, at the end of 2024, to leave BeYs, which had been my only professional experience in the tech world until then. Many reasons justified this departure, but the main one was the feeling of having seen everything there was to see: stacks that I fully mastered, a well-acquired seniority, and a quasi-tech lead role (a role that I never officially had, and which fuels many regrets, but let’s move on).

My position at BeYs was however very comfortable (and I would also like to thank all the people who worked with me there, first and foremost Christophe who was my manager/director during all these years): very good salary, quasi-total trust from the teams and management, a team built over time of people with whom I have a very strong technical and human affinity… In short, leaving was an extremely hard choice.

But, paradoxically, all this context (technical stack chosen and mastered, absolute trust, team created largely by me) gave birth in me to a major existential question: Am I still good at doing something else? In the end, am I not just good at what I do only because I’ve never done anything else?

This question, it nagged at me during a large part of the year 2025.

It must be said that my first months at Zenika were not the most reassuring (technically speaking), because with the cold feet of IT departments, the beginning of the year (and therefore of the contract) was very busy… with “inter-contract” time. For a person coming from a world radically opposite to that of IT service providers, it was a shock. At first, inter-contract time is quite pleasant (especially when you come out of a 6-year technological tunnel): you do technical watch again, you train, you discover technologies, methods, concepts. Thanks to Zenika’s very healthy approach to the subject of inter-contract time, you participate in internal projects, you meet other colleagues from other agencies, you pass certifications… But after a month, you start asking yourself the question that beats up your morale: “Why can’t they staff me?”. And, when you have like me an already well-installed imposter syndrome, with the addition of the previously mentioned context, that question there, it hurts extremely much. Of course, everyone at Zenika tried to reassure me (and I thank them very much for that), and the feedback on the internal subjects I was dealing with was good. But there is a gap between doing internal stuff and knowing how to work with a client.

Fortunately for me and my mental health, the clients finally arrived. And, as expected, I was propelled into missions with radically different technical and human aspects (a requirement I had when joining Zenika, and which was perfectly fulfilled, thanks a lot to -among others- Olivier and Mladen for looking after it): from an augmented reality simulator for an electricity giant; to deploying a Kubernetes for a large mutual insurance company, passing through organizational transformation, training, and performance audits… In short, the year had started badly, but we made up for it well on the rest.

And these missions were a breath of fresh air for me: meeting new people, new work methods, radically different technical and regulatory contexts… In short, this year 2025 allowed me to push my limits and reassure me on the fact that yes, I am capable of adapting and changing context quickly.

Furthermore, I discovered a new work mentality within Zenika: moving from a company of 20 employees to +400 is also about discovering new things: a company that never completely sleeps, communities of practice, internal events… In short, a reality very far from my previous vision of what an IT service provider is; a vision which was, as you can imagine, deeply negative. I am however well aware that Zenika is not an IT service provider “like any other”, by its positioning on the market. But this allowed me to reconcile with the concept of an IT service provider, and it was a task that was far from being won.

Changing environments is also about meeting new colleagues, and I must admit that I have monumental luck. The list is too long to name everyone, but a special thank you to all the Clermont team (❤️) and to the Lyon people with whom I was able to talk this year. DevFest Lyon was a particularly good time, with many Zs on site, and it was really cool to finally spend time with these people I see so infrequently.

My first steps as a Speaker (on national track) - Joy, excitement (and imposter syndrome)

On a daily basis, I love sharing and discovering knowledge. I even think that the term “Sharing” is the first value that comes to mind when talking about computer science. If the fact of being certain of never managing to know everything can depress some people, for me, it makes me love my field even more: I will learn throughout my career, no matter how it evolves. And what better way to learn than discovering and learning with people ready to share their passion(s)?

That’s why I’ve always loved going to conferences, both on the local and national scene. I keep a special memory of my first Clermont’ech, my first LavaJUG, my first Volcamp (in person)… And of course, the desire to speak there was present for a long time.

I had already made a few attempts at Clermont’ech, in 2019 and 2020. Talks that have necessarily aged rather badly from a technical point of view, but which are funny for me to watch now: you see me all stressed, stomach in knots, but happy to be there. However, the years passed, work and my personal prerogatives took over, and I stopped speaking. I had become a silent listener again, happy to learn, but frustrated to no longer share. So, for 2025, I set myself the goal of changing that.

Of course, the first step was the return of the blog. The old one had been abandoned for years; so I made the decision to start “from scratch”. The second will was to give conferences again, and this time to rub shoulders with another challenge: national scenes.

Thanks to gouz (who is also a Clermont Z, and also a speaker I’ve admired for a very long time), I also overcame the apprehension of proposing and speaking at national conferences. First DevQuest, then Volcamp, DevFest Lyon… And already, for next year, SnowCamp and Touraine Tech. Without him, very clearly, none of this would have happened, so a big thank you to him for kicking my ass to encourage me to submit to CfPs. Of course, I also had the opportunity to return to speak at Clermont’ech and LavaJUG, where I discovered the world of confs. A beautiful circle completed, but I hope to be able to go around it several times 😁.

Also, a huge thank you to the organizers of the conferences where I had the pleasure of speaking. It is phenomenal work to organize such events, and a true mark of trust to allow me to participate as a speaker. A huge thank you also to the other speakers for their investment and also for the superb exchanges we were able to have. Thanks also to my two MCs of this year (Nastasia and Matthieu) for their energy before going on stage. And finally, thank you to all the people who said to themselves “hey, maybe I’ll go lose 20/40min with this guy”, and for the exchanges and feedback I was able to have. ❤️

However, giving talks was a huge challenge: people don’t know it, but I’m basically a very shy person; because I hide my apprehension and my stress a lot. Social interactions have long been complicated for me (and to be perfectly honest, I still don’t always understand them). Going on stage in front of 70, 80, 100 people was therefore a huge challenge for me. In addition, the imposter syndrome knocks at the door: “who are you to feel legitimate to go talk about a subject to other people, more experienced than you?”. By the way, that’s why for me, lectures and talks are radically different: at the university, my position is that of the knower who gives advice to future juniors, while at a conference, I am generally younger (and therefore less experienced) than the people who come to listen to me (note: that doesn’t mean I have no imposter syndrome at the university).

This imposter syndrome was particularly persistent (and I still have it a bit, in my moments of doubt), but I managed little by little to get rid of it, thanks to a lot of preparation, advice, and also to the TZ (a conference-like internal event at Zenika), which allowed me to prepare and better apprehend this exercise. DevQuest was nevertheless a difficult moment (only because it was my first); but Volcamp and DevFest Lyon went extremely well in my head. I was happy to be there, but I no longer felt the anxiety invading me.

I am also very happy to have been able to speak without having to twist my subjects, nor my way of expressing myself and making my slides. I still managed to bring to Volcamp a 70cm wide train table with a plaster volcano… And I’m very proud of it. 😁

I also want to thank my partner (Justine): she has always been there, whether to listen to me (many times), give me feedback, encourage me (and often to accompany me in the realization of the subjects I present); but also for simply having understood and accepted the fact that I was going to be away for the fun of going to speak at a conference. She is clearly THE person in the shadows who makes all this possible, and I am deeply and eternally grateful to her. But that, we’ll also talk about a bit later. 😁

Clermont’ech, my point of constancy

I joined the board of Clermont’ech in… 2019. For people who don’t know, it’s a Clermont association that organizes, every 6 to 8 weeks ( approximately) one hour of conferences of 15/30 min, with local speakers. An opportunity to give a first experience to people who have never tried to speak, and above all, to share a good time between technology enthusiasts.

And since 2019, my investment in the association has been very variable: I alternated periods where I was very involved in the project, and others where I was totally absent for 6 months. This year, I finally managed to find a constancy in my involvement and my investment within the association, something I’m very happy about because I love spending time organizing this kind of event. Furthermore, Clermont’ech is, in the end, the only thing that hasn’t moved in my “tech” life, and I’m delighted!

In 2025, it’s 6 events (APIHours) organized, with 17 different speakers, including 8 people who had never spoken in the association before! The opportunity also to send a huge thank you to Pierre, Claude and Justine, my partners in the association without whom nothing would be done.

By the way, two PSAs:

• If you want to start as a speaker, contact us! We are always looking for people to come talk, and we have a mentoring program to support you!
• If you are a company and you are reading this (???), AND you wish to sponsor a small local association, which works only by volunteers, contact us too!

Teaching in the age of Artificial Intelligence

I’ve been giving classes at the university since 2020; which means that’s it, I’ve spent more time on campus as a teacher than as a student. And for two years, of course, everyone has been using AI. My students are big users of it, and, necessarily, the question arises: how to continue evaluating the student and not the AI, and above all, how to make the student really learn?

In my classes, I noted 3 typologies of students:

• Those who don’t want to hear about AI: “it’s crap”, to paraphrase. They are very resistant to this technology; use it occasionally but have no trust in it. They are a very small minority (less than 10%).
• Those who do EVERYTHING with AI (even if they don’t admit it): the AI codes for them, debugs (or at least tries) for them, explains the course to them, the code, etc. They are numerous (approximately 70%).
• And finally, the remaining 20%, who do with AI, but with a great critical distance from the technology: they will use the AI more to help them occasionally on a task, without however copying/pasting what the LLM will return to them. They use it in the end as a very improved rubber duck, to validate hypotheses, obtain a specific detail, etc.

In all these use cases, I notice however a constant: no one knows the actual functioning of an LLM behind: the logic behind a neural network, the probabilistic approach on which the technology is based, etc. For the students who do everything with AI, they are convinced of having an almost " magical" tool, capable of doing everything and inventing everything; while, by definition, the AI only repeats and reformulates things it has already seen before.

Faced with students who only prompted in practical work sessions, I decided to take the time, in class, to explain the behavior of an LLM, its good uses, and its bad uses; its theoretical functioning and the limits of this model. The impact was perceptible, since the resistant students started giving the technology a chance, while having made the “all-AI” students come out of their way of working to regain a critical spirit.

Because, even if it’s a technology that is scary (notably because of the societal changes it risks bringing), it is not a fundamentally bad technology (just like blockchain, which is also a very misunderstood technology). It is even, on the contrary, a technology whose use, if well realized, is an incredible source of inspiration and acceleration. But this cannot happen without a critical mind and look at an AI’s production; and this critical look can only be obtained by already having the skills and technical knowledge. That’s also why AI mostly benefits seniors: AI needs a clear and well-defined prompt to produce what is asked of it. In the end, one can almost make a parallel between using an AI and teaching: to be able to teach a subject, you need a very good knowledge of the subject, in order to be able to popularize and answer questions. Using an AI is in the end the same thing: you must guide it towards what you want, and for that, you must already have a very clear idea of it. A point of view that I visibly share with Horacio “LostInBrittany” Gonzalez, with whom I had the opportunity to speak several times during the year, and who released a long series of blog posts on the subject (they are all captivating, don’t hesitate to take a look).

And the pleasure of teaching, in all this? I would say it’s different. The most notable effect is that we have the impression that students are less in possession of knowledge than before; because they delegate a big part of it to the AI. It’s quite sad, because the impression we have in return, on the teacher side, is that classes no longer count: the AI will answer them (wrongly). Students are also less demanding: they ask the AI, then only after the practical work instructor. It’s a real problem, especially when we are faced with students who try with the AI for 2 months, before starting to ask questions… 7 days before the deadline.

But not all is dark: students are increasingly aware of the actual capacities and limitations of such tools; and I have good hope that, with pedagogy, we will arrive more and more at “AI-native” students, knowing when and how to use (and especially, not use) an AI. This year’s experimentation allowed me to see that it was possible to make students question their relationship with AI again, so why give up?

My best talks of 2025

Since I’ve been to conferences, I’ve necessarily prepared a small selection of the talks that marked me the most in 2025! Of course, the list is:

• non-exhaustive: I watched a bunch of conferences this year, so I might have missed some
• non-exclusive: Conferences have several tracks, but I only exist once, so I couldn’t see everything
• non-sorted: I listed as it came to mind, so it’s not an ordered “top”. I grouped by conference because I re-read the programs to get the names and links.

Now that the disclaimer is passed, the list!

• Behind the scenes of JavaScript: what we use without understanding (Mickael Alves, Etienne Idoux)
  • An incredible talk, which makes us enter visually into the JavaScript scheduler. A complex subject but treated with a pedagogy and visual supports absolutely insane. A real gem as we rarely see.
• One pixel, then another: How to make DOOM run on an e-reader (Moustapha Agack)
  • DOOM is mythical, and the r/itrunsdoom is just as much. So necessarily, when we are offered to discover how to run DOOM on a first-generation Kindle, it makes you want to! A great talk, where we also talk about color management, chromatic aberrations when moving to black and white… And which makes you want to go hack things.
• I mistreat your LLM live with 10 security flaws (Gaëtan Eleouet)
  • A talk with a lot of humor and pedagogy on the functioning of LLMs and the risks of context bypass and potential solutions to avoid them. A very beautiful immersion in the capacities and limits of these tools, led by an excellent speaker.
• How to merge your PR in 10 seconds: REX Mob Code Review (Thibaut Cantet)
  • We’ve all heard of pair and mob programming at least once in our life; and doing pair-programming is quite frequent. On the other hand, mob programming is much rarer! To be perfectly honest, I had never seen this practice “in prod”, at the scale of a team, before this talk. A superb human RETEX that makes you want to try despite the prejudice of “it’s going to be a massive mess if we do that”.
• Untangling data provenance problems using graphs (Nastasia Fouret)
  • I’m not going to lie to you, I’m not a big fan of graph and BigData universes. And that’s why I like going to see this kind of talk: to make me want to take an interest in it anyway! Nastasia returns to the utility of graphs in the framework of reunifying and cross-referencing data, notably when data is dissonant between several sources. A very beautiful example of a concrete and real use of this kind of tool.
• Another World, a beautiful lesson in software architecture (Olivier Poncet)
  • Well, already, it’s a talk by Olivier Poncet, so, from the start, a good time announced (I was talking to you about speakers who impress and inspire me earlier, Olivier is clearly one of them). This talk is a dive into the guts of Another World, a mythical game of the 90s, and above all a demonstration of an architectural gem. Olivier plunges us into this universe and it’s 40 minutes of pure happiness.
• Makers from Father to Son (Sylvain & Matthias Gougouzian)
  • This talk is special because first, it’s my gouz at the controls, the same one who pushed me to give talks. Secondly, it touches a sensitive chord in me, transmission and sharing, because it’s a strong value for me, all the more so this year with my Trainberry project, where I shared my passion with my grandfather. Seeing Sylvain and Matthias on stage, together, presenting their little project, is strong and it’s a very beautiful proof that computer science is accessible at any age, as long as you are well accompanied. A talk that also talks about doubts, human, communication… A real “off-track” talk as we rarely see. <3
• SSE Chronicles - When your app whispers to your browser (Madz)
  • In my rare attempts to do front-end with notifications sent by the server, I often used (and hated) Websockets. With a real-time demo that calls on the audience (demo + audience, crazy guy!), Madz shows us the detailed operation of Server-Sent Events. Technology that served me 15 days later on Trainberry, so thanks Madz, you pulled a real thorn from my foot!
• The WebGPU revolution: all the power of the GPU, on the web, and beyond (Julien Sulpis)
  • An impressive and masterly talk led by Julien, who takes us through the history of 3D rendering in the browser; first with WebGL and its limitations, then with WebGPU. A very beautiful talk visually, and clear on the technical explanations. Typically the kind of presentations that gradually reconcile me with the world of front-end web…
• Developing a Kubernetes operator in Java, challenge accepted! (Stéphane Philippart)
  • When you think of Kubernetes source code, you immediately think of “performance”: it’s written in Go, it’s designed to fail, it’s capable of surviving a rocket launcher shot at point-blank range… In short, a bit the opposite of Java (#trollInside). But Stéphane decided to do as he pleased, and show that, yes, one can create a Kube operator in Java. And yes, it can be performant. A talk that reminds well that a tool must above all meet a need rather than responding to the hype of the moment.
• Rediscovering PHP: modern practices beyond legacy (Horacio Gonzalez)
  • I started computer science through PHP. It was in PHP 5.1, modifying PHPBB2 forums hosted on Xooit (and yes, it still exists, I went to check for the needs of this article!). Then, I discovered object-oriented with Java, and I haven’t touched PHP since. For me, PHP is an old-fashioned language, not performant, and a nest of poorly designed, poorly optimized code riddled with thousands of flaws. Horacio comes to destroy these prejudices, with a very good overview of PHP 8, and especially the community that keeps the language and its best practices alive. A real cooperative model, with truly open governance.
• Mom, I recoded Minecraft in Python (Gwendoline Fichant)
  • I was talking to you just above about Java, which made me leave PHP… Well, Java, I started to mod Minecraft! Gwen’s talk is excellent, and allows us to enter into the details of the functioning of a video game rendering engine: optimizations, lighting management, user interactions, etc… A technically bluffing conference and demonstration, all told with a lot of pedagogy. By the way, Gwen, if you read this post: present this talk at a national conf. Really. It’s top.

And for 2026?

2026 looks “calmer” than 2025: I’ve found a work/life balance, which allows me to invest and involve myself again in the causes that are close to my heart, primarily education and sharing.

But there is no question of stopping there. I nurture the hope of being able to continue doing more conferences - for now, it’s starting rather well, since SnowCamp, Touraine Tech and… FOSDEM (yes yes) are already on the program. I also want to try the experience of talks in tandem. My partner will join me on stage at Touraine Tech for the Trainberry talk; and a top-secret project is underway with Gouz… Stay tuned. 😉

For some time now, ideas around the world of audio/video (and tech of course) have been turning in the back of my head. I don’t know if I’ll have the time in 2026 to finally launch this project, but if it’s possible, we’ll launch, and we’ll see!

2025 was a good year. Trying, tiring, full of questions, but resolutely positive. I rediscovered the pleasure of doing tech, sharing, innovating, and learning. I (re-)met wonderful people, who make me grow daily, and that is priceless. So, whether we spoke all year long, or five minutes at a stand in a conference: thank you. ❤️