AI and Innovation Take Center Stage at trivago Tech Get Together 2024

AI and Innovation Take Center Stage at trivago Tech Get Together 2024

In May this year, more than 300 of (mostly tech) trivago talents gathered for a full-day conference focused on knowledge sharing and valuable exchanges on the latest tech trends. Known as the trivago Tech Get Together, this event is a crucial part of our learning culture and provides an opportunity for our talents to learn from each other. The event featured several talks, keynotes, workshops, and a panel discussion, ensuring that everyone who attended the event could take away important learnings applicable to their work environment.

This year, we focused on the industry’s hottest topic: Artificial Intelligence, under the theme “Pioneering AI Frontiers”. The event held at the Clayton Hotel in Düsseldorf, began with a fascinating keynote delivered by our CEO Johannes Thomas. Johannes highlighted how AI is disrupting several industries, including music, agriculture, health, and notably travel. His keynote ended on a powerful note, encouraging us to embrace a transformative mindset and critically consider how AI is applied in our daily lives.

Steven McAuley, Business Psychologist & Customer Engineering Manager at Google, continued with an intriguing keynote on the four waves of AI adoption: Internet AI (e.g. Google Maps), Business AI (hugely influenced by the cloud), Perception AI (which influences how we see and think about things in our world), and Autonomous AI (with the use case of autonomous cars). He mentioned that while AI may not always offer the best results, it is already very helpful in our businesses. Finally, he emphasized that we are still in the early stages of AI and highlighted the importance of embracing it while being aware of ethical considerations.

The rest of the day featured several talks by trivago talents on different topics, ranging from Graph QL, Site Reliability Engineering, and Quality Assurance, to how we aggregate billions of hotel prices to help our users find their ideal hotel, and our main gallery image strategy. A major highlight for most attendees was the famous panel on AI. “AI is just a hype - change my mind” featured trivago talents roleplaying as AI advocates and skeptics, with a moderator balancing both perspectives. While AI advocates claimed that AI tools could increase productivity by at least 5%, skeptics noted that AI tools were not as immediately transformative as promised. The panel concluded that AI offers many opportunities, but with every opportunity comes a challenge, and awareness is key to navigating these challenges.

To end the day on a high note, participants enjoyed an informative yet humorous quiz with questions like how many articles have been published on trivago’s tech blog and the origin of the programming language Kotlin.

”I think it’s a great event organized by the company where they give us the opportunity to learn from each other, to share the knowledge, and also to celebrate the accomplishments of our technical teams,” said Ricardo Vega, Backend Software Engineering Lead.

Here are some impressions from the trivago Tech Get Together 2024:

To sum up, this edition of the trivago Tech Get Together proved to be insightful for the attendees, with lots of bonding moments, networking, and countless learnings. Thanks to our events team for putting together such a phenomenal event and to the speakers and attendees for making it memorable. We’re looking forward to hosting yet another insightful event hopefully next year!