Everything You Missed from Orkes’ Seattle Developer Meetup 2025 and What’s Coming Next

On May 15, Orkes brought developers together in Seattle for an epic evening focused on AI agents and agentic workflows.

The event, hosted at the lively SPIN Seattle (yes, the place with the ping-pong tables), combined real tech talk with just the right amount of social energy.

While there weren’t exactly any heated ping-pong battles this time (apologies to the serious paddlers out there — I’m no Forrest Gump when it comes to the sport), the conversations definitely bounced back and forth with some fast-paced, sharp ideas.

Couldn't make it? No worries — here’s your full recap, powered by Orkes.

Let’s serve it up! 🏓

📋 Event Agenda

Checked In, Met Up, and Talked Tech

Guests checked in, admired the now-legendary bathtub full of ping-pong balls, grabbed wristbands, enjoyed delicious bites and drinks, and mingled before things officially kicked off.

It was a chance to talk shop, swap dev stories, and chat with the Orkes engineering and advocacy teams in person.

First Serve: Michael (Senior Developer Advocate) Hit the Stage

Our Senior Developer Advocate, Michael, kicked things off with an insightful session on agentic workflows, delivering ace-level knowledge and interactive demos.

He broke down how agentic workflows — autonomous, goal-oriented processes — are transforming the way modern apps are built. With Orkes Conductor, developers can easily design smart, scalable workflows that tie together APIs, large language models (LLMs), and microservices.

During his demo, he showed how Orkes takes workflow orchestration to the next level. It’s not just about automating tasks — Orkes offers built-in retries, decision-making logic, and smooth LLM integration right out of the box. It was a clear example of how Orkes brings structure, clarity, and power to AI-driven automation.

Second Serve: Mrinal (Software Engineer) Took the Spotlight

Our Software Engineer, Mrinal, followed up with a talk on mastering AI agents — how they work, and how to build them using Orkes.

He showed how Orkes handles the heavy lifting (timeouts, retries, service calls), letting you focus on intelligent behavior.

The result? Smarter agents and simpler code, all backed by enterprise-grade orchestration.

✋ Attendees Q&A with Mrinal and Michael

The panel quickly turned interactive, with devs eager to ask about real-world applications, tooling, and how Orkes fits into the AI stack.

Attendees were particularly curious about:

• How to scale workflows securely in enterprise environments
• How Orkes integrates with LLMs like OpenAI and Cohere
• How to monitor and troubleshoot agentic workflows in production

Takeaway? Building AI agents is game-changing — but running them reliably at scale is where Orkes shines. ✨

Swag Galore

Attendees didn’t leave empty-handed. The Orkes swag haul included backpacks, mugs, and stickers that were, honestly, pretty sweet. 🧢

Final Rally & Wrap-Up

The night wrapped with more bites, laughs, and a few late-night ping-pong duels.

Most importantly, folks left inspired by what’s possible with Orkes Conductor — and excited to build their own agentic systems.

🎤 3 Burning Questions Everyone Really Wanted to Know

1. “What’s the difference between Orkes and just using open-source Conductor?”

Orkes builds on OSS Conductor, but delivers it as a fully managed, enterprise-grade platform — with zero infrastructure headaches.

It’s offered as a cloud service with guaranteed SLAs, deployable in your cloud, our cloud, or on-premises — giving you the flexibility to run workflows wherever it fits best for your organization. Bonus: You also get access to expert support from the team behind Orkes, helping ensure your workflows run reliably and scale smoothly.

Included with Orkes:

• Built-in scalability and high availability
• Enhanced security
• Visual workflow editor
• Prebuilt integrations for popular services and queues

🆚 To compare, check out this breakdown.

In short: Orkes gives you Conductor’s power — without the setup or stress.

2. "Do I need to learn a new programming language to use Orkes for building workflows?"

Nope! Orkes fits right into your stack.

Define workflows in JSON and build task workers using languages you already know: Java, Python, Go, JavaScript, and more.

In addition to building task workers, you can also use Orkes' SDKs to perform workflow operations — like starting a workflow, checking workflow status, and more — all from within your existing codebase. 💻

Whether you're building a chatbot, data pipeline, or agent-driven app, Orkes keeps things simple and flexible.

3. "I see you have SQS (Amazon Simple Queue Service), can I bring my own queueing system?"

You bet. Orkes supports a wide range of queue integrations, including:

• AMQP
• NATS Messaging
• AWS SQS
• Confluent Kafka
• Apache Kafka
• Google Pub/Sub
• Azure Service Bus
• Amazon MSK
• IBM MQ
• Custom in-house queues (via API integration)

Use what works for you — Orkes is built to adapt to your environment.

Explore our full integration list.

📣 Your Next Move: Build, Play, and Stay in the Loop

Try It Yourself

Want to get hands-on with agentic workflows? Dive into the Orkes Developer Playground — no setup, no friction, just start building.

💡Quick Start Tip:

Open the Launch Pad in the left nav and import the Agentic Research Workflow template. It’s a hands-on way to see agentic orchestration in action.

And finally...

Don't Miss These Upcoming Events!

Mark your calendars! Join us at an upcoming event to keep learning and connecting:

• 🌍 Web Summit – November 10-13
• 💻 PlatformCON - June 23-27
• 🏆 AI Agent Builders Summit - July 15-30
• 📅 Webinar: The Big O in BOAT – May 28

Check out the full list on the Orkes Events Page.

💬 Let’s Keep the Conversation Going

Got a question, a build idea, or feedback? We’re all ears. Connect with our growing community on Slack or Discourse. We’d love to hear what you’re building with Orkes.

Looking forward to seeing you at an upcoming event. Until then—keep building, keep orchestrating, and see you at our next paddle battle 🏓

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Orkes Conductor is an enterprise-grade Unified Application Platform for process automation, API and microservices orchestration, agentic workflows, and more. Check out the full set of features, or try it yourself using our free Developer Playground.