Laravel Greece - Athens September 2026

🧪 Athens, let's talk about the boring thing that saves you.

In the age of AI-assisted coding, shipping fast is easy. Shipping fast and safe is the hard part. Everyone has a story about the Friday deploy that looked fine in the diff and very much wasn't in production.

This September, Elvis Poenaru makes the case for tests as the thing that lets you refactor without fear, ship with confidence, and keep a codebase reliable as it grows. We're going from zero to your first test tomorrow morning, through the practices that actually matter, all the way to growing your coverage from nothing to something solid. Along the way, a custom AI Skill built to write Laravel tests that follow a real set of team conventions, so the habit sticks instead of dying after week two.

The principles hold no matter what language you write in or how big your codebase is. At the end of the day, this saves you time and money 💸

Elvis has been in this room since 2019, at almost every meetup and talk since. Nice to finally have him on the other side of the mic 🎤

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📅 Thursday, September 24th, 2026 🕡 6:30 PM start 📍 T16, Tzaferi 16, Athens 🎫 Free entry, RSVP below

📣 Heads up on timing: 6:30 PM is when we kick off the talk, not when doors open. Please come a bit earlier so you can find a good seat, and stick around after we're done 🍕

See you there! 🇬🇷

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⏱️ THE PLAN

18:30 · Welcome and community news 18:45 · Elvis takes the stage 19:45 · Q&A 20:00 · Pizza, drinks and the usual hangout that runs longer than planned

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🎤 THE TALK

Elvis Poenaru · Ship Fast, Sleep Well: Testing in the Age of AI-Assisted Code

In the age of AI-assisted coding, shipping fast is easy. Shipping fast and safe is the hard part. This talk is about how testing lets you refactor without fear, ship with confidence, and keeps your codebase reliable over time. We'll go from zero to your first test tomorrow morning, cover the practices that actually matter, and help you grow your coverage from nothing to something solid. A custom AI Skill built to help us write Laravel tests following a real set of team conventions will help us adopt a habit that brings a huge payoff. The principles are the same no matter what language you're using or how big your codebase is. At the end of the day, it will save you time and money.

About Elvis Elvis Poenaru started as a Full Stack Developer in 2018, working mainly with the Laravel Framework. Since 2022 he's focused on backend engineering, first with Golang at instacar and now with Python at Plum. At Plum, backend testing coverage is around 90%, which makes it a good case study for the practices that matter and the benefits testing actually delivers. Outside of work, Elvis enjoys building new ideas and products, using Laravel and Inertia to bring them to life. He's been part of the Laravel Greece Meetup community since 2019 and has attended almost every meetup and talk ever since.

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📺 Can't make it to Τ16? We stream on YouTube.

📬 Don't forget to register to our newsletter to keep up with the latest changes and updates for our community! http://laravel.gr/s/subscribe

See you there!

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🙏 SPONSORS

None of this happens without our sponsors. Huge thanks to Laravel, Typesense, Epignosis, and Hack The Box for keeping the lights on at Laravel Greece.

Special shoutout to our partner Certification for Laravel 💜

See you on September 24th!