Two days in the loop in Berlin

In The Loop is n8n's own conference, and this year it filled a glass-roofed industrial hall in Berlin for two days in October. I went with two goals: to hear first-hand where n8n is heading, and to finally meet the n8n community in person rather than through a screen. Both boxes were ticked. Thanks and congratulations to the n8n team for hosting a most excellent conference. ## The roadmap If you wanted to know where n8n and AI are going together, this was the place to be. [The keynote](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FleqhicX7M0) laid out a roadmap that was equal parts exciting and controversial (there's a new logo and branding too, by the way). A lot is being built to extend n8n's competitiveness, and I'm happy to see it. Whether it's all heading in the right direction remains to be seen. My one disappointment was that much of it was "soon" rather than "today". I'd have loved to see more hands-on demos. ## Two more talks worth your time **[Building n8n’s AI Assistant: wrong turns and lessons learned](https://n8n.io/intheloop/agenda/building-n8n-s-ai-assistant-wrong-turns-and-lessons-learned-2be0fc1e/).** Albert Alises Sorribas, senior AI engineer at n8n, gave a candid account of how the assistant grew from a scrappy two-engineer attempt at an "n8n super agent" into something that can understand your instance, build and change workflows, and check its own work. He took us through each version, from a simple chat to the first workflow builder, multi-agent experiments and today's more autonomous design, and what broke each time usage grew. The part I took away was on evaluation. With output that is never quite the same twice, they start from what the product needs the assistant to do and write it down as a product rubric before measuring anything. The checks are refreshingly concrete: did it show a useful draft before asking for setup, and did it respect "connect later" when the user edited? It's a habit worth copying for anyone shipping an AI feature. **[Highly GDPR restricted environments: inside a German city administration](https://n8n.io/intheloop/agenda/highly-gdpr-restricted-environments-inside-a-german-city-administration-375d154e/).** Keivan Shakory Tabrizi, co-founder of coompanion, on helping the staff of a city administration in Germany automate their work with self-hosted n8n, in an environment about as locked down as it gets: fully air-gapped, no cloud models, no external APIs, and special category data under Article 9 of GDPR. The team had no access at all, no VPN and no credentials, and worked only from dummy data the administration had censored first. The specialist government software was sealed off or too expensive to reach, so the value lay in the manual work around it. Their answer was an enablement model: a week onsite teaching n8n to non-developers, remote debugging after that, and a return visit only when remote support wasn't enough. The point that stuck with me is that the human and process work, getting everyone aligned on the process from end to end, mattered more than the technical build. ## The community, in person The highlight of the event was meeting the n8n community in "people-form". I'd be lying if I said I didn't feel a little anxious, having mostly existed online for the past six months. It was a great mix: OG fans from n8n's pre-AI era, newcomers defecting from Make.com, and fellow expert consultants like myself, comparing notes on how to navigate the new platform offerings. The atmosphere was genuinely fun and friendly, with a love for n8n as common ground. It also got progressively pinker as the day drew on, as the photos below will show. Thank you to the n8n legends I had the pleasure of meeting and managed to sneak a photo with: [Bart Veldhuizen](https://www.linkedin.com/in/bartveldhuizen), [Tino Zwirs](https://www.linkedin.com/in/tinozwirs), [Stefano Manese](https://www.linkedin.com/in/stefano-manese), [Guillaume Duvernay](https://www.linkedin.com/in/guillaume-duvernay) of Softr, [Marcel Claus-Ahrens](https://www.linkedin.com/in/geckse), and the original n8n × SF hackathon crew, [Kaila Love](https://www.linkedin.com/in/kailalove) and [Dylan Watkins](https://www.linkedin.com/in/dylanjwatkins), who both flew in from the US. I wanted to finally get a photo with the main man, Jan Oberhauser, but wasn't so lucky. Maybe next year. Special thanks to the n8n ambassadors [Inyoung Lee](https://www.linkedin.com/in/2innnnn0) of the amazing 데이터팝콘 (DataPopcorn) in South Korea, [Jaruphat Jongpaijit](https://www.linkedin.com/in/jaruphat/) from Thailand and [Zorigt Otgontumur](https://www.linkedin.com/in/zoogii/) from Mongolia, for the after-party banter and for sharing their experiences. I agree: n8n needs an office in APAC. If you're into n8n or AI, or both, connect with and follow all of these people. ## The photos Below are the two days in the hall, then a little of Berlin around them: currywurst at Curry 61, the city lit up at night, and the East Side Gallery.