Learning in the Room

There’s a point in any technology cycle where reading about it stops being enough. You have to actually use it, build something, break something, figure out what works in your context. For AI, that moment is now. At First Derivative, we’ve been focused on making it as easy as possible for our people to get there.

As an EPAM company, our people are part of EPAM’s AI/RUN initiative, a company-wide effort to build AI-native delivery capability that has seen 15,000 EPAM employees take part across every delivery role. The tools and resources are there. The question we’ve been asking is how we make sure our people are genuinely getting hands-on with them. Earlier this year, Louise O’Hare and Jason Raffo wrote in this series about why peer learning is the best way to build AI skills. Since then, we’ve been putting that into practice.

Weekly Drop-Ins

One of the things we’ve put in place at First Derivative is a weekly Thursday session held in our Newry office, with colleagues dialling in from Belfast and beyond. Sometimes there’s a planned agenda – a speaker demoing actual work using agents, or a live demo of new features on the EPAM LEAP platform.

Other weeks it’s more open: colleagues sharing what they’ve been building, asking questions, or working through something together. Both formats have their place. The structured sessions bring everyone up to speed on what’s new and what’s possible. The open ones generate the kind of honest, practical conversation that’s harder to plan for – colleagues arriving with live demos of MCP servers they’ve built to integrate Claude with other platforms, agents automating real SDLC workflows, approaches that others in the room hadn’t considered. Watching someone in the same room build something is inspiring. Special thanks to all those who have contributed by preparing demos and sharing their knowledge so far.

Bootcamps and Getting Hands-On

Alongside the drop-ins, we’ve run structured in-person bootcamps to get people genuinely productive – setting up and using Claude Code and EPAM’s CodeMie, not just installed but using them as part of how they work. We want all staff regardless of role to be exposed to and using these tools. Not everyone learns the same way of course, so we’ve also run dedicated sessions for individual teams like the People team and Marketing – a smaller-group format where colleagues can explore what’s available through EPAM’s library without the pressure of a larger audience.

What We’ve Learned

The AI landscape moves fast and there’s no shortage of tools competing for attention. Our approach has been deliberate: focus on what’s available to us, what’s proven in practice, and what changes how work gets done so we can deliver more value for our clients, both in quality and speed of what we do. When a colleague shares what they’ve been using on a real project, the value is immediate and tangible. The other thing we really appreciate is the human connection. We can learn so much from each other when in the room, someone mentions a problem, someone else solved it last week. That kind of knowledge transfer is hard to replicate in any other format, and it’s why we’ll continue to invest in creating the space for it.

We’re continuing to run the sessions and bootcamps and will aim to keep it fresh and inspiring. If you’re an FD colleague who hasn’t made it along yet, Thursdays at 2pm is where to find us.

Thanks
Liam