David Boyne on Event-Driven Architecture, Event Catalog, and Why Context Is King for AI

Try out IcePanel, your C4 model tool: https://icepanel.io/lucaIn this episode of Dear Architects I sit down with David Boyne, creator of Event Catalog and EDA Visuals, who has spent almost a decade working in the event-driven architecture world. We get into the practical realities of building async systems at scale, the mindset shift that trips up so many teams, and why treating your events with the same care you give your APIs changes everything.David shares hard-won lessons from production, including the trap of turning every single thing into an event, and we dig into how domain-driven design and EDA fit hand in hand. In the second half we move into AI, where David makes the case that documentation and context are becoming the real differentiator, how MCP changes the way we query our architecture, and why human interaction still sits at the centre of it all.If you are starting your event-driven journey, or you are already feeling the governance pain that comes with scale, there is a lot here to take away.Event Catalog: https://www.eventcatalog.devEDA Visuals: https://eda-visuals.boyney.ioChapters below.Subscribe for more conversations with the people shaping modern software architecture.#EventDrivenArchitecture #SoftwareArchitecture #EventCatalog #DomainDrivenDesign #AICHAPTERS00:00 Intro and David's background02:32 The one thing I wish I knew earlier: treat events like APIs03:59 Why teams find async architecture so intimidating07:59 Eventual consistency and the fear of debugging EDA09:59 Latency, business context, and asking the right questions16:59 The trap of turning everything into an event17:32 EDA Visuals: most popular pattern and anti-pattern19:57 How domain-driven design makes EDA click26:32 The origin story of Event Catalog40:49 Where Event Catalog is heading and the role of AI43:30 Where AI helps on the documentation side45:45 Why context will be king49:25 Living systems, mob programming, and shared understanding52:12 Can AI sit in on the mob and learn our decisions?55:44 First steps if you want to start with EDA