QCon New York
I went to QConNYC this week and picked up a lot of valuable knowledge. I wanted to throw out a quick summary of my takeaways and I'll be delving deeper into some of these topics in the coming weeks.
Day 1:
The Decision Buy-In Algorithm: John Riviello - Comcast
This was an great discussion of the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) and how they used it at Comcast for making group decisions.
Build Features Faster With WebAssembly Components - Bailey Hayes - Cosmonic
I actually missed this talk but after watching the video Bailey and I chatted the next day and I've had to do a significant re-evaluation of WebAssembly. I think has a big role to play in the future.
Achieving SLSA Certification with a “Bring-Your-Own-Builder” Framework - Asra Ali - Google
Securing the Software Supply Chain: How in-toto and TUF Work Together to Combat Supply Chain Attacks - Marina Moore - NYU
In these two talks Asra and Marina painted a picture of how we will be securing the software supply chain from build attestations to cryptographic and policy validation.
Day 2:
Agile Rehab: Engineering for Improved Delivery
Bryan Finster - Defense Unicorns
Bryan gave a really compelling talk about how a massive retailer used engineering and a focus on delivery to reduce process and create fast flow.
Success Patterns in for building Cyber-Physical Systems with Agile
Robin Yeman - Robin Yeman Llc
Robin was an excellent speaker with deep experience in the aerospace industry and she provided a lot of great examples of incremental working methods in the hardware space and how this will come to play in the delivery of complex, software defined physical systems. To paraphrase Robin, if a girl scout troupe can launch a satellite in 6 months, we should be able to do it in less than 90.
Day 3:
Keynote: The Joy of Building Large Scale Systems
Suhail Patel - Monzo
Suhail gave an eye-opening keynote on the challenges and some of the upcoming solutions for creating efficient large-scale systems.
Offline and Thriving: Building Resilient Applications With Local-first Techniques
Carl Sverre - Amplify Partners
Carl gave a very engaging talk about offline-first architectures with some interesting details behind how some of our favorite favor this model and how it can be more approachable than people think.
Perils, Pitfalls and Pratfalls of Platform Engineering
Charity Majors - Honeycomb.io
All I can say is that I was nodding my head so much during Charity's talk that I started to get dizzy.
Building and Using Generative AI Responsibly: Microsoft’s Journey
Sarah Bird - Microsoft
This was the closing keynote of the conference and a topic that is (or should be) top of mind for many of us. It was heartening to see all of the effort going into making AI safe for broader use and interesting to see in detail how it is being done.
There were many more talks and I'll be taking in some more through recordings. An excellent return to New York for QCon!
