Host Intro (Gene Kim)

As I mentioned in my opening remarks, the goal of this last wrap-up session is to have someone we admire give feedback to this community. I can't think of a better person than former Chief of Naval Operations Admiral John Richardson, who you met earlier today. Please welcome Admiral Richardson.

Q&A — Gene Kim with Admiral John Richardson

Gene Kim: First question — you've spent the day with us. You caught many sessions, some of which included people in the US Navy. I'm now dying of curiosity. What were the highlights for you?

Admiral John Richardson: First I gotta apologize because by now you've gotta be getting Richardson fatigue. It's been a day.

One, all of the presentations have been absolutely fantastic. They've really been fascinating — up to the very last one, which was both fascinating and entertaining. If you wanted to draw some strings between all of them, I think it's pretty clear that technology is changing very, very fast. We don't actually know where it's going as much as we used to. And it's changing much faster than our culture is changing to adopt it. So there's been a lot of discussion about what we need to do to get the culture ready, to be able to adapt and receive that change as quickly as it's coming.

The other one is that the teams that can do that and learn the fastest will win. They'll outstrip their competitors. There are so many things out there, so many new technologies — we don't know where it's gonna lead. There's a lot of clouds out there, just some uncertainty. But we know that it's gonna change, and the team that can adapt the fastest will prevail.

And even defining a team, I think is different now. The teaming of technology and humanity is gonna be a new thing. And then finally, a lot of that's gonna be done in communities. I highlighted the importance of connections. ETLS is one of those communities where, if people come consistently — I hope everybody's had as good a time as I have had and has learned as much as I have learned and connected as much as I've connected, not only this year, but in the previous two years. This is a kind of a learning community that bears repeated wash, rinse, and repeat. Come back to ETLS and let's move this thing down a path so that we can learn together and be that much more adaptable. I think that's the winning formula.

Gene Kim: So given the talks and interactions you had — it was actually fascinating watching you, watching a full room eagerly asking questions — what advice would you give this community?

Admiral John Richardson: My talk was really kind of a lot about advice. So this idea of maintaining those connections is really important. Continue to learn. We talked a lot about leadership. In fact, the emphasis switched to leadership and the people that were at that dinner party. One thing you could take away — they were just voracious learners. They weren't necessarily waiting for the next formal school. They weren't necessarily waiting for the next on-the-job training. They learned every opportunity. They grabbed whatever they could to just learn. So I would say, definitely do that.

And then do everything we can to try and stitch together this marriage between technology and humanity. What do people do best? I'll tell you, I'm a bit of a dinosaur right now, because the things that were the keys to my success are done much better by machines now. I would not have succeeded in the modern environment because it's just so easy to program a machine to do what I was good at. So what's that new combination? Just keep looking for ways to adapt.

Gene Kim: What you said resonates with me, because every once in a while I kind of do a broad review of the talks from this conference over 10 years — like 1,500-plus talks. And what's coming clear was the evidence that we're stitching together a language — how do we get large organizations, teams and teams, actually work together towards a common objective? It's just amazing to see how this is a community that's actually stitching together the vocabulary. I think even DevOps is a very crude expression of what we know — this is not just DevOps, it's actually a much broader team. Does that resonate with you?

Admiral John Richardson: Totally. How do we define ourselves as a team, particularly the people part of it, and just looking for opportunities for us to affirm one another? Really looking for ways that we can make each other more successful. I think that's gonna be absolutely key.

Gene Kim: One of the things that I've heard year over year is, 'the reason why I keep coming back is that I just need to get recharged to make it just one more year. It's so difficult.' So to that sort of person — let's not point out any specific individuals, but if you were a doctor and you have to sort of make a diagnosis — what does that say to you?

Admiral John Richardson: Help me again with that.

Gene Kim: When you hear someone say, 'oh my gosh, I come here because I get recharged to go back, and hopefully I can make it another year, because everything is just so hard.'

Admiral John Richardson: Yeah, it is hard. But I hope that everybody has already put something on their schedule to get your teams together, bring them together as soon as you get back and share what you've learned here. Just go on the offensive. Don't think of this as an endurance match until the next time.

I used to do this when I was running the Navy, because we would get our leaders together and we would have great presentations, and we would get our thinking aligned and everything. And I was always worried that once we left, well, then what happens? I would tell 'em, 'it's not like a spa week here.' We had some good things going on, but there's actually expectations now. I hope that you've all learned enough and are excited enough that you're like, 'Hey, let's get everybody together, back wherever you work, and share what you've learned here and take the offensive.' So that next time when you come next year, you've got all these stories to tell about what this incubated into in your own organizations.

Gene Kim: That's fantastic. Well, I want to say thank you so much for making yourself so available throughout the day. It was just a real treat to watch all the interactions in that workshop that you held.

Admiral John Richardson: Oh, the joy was all mine. And I'll be available until midnight. If you wanna hang out, I'll just hang out here.

Gene Kim: Hey, thank you so much. Thank you.

Deadpool / Wolverine Sketch Video

[Pre-recorded comedy bit plays — 'Deadpool' character interrupts to roast Gene Kim ('Eugene Kim, Tech World's President… Gene Pool now…'), riffs on Gen AI, CI/CD, Kubernetes, closure, and junior dev jobs disappearing. Closes with banter and exits.]

Gene Kim — Closing Remarks

This is generally one of the most surprising, confusing things ever.

Okay, well, let's wrap this up. We're at the end of the conference programming. Thank you for being with us. This has been such an exhilarating three days, and I hope it's been worthwhile for you and for me. There's nothing more comforting to have everything written out in advance. So I'm in my comfort area right now.

Next slide — here's how I personally measure the success of these events. Whoever's responsible for that [Deadpool video], I would just love to hear the story behind that.

In all seriousness — I measure (and actually anything I do, I really want something to fulfill) two criteria. One, it has to be high learning. The second is high networking. In other words, I'm learning something I view as important, and two, I'm hanging out with the best in the game. Trust me, this whole three days, I absolutely felt that. For so many people, I'm so glad that we got a chance to meet, because some people ask, 'where do these talks come from?' And often people come up to me saying, 'Hey, I'm X, Y, Z, I'm working on these really important problems.' And often my reaction is, 'wow, that's really great, we should talk.' I'm no doubt surrounded by worthy people working on really important things.

I'm hoping that you've had similar experiences — that you had the exhilaration of hanging out with kindred spirits, fellow travelers; reconnecting with people; meeting people that you might have admired, authors of books you've loved; and you feel part of a community with shared goals who love sharing, and that you're learning from the best in the game. By maybe show of applause — how did we do?

Fantastic. Here's the thank-yous. Thank you to all the speakers — you did a phenomenal job, I so much appreciate it. I actually meant to do this on day one — I have to thank the program committee. We evaluate hundreds of proposals, and I'm so grateful for the judgment of everyone on the programming committee, who bring their own goals and aspirations and puzzles. If you submitted, there is a tremendous amount of deliberation that goes on. I really wanna acknowledge everyone on the program committee.

And of course I want to thank the entire IT Revolution team, and that includes my boss and wife, Marguerite, Beth, Ann, Alex, Aaron, Marjorie, Anna, Leah, and this time, my three kids — Reid, Parker, Grant — and also my co-MC Jeff. And then of course all the sponsors — thank you so much for all of you who helped make this possible, Sonatype and everyone here who helped in so many ways.

With that, I want to turn this over to Jeff to tell us how to wrap this up.

Jeff Gallimore — Conference Wrap-up

Thanks. By the way, Gene — you asked about who you needed to talk to about that [Deadpool] video. You need to talk to your boss about that. Okay? Yeah, Roger.

We are almost at the end of the summit. Just a few more things to share before we all hop into the planes, trains, and automobiles to take us back to where we live and where we work.

Couple more thank-yous. First of all, a huge thank-you to IT Revolution for creating the opportunity for us to get this community back together. It's a community that matters so much to so many people, so we really appreciate it.

Also, a thank-you to all of our sponsors, our premier sponsor Sonatype, and all of our platinum, gold, silver, and bronze sponsors. You've all been an important part of our summit experience over the last three days and our enterprise journeys.

Beyond that — many of you have asked about the videos of all the talks. Those will all be published in the video library. We're working on posting those soon. You will all have access to that video library for two weeks. Once they are posted, we have also made it super easy to get access for more people and for longer. The key word there is IT Revolution membership. That is the ticket for the longer-term access to the video library.

And in the video library, we have also attached all of the slides for all of the talks. So it's really easy to find those too. And not only does the video library have the talks for this summit, it has the videos and the talks going all the way back to the very first summit 10 years ago. So you have access to all of that content.

Now, the reason that we're sharing the videos and we're sharing the slides is because we want you to share those with others. We want you to share the videos. We want you to share the slides. We want you to share the sponsor swag. Most of all, we want you to share your stories and your experience at the summit with the people that you work with.

And speaking of sharing, we also want your session feedback. You could do that online in the schedule. Remember, feedback is a gift, and sharing is caring.

Now, over the last three days, we have talked a lot about community. And that's what this is — it's a community, and we want to create opportunities to get this community back together. And we have an opportunity to do just that. It's ETLS Connect. This is also included in the IT Revolution membership. And the first of these opportunities is in just two months.

ETLS Connect is a series of half-day virtual events that you can watch from anywhere. Or if you are lucky enough to watch in one of the Equal Experts cities, you can do that too. This, again, is part of the IT Revolution membership. And again, the first opportunity is happening in just two months. We would love to see you there and have you participate.

Until then, be safe, be well. Take care, everybody.