Host Intro (Gene Kim)

Please welcome researcher, founder of IT Revolution, and author of the new vibe coding book, Gene Kim.

Gene Kim

Good morning. Good morning. Can I get that 10-minute timer down here? Fantastic. Thank you.

Hey, welcome to the 23rd Enterprise Technology Leadership Summit. I'm so delighted about the programming this year and that you are all here. So in the next 10 minutes, what I'm going to do is just share with you four things. One is a little bit of the history around the conference and the goals, the structure of the conference, the community norms and notion of scenius, and some of the choices that we've made around the programming this year.

So why are we here? If you go back to conference one, which we called the DevOps Enterprise Summit, we had this notion that there were winning organizations that were capable of doing extraordinary things, more than any single individual could ever do alone, that somehow fully liberated people's creativity and problem-solving capabilities, versus those organizations that somehow constrained and put people in the silos that extinguished entirely people's problem-solving capabilities and ability to achieve organizational goals.

And so the way we expressed that back then in 2014 was through the notion of DevOps, right? The notion that dev, QA, operations, and information security need to work together to solve a common objective, versus being constantly warring with each other.

And so it has been amazing to see over the years how we've been able to get a whole more complete understanding of what this element of winning looks like. We know that there's really three dimensions, and this is done with the work with Dr. Steven Spear from the MIT Sloan School of Management.

We know that one dimension is that everyone's solving important problems all the time, ideally in parallel. And that's enabled because everyone has what they need when they need it, in the right format, and they're interacting with just the right people. And that could be information, approvals, decision rights, requirements. And not ideal is that everyone's stuck. No one can do what needs to get done because no one has what they need, when they need it, in the right format, at the right time. And so even small efforts require heroic efforts. And that's really what The Phoenix Project was trying to articulate back when the book came out in 2013.

But that's actually only one dimension of the magic. The other one is that there's energetic feedback loops everywhere, where even weak signals of failure are amplified and can be acted on quickly and solved while they're still small problems, right, as opposed to ballooning into large problems. People are constantly getting fast feedback from their work. And that's enabled when feedback goes to the right people at the right time in a way that is actionable, in contrast to the opposite, where the feedback loops are weak, slow, non-existent, or go to the wrong people. And these are the conditions where failures go undetected and actually grow over time.

And the third one is that in winning organizations, there's enough time for planning, practice, experimentation, and improvement, that you can do the most dangerous, consequential actions not in production but in some pre-production environment where there's lower stakes, where you can undo, redo, and improve over time. And if you don't have that, then you're doing the most dangerous, consequential work in production. And under those conditions, you certainly can't undo, and you certainly can't learn and improve.

And so, yeah, this is a community, I think, that's really pioneered these three dimensions within technology organizations. And all of this has very significant relevance when we talk about AI.

So kind of our goals in the programming for this week: we're going to be featuring experience reports that show how technology leaders are improving not just the technology but also the sociotechnical parts of their organization. We will be sharing about how to create great careers, not only for their teams but for themselves. And now we've found some of the best subject matter experts, especially around AI. I mean, I'm not sure about you all, but I think we can say with some confidence that almost any technology leader is dealing with AI, either on a strategic level or at an operational level.

And so over the last 10 years, we've had 26 conferences, some virtual. We've had over 1,700 talks, 2,200 speakers, with over 700 enterprises represented. And maybe just to sort of take you back 11 years, 12 years, in the beginning I think one of our main goals was to show that these technology practices, whether you call it DevOps or continuous delivery, weren't just for the tech giants, the Facebooks, Amazon, Netflix, Googles, Microsoft, but instead they were for large, complex organizations that have been around for decades or even centuries.

And what I take so much pride in is that over the last decade, we've had experience reports from almost every industry vertical. So certainly you see financial services, but surprisingly manufacturing. But the second most common industry vertical was actually public service, whether that was government agencies, military services, or not-for-profits, which I certainly could not have predicted 15 years ago.

So the structure of this conference, what you're going to see over the next three days, are two types of talks. The first are experience reports. And so experience reports, they're going to be structured in the same way: here's the organization that I represent; here's how we compete; here's where I fit in the organization; here's the business problem that we set out to solve; here's where we started and why; here's what we did, including tools and techniques; here's the outcomes that resulted, especially with testimonials; and then here's the challenges that still remain.

And I love this because this is actually one of the best ways that we can learn as leaders. And it's actually so similar to the scientific method, where we state a hypothesis, we perform an experiment, we confirm or disprove the hypothesis, and then we repeat. And what I've learned over the last number of decades is that this is so effective because as professionals, as leaders, we don't learn from hearing someone else telling you what they think you should do, right? It's some sort of theoretical exercise. Instead, we really learn from watching how other people solve problems. And so that's the basis for why these experience reports have been structured this way for the last decade.

And so I'm so delighted that this year we have so many amazing experience reports, and so many of them dealing with AI. In fact, it is just so exciting to me to see how these courageous technology leaders who pushed these wild ways of working last decade are now at the frontier of trying to figure out how to use AI to help achieve things that are important to the organization.

So the second type of talk that we have here this week are expert talks. These are talks that are important for us as a community to help us get from here to there. So for me, still, one of my favorites was when we had people from each one of the Big Four audit practices describing how audit -- this was a common problem where auditors would actually say, you can't do DevOps here. And so today, to be able to have people from each one of the four audit assurance practices say, not only do we think it's important, but because we want our clients to still be around, we need you to be doing it. And so that was just a phenomenally rewarding experience.

Last year, day two was the ultimate GenAI learning day for leaders. And so we've expanded that programming. This year we have some phenomenal talks around a whole bunch of topics, but primarily around AI, teaching us what we need to get from here to wherever we want to go. We have some phenomenal talks around value streams and QBR and planning practices.

And then also, I'm so delighted that on day three, we're going to have Dr. Carliss Baldwin, who was actually Dr. Steven Spear's advisor when he was working on his dissertation at the Harvard Business School. She's one of the preeminent scholars of modularity and optionality. And so she'll be presenting with Claire Hawthorne. Anyway, I'm just so excited about the expert talks that we have this year.

So the last thing I want to mention is that, experience reports or expert talks, really, conferences are for conferring. I just love how conferences are just a phenomenal way for any sort of field to advance the practice, whether it's in science or leading organizations. And so over the last 15 years, I cannot express just how much gratitude I have towards conferences. In fact, so many people that I got to work with, the most rewarding relationships I had, I've met at conferences, often at the Velocity Conference held by the O'Reilly group. I met most of the program committee at conferences.

In fact, I met this guy named Steve Yegge at a conference in June that he spoke at last year. And we ended up writing a book together, the vibe coding book that's coming out in October, which has been one of the most rewarding, exciting adventures of my life. And just to put that into perspective, when you get done writing a book, you're not very eager to pick up a new project. But after talking with Steve, when he talked about his aspirations to write a book on vibe coding, I couldn't resist. I'm like, hey, what can I do to help? So that was super cool.

So I'll leave you with one last closing thought around the nature of great communities, great conferences, and that's the notion of scenius. This, I noticed in 2014 at the first DevOps Enterprise Summit, that there was a sense that there was a certain universality to the problems that every organization was facing; that there was a feeling that something genuinely exciting and momentous was happening. And I learned year after year that this is a community that loves helping each other.

And I learned that there's actually a word for this kind of characteristic, and it comes from Brian Eno. He's a famous musician, record producer, visual artist. He was behind U2, Devo, Talking Heads, David Bowie, and so much more. But he defined genius as he observed that lone geniuses do not drive scientific, cultural, business, or policy advances. Instead, these breakthroughs come from a scene, an exceptionally productive community of practice that develops novel epistemic norms. And major innovation may be genius, but genius is created in part by a scenius.

And there's really three markers of scenius. One is mutual appreciation. Risky moves are applauded by the group, subtlety appreciated, and friendly competitions go too far. And you're going to see, I think, a lot of mutual appreciation in the talks this week. Second is rapid exchange of tools and techniques. As soon as something is invented, it's flaunted and then shared. And then this is flowing inside a common sensibility. And so we saw this in the DevOps movement. I think you are going to very much see this in how AI is incorporated in technology organizations. And third, network effects of success. When a record is broken, a hit happens, a breakthrough erupts, the success is claimed by the entire scene, empowering the scene to further success.

So I just want to leave you with that thought as we go into the program. But before we get there, I'm going to introduce my friend Jeff, who will give us the instruction manual for the conference. Jeff.

Jeff Gallimore

Good morning, everybody. Who is pumped besides me to be at the summit today? Yes, that's what I'm looking for. By show of applause, how many people are here at the summit for your very first time? Outstanding. Outstanding.

And for those of you who didn't clap, I'm going to assume that you are coming back to the summit again, whether you're here for the first time or the 23rd time, and there are some of you out there. We're so glad to have you here to experience an amazing three days together.

So let me set the stage for what that is going to look like and what makes the summit experience so unique and special. First, we are going to get rid of that velvet rope that exists at many other conferences that separates attendees and the audience from the speakers on the stage. We're going to create those opportunities for you to engage with the summit's amazing speakers. We are also going to create opportunities for those serendipitous interactions for us to engage with each other that are such a valuable part of the summit experience. And I'll explain what those opportunities are as we orient each other to the event.

All right, so we're here in person. That's great. All of the things that an in-person experience affords. We've also learned a lot about how to create engaging virtual experiences over the years, and we are going to integrate the two to create the best of both worlds. And one big way we're going to do that is by using Slack. So if you haven't been onboarded or gotten onboard into the Slack workspace for this event, definitely do that. It is going to be a valuable part of your summit experience.

We have a handful of channels to pay attention to. They're listed here. I'll hit those as we go through the orientation of the event. If you take away nothing else from what I say up here today, pay attention to Summit Info. That's going to get you to the information you need to know and the places you need to go when you get into Slack.

We'd really love it if you would update your Slack profile: your name, your title, profile picture, organization, pronouns, whatever it is that you want to share with this community to help us get to know each other a little bit better.

Now, I mentioned engaging with the speakers. One way we're going to have to do that is through Slack. So while the speakers are speaking, you have the opportunity to engage in Slack and ask them questions. Just at-mention the speaker, post your question or your thought, and they'll get back to you -- probably not while they're speaking, but after the fact for sure. And if you have thoughts on something that somebody else has shared, definitely contribute that.

We have Slack channels for each of the rooms where the talks are going to be happening. There's four of them. This one is the Discussion Royal Ballroom. We have three other ones for the other breakout talks. Just make sure you're posting in the right channel.

Now, if you do choose to engage in Slack, which we hope you do, please mute your sounds. The clickity-clickity and the Slack notifications may add to your experience, probably less so for the attendees around you. And alert fatigue is a real thing. So please, no @here, no @channel.

Now we're also creating some opportunities to engage with each other in addition to Slack. We also have something new for this year. We have nooks for vibe coding and AI discussion. These will be in the expo hall. So look for these signs. One is going to be for vibe coding, one is going to be for AI. Check those out, find your fellow travelers, talk about those topics.

We have some workshops on Wednesday -- that's tomorrow. We'll hit these as we get a little bit closer to those events. But you'll definitely want to take advantage of these opportunities to get a little bit deeper on some of the topics.

All right, the conference schedule is your friend. We're all about sustainability here at the summit, so everything is online. This QR code will take you directly to the schedule. We'll be posting updates as they happen in the online schedule.

We're all part of the same community here at the summit, and we're also all human beings. So we should be treating each other well. Our code of conduct reflects that. You can read it up here on the screen. We've also posted it in Slack. But let me just summarize it for you. Listen well when someone else is sharing. Share well when you have something to say. Respect everyone at all times. And speak up if you see something or hear something that is not consistent with the kind of experience that we want here at the summit.

So give me some sort of indicator that you're all on board with this code of conduct. Clap, catch hands, thumbs up. Great. Unanimous, as always.

All right, some thank-yous. Thank you to IT Revolution for not only bringing us to summit, but a lot of the books that have been so important to us in our individual and organizational journeys. Thank you to our sponsors, especially our two premier sponsors, Sourcegraph and Salesforce. You'll have a chance to interact with them throughout the three days in the expo hall, that it's open each of the three days at these times.

While you're there, play the sponsor passport game. As you're talking to the sponsors that are participating in that, get your badge stamped or the passport card stamped. When you've completed that, drop it off at the Sourcegraph booth before 12:45 on Thursday. Very important: write your name before you drop it off. You don't want to be the person who wins and forgot to write their name. I wouldn't be making this announcement if it didn't happen.

So thank you to all of our sponsors for being an important part of our summit experience. Over the next three days, we have Wi-Fi. This is it. Joining with one or two devices: great, totally encouraged. Joining with 17: a lot less so. Be considerate of the bandwidth that we're sharing with all of us.

All right, if you missed any of that information, get your phones out. Take a picture of this. This will take you to all the useful information with the schedule, the Slack, the Wi-Fi, anything that we need to get out to you over the course of the three days. This will be it. Great. Okay.

If you need help or have any other questions, post that in the help channel in Slack and someone will get back to you. You can also email help@itrevolution.com. You can find a member of the super helpful IT Revolution staff. They will have a black staff ribbon on the bottom of their badge. And if all else fails, you can direct-message me, Jeff Gallimore, in Slack.

With that, have an amazing time. Gene, back to you to introduce the summit's first talk.

Gene Kim

Thank you, Jeff.