Host Intro (Gene Kim)

Good morning, everyone. Hey, thank you so much, and welcome to the Enterprise Technology Leadership Summit. This is our 20th conference together, and we have put together an amazing two days for you. I am so excited about what we have in store for you for the next two days.

So Jeff, I am going to attempt to share my screen. If you can just give me a quick audible confirmation that we are up and running.

Jeff Gallimore

You should see one slide. We are good. Yeah.

Host Intro (Gene Kim)

Fantastic. Thank you.

All right. So in the next 11 minutes, what I would like to do is share with you three things: the history of the conference and the goals that we set out for 10 years ago; the structural elements of the conference; as well as the community norms and the notion of scenius.

Before we go, I just want to acknowledge Equal Experts, a global partner, for making possible the amazing watch parties that are going on at this time around the world in Manchester, Central London, Amsterdam, Berlin, Lisbon, and Johannesburg, and six areas.

I just love this and how deliberately they thought about how to create this experience. I think this is important because I love conferences, because they are one of the pinnacles of a vibrant and important third place, the other two places being work and home. Virtual conferences can be great, but often work colleagues treat it as if it were just another day for you. And so you have ally calls and meetings set up, which actually deprive us of the real conference experience.

And so I think we are experimenting with these watch parties that enable rich and serendipitous interaction among fellow travelers and like-minded peers. And to help accommodate that, we have made this a single-track conference so that we are seeing all the same things all the time. So I am hoping very much that the people who are at the watch parties can post pictures in the Slack discussion channel so that we can all admire them from afar.

So let us talk about why we are here. We believe that DevOps and how technology work is performed is important. We believe that when it is done well, it creates enormous value, and that by doing so, we can not only create value, but make technology work humane. And we believe that this liberates everyone's full creativity and problem-solving potential. And so these were some of the things that we set out to explore 10 years ago.

And I have learned so much about what winning organizations look like. Working with Dr. Steven Spear from the MIT Sloan School of Business and working on the Wiring the Winning Organization book, I learned that winning organizations do extraordinary things, more than any single individual could ever do alone, that fully liberate people's creativity and capabilities.

And so this sounds amazing. We have all probably had experiences where we are in the opposite, where we are in an organization that is somehow constrained or even extinguishes entirely the full creativity and problem-solving capabilities of the people within them. And so that is not so good. And so this is a community that strives for the first.

For 10 years, we called it the DevOps Enterprise Summit. We now have a new name called the Enterprise Technology Leadership Summit. It is the same objective, really focusing on improving the socio-technical system through amazing experience reports to enable great careers for our teams and ourselves, and bringing in and learning from the best subject-matter experts who can help us get from here to there.

So I had mentioned that this conference started in 2014. Over the last 20 conferences, we have had over 1,700 speakers from nearly 600 organizations. It has been so fun last year to actually do something I have wanted to do for almost five years, which is look at which industries have presented at DevOps Enterprise Summit.

Before last year, this was the best representation that could come of the amazing organizations that have presented. But what I was hoping for is that we could get a view that looked more like by industry vertical. So I experimented with using ChatGPT for categorization and trying to find the industry codes, and what emerged was finally something that looked like this. It just sort of validated some suspicions I had and also revealed some surprises.

One surprise - well, actually not a big surprise - was that the top industry represented was financial services and insurance. I think we all sort of expected that, given the pioneers in the space. But what was surprising was just how many manufacturing organizations have presented over the years, which is something that I was aware of but did not fully appreciate, to what extent manufacturing was represented.

Another surprise was how rich this conference has been with stories from public administration, military agencies, and not-for-profits. And so I am just so delighted by the achievements of this community.

One other thing that we were able to show is that as the years go by, more senior people are presenting. And it is not just dev and ops; it is also their colleagues from audit, security, and compliance, and increasingly with their business counterparts. And I love the fact that as the years have gone by, the speakers have gotten more senior.

This is not to say that job titles are all that matter, because we need leaders at all levels. But it just increasingly shows that our work matters to people who matter. One of the things that I am just so proud of is that we have had so many experience reports that are being acknowledged by profit-and-loss leaders, business leaders, CFOs, CEOs, chief learning officers, and so forth.

And one of the things that I think is so fantastic that comes out of this is that we are learning what value looks like from people who matter; that we can show the experience reports to people with profit-and-loss responsibility. And these stories are being shared by people they listen to, describing how the work that you are doing matters.

So that is some of the conference goals. I want to talk about the structure of this conference. The hallmark, I think, of the conference for the last 10 years, for the last 20 conferences, has been that this conference is primarily made up of experience reports. And so these all follow a very similar format.

They state: here is my organization and the industry we compete in; here is my role and where I fit in; here is the business problem we set out to solve; here is where we started and why; here is what we did, including tools and techniques so they can be replicated; the outcomes that resulted; and the challenges that still remain.

I love this because this is very similar to the scientific method, where we state a hypothesis of what we think will happen, we perform the experiment, we confirm or disprove that hypothesis, and repeat. And by doing this, we can see which patterns seem to work, which patterns take us to great places, and which patterns might take us to places that we do not necessarily want to go.

Contrast this from talks that do not follow this format. What I have found is that, as adult learners, as leaders, we do not learn from hearing someone from stage saying what they think you should do, or just theory. Really, we learn best from listening to how other people solve problems that sound similar to our own.

And so I am so delighted that this year's experience reports, we have so many from so many different industries, including a couple of firsts for this community that I will go into later today.

The second component of this conference is the expert talks. One of the things I am just so proud of is that over the years we have gotten so many people from so many different areas helping teach us what we needed to know to get from here to there. This is everything from dev productivity to psychological safety, to workplace empowerment and overcoming burnout, and so forth.

One of the things that I personally have so many fond memories about is a specific panel we did in 2019, where we had people from the Big Four audit firms. Because what we heard from you was that it was audit and compliance that was one of the top obstacles for us to do things in a better way.

And so it was so fantastic to have people from the Big Four audit firms. These were not the consultants. These were from the audit and assurance side describing how DevOps is not just possible to do in an auditable and compliant way, but for them, they view it as necessary because they want their clients to still be around in 10 years.

And so this year we have another fantastic round of expert talks, again teaching us things that we need to know to get from here to there.

The third category of talks that you will hear over the next few days are around AI and LLMs. We started this in the Amsterdam conference about one year ago, and it was just so amazing to see that truly there is something astonishing happening in the technology field that is transforming not just how we do technology work, but all work potentially in the organization.

And it just was such an energizing set of talks. And so about 25% of the programming is dedicated to these topics, including some incredible authorities: Dr. Ethan Mollick from the Wharton School of Management, who just came out with the book Co-Intelligence; Jacob Pronk and Andy Duncan talking about their work around creating chatbots for service; Brian Scott and Dan Neff from Adobe talking about how they are now owning the rollout of AI within Adobe; and Dr. Mik Kersten talking about how coupling can still happen in LLMs, and the astonishing results of what we learned from software architecture are applicable to the world of AI and LLMs.

So the last thing I want to present is the notion of scenius. For those of you who were at the conference in 2014 in San Francisco, at the first conference that we had, there was something astonishing. There was a sense of universality to the problems that we are all facing in large, complex organizations. There was a feeling that something genuinely exciting and momentous was happening.

And what I learned over the next 12 to 24 months is that there was a sense of not only shared goals, but an incredible sense of helping each other that was a part of this community.

It turns out there is a word for this dynamic, and that comes from Brian Eno. He is a musician, a visual artist. He is known for helping define the sound of some of the most popular bands in the 1980s and 90s, including U2, Devo, and many more. And he described it as scenius.

Despite heroic mythology, lone geniuses do not drive most cultural, scientific, business, or policy advances. Instead, they emerge from a scene, an exceptionally productive community of practice that develops novel epistemic norms - epistemic meaning ways of thinking. Major innovation may indeed take a genius, but the genius is created in part by a scenius, like we are surrounded by here.

A scenius stands for the intelligence and the intuition of a whole cultural scene. It is a communal form of the concept of genius. Individuals immersed in a scenius will blossom and produce their best work. When buoyed by a scenius, you act like a genius. Your like-minded peers and the entire environment inspire you.

And there are really three features: mutual appreciation, where risky moves are applauded by the group; rapid exchange of tools and techniques - when something is invented, it is flaunted and then shared; and network effects of success. When a record is broken, a hit happens, a breakthrough erupts, the success is claimed by the entire scene, further propelling the scene to further success.

And I think when you look at the achievements of this group, I think you will see all these mechanisms at work, and I know you will see this over the next two days.

And so what is a problem that we are trying to solve? The technology function is often misunderstood by senior business leaders and is often over-delegated to those quote technology leaders. Instead, we all know that amazing business outcomes are created when technology is fully integrated into all aspects of strategy and operations. So that is what we set out to do for the next two days.

And so I am going to turn over to my buddy Jeff, who will provide the operating manual for this conference. Jeff?

Jeff Gallimore

All good? Yes. Okay. Thank you.

All right. Well, hello, everybody, and welcome to the Enterprise Technology Leadership Summit 2024 in Europe. And because we are virtual, many of you are tuning in from around the world. We are so glad we are all together for the summit.

Gene and the programming committee have created a fantastic lineup of talks over the next two days. Now, at most conferences, those talks are primarily one-way sharing from the speaker to you and the audience. We all know we can get a ton of value from two-way interactions and two-way sharing. And we want to create those kinds of opportunities for interactions between you and the speakers and between you and each other. And we want to create this kind of experience for you even when we are together virtually like we are now. So let me run through how we are going to do that.

First, we are using Slack. Many of us use Slack for our daily work, so we are going to use it in a similar way for the summit to engage with speakers, sponsors, and each other, both during and after the conference. The Slack workspace is also available after the conference, so we can continue our conversations, and you can get on board at the link at this slide.

There are some important Slack channels you should be paying attention to, and I will explain each of these as we go through the orientation to the event.

We would really appreciate it if everyone would edit their Slack profile to include more information about yourself: name, image, organization, title, pronouns, whatever you feel comfortable sharing with this community to help us learn a little bit more about you. It will improve your experience and the experience of everyone else by making things just a little more human.

Now let us talk about engaging with speakers. This is the opportunity you have to ask the amazing speakers some questions. And because we are virtual, we get to do something a little bit different. The speakers will be available in Slack, so you can post your questions in the discussion channel and @mention the speaker. Just wait for the speakers to respond until after they are done with their talk. We are live, after all.

And if you have thoughts on a question someone else asked, please contribute. You do not have to wait for that. We have heard from many attendees that this kind of interaction with speakers and other attendees is an incredibly valuable and engaging part of their summit experience. So please share your voice in Slack.

Now, when using Slack, remember alert fatigue is a real thing. So please be considerate of your fellow attendees and the important messages they might need to see from their teams. So please do not use @here or @channel.

Another opportunity for interactions with each other is to use the several longer breaks built into the schedule each day to connect with other attendees. And you can do that in Gather, our virtual conference venue for the summit. You can walk around in it and interact live with speakers and other attendees. It does a remarkable job of recreating the hallway track we find so valuable from in-person conferences.

When you enter Gather, you will have the opportunity to set your character for the virtual space. Please set your name in Gather to match your name in Slack. That will just make it easier for you and others to interact. And then do whatever makes you happy with your choice of character and clothing. You can enter the Gather space using this link on the slide.

And because we are all part of the same community, we should treat each other well regardless of whether we are in person or virtual. We want everyone to have an amazing time here at the summit, and our code of conduct reflects that.

We have posted the code of conduct in Slack, but let me give you the gist. 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 environment we want for this community.

If you have any issues, email help@itrevolution.com or direct-message me, Jeff Gallimore, in Slack. Now I would like to enlist all of your support in creating the kind of harassment-free environment we want for this community. I mentioned that we have posted the code of conduct in Slack, so I am going to give you just a few seconds to go into the discussion channel in Slack, find that code of conduct post, and then just please give it your favorite emoji to indicate your support. I will give you a few seconds to do that.

All right, fantastic. Thank you so much.

The Enterprise Technology Leadership Summit is brought to us by IT Revolution, same people who bring us our favorite books like The Phoenix Project, Accelerate, The DevOps Handbook, and Wiring the Winning Organization.

A huge thanks to our sponsors, Equal Experts, Ethicode, and Synopsys. And another special shout-out to all the people joining from the Equal Experts watch parties around the world: Manchester, Central London, Amsterdam, Berlin, Lisbon, and Johannesburg. Thanks so much to Equal Experts for hosting those.

If you need any help or have any questions, you can post in the Help channel in Slack. You can email help@itrevolution.com. Or if all else fails, you can direct-message me, Jeff Gallimore, in Slack.

Okay, that is it. We hope you have an amazing time at the summit. Gene, let me hand it back to you to introduce the summit's first talk.

Host Intro (Gene Kim)

Fantastic. Thank you, Jeff.