202023 Edition

QCon SF 2023

Modern Systems for Senior Engineers

As LLMs entered the conversation, QCon SF focused on the fundamentals that hold up: distributed data planes, Staff+ craft, and architectures you have always wondered about.

Oct 2-6·Hyatt Regency SF·104 talks·3,800+ attendees

Program

Mon · Oct 2

8:00 AM

BreakRegistration & Breakfast

9:00 AMKeynote

The Senior Engineer's Role in the Age of AI

Tanya Reilly

Author, The Staff Engineer's Path

10:15 AM

BreakMorning Coffee & Expo Hall Opens

10:45 AM

TalkConsistency in Distributed Data Planes

Vikram Anand · Tech Lead, Data Platform, Stripe

10:45 AM

TalkThe Staff Engineer's Influence Toolkit

Krystal Flores-Bay · Staff SWE, Lumen Labs

10:45 AM

TalkLLMs in Production: Our First Six Months

Ankur Patel · ML Engineer, Databricks

11:45 AM

TalkPartitioning Strategies You Wish You Learned Earlier

Adira Chen · Principal Architect, Netflix

11:45 AM

TalkTechnical Strategy Without Authority

Nate Morrison · Principal Engineer, Slack

11:45 AM

TalkPrompt Engineering Is Not a Real Thing (Yet)

Vanessa Huerta · Director of Engineering, Anthropic

12:45 PM

BreakLunch Break & Birds-of-a-Feather Tables

1:45 PM

TalkBuilding a Data Plane for 10M Events/Second

Vikram Anand · Tech Lead, Data Platform, Stripe

1:45 PM

TalkNavigating Ambiguity as a Staff+ Engineer

Krystal Flores-Bay · Staff SWE, Lumen Labs

1:45 PM

TalkRAG Systems: The Good, the Bad, and the Hallucinated

Ankur Patel · ML Engineer, Databricks

2:45 PM

BreakAfternoon Coffee & Expo Hall

3:15 PM

TalkReplication Protocols Your Team Can Actually Operate

Adira Chen · Principal Architect, Netflix

3:15 PM

TalkGoing from Senior to Staff: What Actually Changes

Tanya Reilly · Author, The Staff Engineer's Path

3:15 PM

TalkFine-Tuning Open-Source LLMs for Enterprise Use

David Patterson · Distinguished Engineer, Stripe

4:15 PM

TalkArchitecting for Multi-Region Data Consistency

Vikram Anand · Tech Lead, Data Platform, Stripe

5:15 PM

SocialWelcome Reception & Sponsor Showcase

Drinks, appetizers, and AI demo stations in the expo hall.

Tue · Oct 3

9:00 AM

TalkCRDTs in Production: Collaborative Editing at Scale

Adira Chen · Principal Architect, Netflix

9:00 AM

TalkWriting RFCs That Actually Get Read

Liz Fong-Jones · Principal Engineer, Honeycomb

10:00 AM

TalkChange Data Capture Patterns for Microservices

Vikram Anand · Tech Lead, Data Platform, Stripe

10:00 AM

TalkRunning an Engineering Book Club That Sticks

Krystal Flores-Bay · Staff SWE, Lumen Labs

11:00 AM

BreakMorning Coffee & Sponsor Expo

11:30 AM

TalkVector Databases: The New Kid on the Data Plane Block

Ankur Patel · ML Engineer, Databricks

11:30 AM

TalkThe Art of the Technical Design Review

Nate Morrison · Principal Engineer, Slack

12:30 PM

BreakLunch Break & Unconference Sessions

1:30 PM

TalkBuilding an Internal LLM Evaluation Framework

Vanessa Huerta · Director of Engineering, Anthropic

2:30 PM

BreakAfternoon Coffee & Hallway Track

3:00 PM

TalkDistributed Transactions: Sagas, Outbox, and Two-Phase Commit

Adira Chen · Principal Architect, Netflix

3:00 PM

TalkStaff+ Career Ladders: Designing for Impact, Not Promotion

Tanya Reilly · Author, The Staff Engineer's Path

4:00 PM

WorkshopDesigning Your Data Plane: A Collaborative Architecture Session

Vikram Anand · Tech Lead, Data Platform, Stripe

Wed · Oct 4

9:00 AM

TrainingTechnical Writing for Engineers

Kelsey Hightower · Distinguished Engineer, Google Cloud

Full-day workshop on writing design docs, RFCs, postmortems, and technical blog posts that engineers actually read.

12:00 PM

BreakLunch Break

1:00 PM

TrainingBuilding Your First LLM-Powered Feature

Ankur Patel · ML Engineer, Databricks

Half-day hands-on workshop taking an LLM feature from idea to production deployment.

9:00 AM

TrainingStaff+ Engineering: Beyond the Code

Krystal Flores-Bay · Staff SWE, Lumen Labs

Half-day workshop on technical leadership, organizational influence, and navigating ambiguity at the Staff+ level.

12:00 PM

BreakLunch Break

1:00 PM

PanelClosing Panel: The Staff+ Engineer in an AI-Augmented World

Tanya Reilly, Kelsey Hightower, Liz Fong-Jones · QCon SF 2023 Track Hosts

2:30 PM

BreakConference Close & Farewell