Platform engineering promises so much, from developer productivity to better operational efficiency, and yet the Trough of Disillusionment still beckons. "Over promised, over sold and over here", if you're in a company of more than 50 people and growing you're almost guaranteed to have creating a platform to help you scale safely and cost-effectively. But how do you doge the disillusionment and develop what delivers?

In this entertaining and thoughtful keynote, Russ Miles (Developer, Listener, Author and Builder of platforms) will unpack the myths around platform engineering. Touring a collection of real-world examples where platforms swim or sink through the lense of philosophy, Russ will explore the many choices you can make that will make the difference between a successful platform that your teams will love and a franken-platform that no one wants to touch.

Together we'll explore which myths hold and which fold under scrutiny so that you have the best possible chance of building a loved internal developer platform. Why? 

Because your developers are worth it(TM).

Platform engineering promises so much, from developer productivity to better operational efficiency, and yet the Trough of Disillusionment still beckons. "Over promised, over sold and over here", if you're in a company of more than 50 people and growing you're almost guaranteed to have creating a platform to help you scale safely and cost-effectively. But how do you doge the disillusionment and develop what delivers?

In this entertaining and thoughtful keynote, Russ Miles (Developer, Listener, Author and Builder of platforms) will unpack the myths around platform engineering. Touring a collection of real-world examples where platforms swim or sink through the lense of philosophy, Russ will explore the many choices you can make that will make the difference between a successful platform that your teams will love and a franken-platform that no one wants to touch.

Together we'll explore which myths hold and which fold under scrutiny so that you have the best possible chance of building a loved internal developer platform. Why? 

Because your developers are worth it(TM).

Platform engineering promises so much, from developer productivity to better operational efficiency, and yet the Trough of Disillusionment still beckons. "Over promised, over sold and over here", if you're in a company of more than 50 people and growing you're almost guaranteed to have creating a platform to help you scale safely and cost-effectively. But how do you doge the disillusionment and develop what delivers?

In this entertaining and thoughtful keynote, Russ Miles (Developer, Listener, Author and Builder of platforms) will unpack the myths around platform engineering. Touring a collection of real-world examples where platforms swim or sink through the lense of philosophy, Russ will explore the many choices you can make that will make the difference between a successful platform that your teams will love and a franken-platform that no one wants to touch.

Together we'll explore which myths hold and which fold under scrutiny so that you have the best possible chance of building a loved internal developer platform. Why? 

Because your developers are worth it(TM).

AI agents are moving from novelty to necessity — but building them safely, predictably, and observably requires more than clever prompts. This workshop gives developers a practical introduction to AI agent engineering using Embabel, with an emphasis on the habits, patterns, and mental models needed to design trustworthy agents in real systems.

Across two focused sessions, you’ll learn how to ground agents in strong domain models (DICE), design goal-driven behaviours (GOAP), enforce safety through invariants and preconditions, and make every action explainable through observability.

You’ll run and inspect a fully working reference agent, extend its domain, add new actions, and validate behaviour through explainable planning logs. You'll explore how to select and deploy models tuned to provide the best and most cost-effective agent behaviour for your users.

By the end of this full day workshop, you’ll know how to:
Build agents anchored in typed domain models
Design composable, goal-oriented behaviours
Use preconditions and invariants as safety guardrails
Debug agents through explainability, not guesswork
Extend an agent with new domain objects and actions without breaking existing flows
Apply a repeatable habit stack for reliable agent engineering

Whether you’re designing workflow agents, platform automations, or domain-specific assistants, this workshop gives you the practical skills and engineering discipline to build agents that behave safely and reason predictably — fit for production, and even fit for regulated environments.

The AI revolution isn’t coming — it’s already here, in our editors, our pipelines, our incident channels, our platforms. But while everyone is racing to bolt “AI-powered” onto their products, a quieter, more consequential truth is emerging:
The future won’t belong to teams with the biggest models. It will belong to teams with the best habits.

This keynote is a fast-paced journey into the craft of AI engineering — the behaviours, reflexes, and mental disciplines that separate teams who build safe, reliable, explainable AI systems from those who unleash unpredictable ones into production.

Through vivid stories of teams who got these habits right — and cautionary tales of those who didn’t — you’ll see why AI engineering is less about algorithms and more about discipline: the daily behaviours that make AI predictable, governable, and safe in the wild.

Internal developer platforms hold promise: faster delivery, better reliability, happier engineers. Yet they often stall—caught in organisational inertia, tool complexity, and unclear value.

These two high-impact 90-minute sessions give you the core mental models and practical artefacts to shift from tool-chase to strategic platform value. You’ll walk away with real maps, a clear focus, and next-step experiments—not just ideas. If you’re looking to make your platform team a force for value, not just operations, this compact format delivers.