We often stumble over the invisible webs that drive decision making. Reflecting upon past decisions, we wonder "How did we come to this?". Why do others not see the obvious flaws in their decision making? Have you been forced to make a bad decision, hoping the future will provide a path to recovery?

This talk is about the anatomy of a decision. We'll examine its parts and their relationships. We'll learn about the context of a decision in a socio-technical system, and how we can create and distribute knowledge to effectively drive decision making. Ultimately, we'll better understand how influence and power affect us all.

Against conventional wisdom, we're rebuilding our product from scratch with an aggressive timeline. It's 9 years old, a Series A acquisition, has ~2700 customers, the largest at 77k users. The monolith is riddled with tech debt, outdated models, tight coupling, bandaids, and won't scale to the potential $3b market. That wasn't hard enough so I'm also rebuilding our engineering culture to create high performing teams.

You’re not supposed to do technical rebuilds but where’s the fun in that? Come hear about why we're doing one and what I learnt. It’s either the best or worst decision I ever made!

GenAI is transforming the way we build software, but code generation tools like Copilot are just the tip of the iceberg. Software delivery is much more than writing code—it encompasses planning, design, testing, deployment, and continuous improvement. The real opportunity lies in applying AI across the entire software delivery lifecycle to unlock greater efficiency, enhance collaboration, and drive innovation.

At Thoughtworks, we’ve spent the past year exploring how to take an AI-first approach to software delivery. Through hands-on experiments, we’ve discovered if the bold claims are fact or fiction, uncovered what works (& what doesn’t), and identified where untapped potential lies. In this session, we’ll share up-to-date real-world insights, practical strategies, and our vision for a future where AI is seamlessly integrated into every stage of delivery—not just for developers, but for product teams, designers, and operations.

You’ll leave with a clear-eyed view of what’s real and what’s hype in AI for software delivery—plus practical, actionable strategies to move beyond code generation and start using AI to innovate faster, smarter, and across your entire SDLC.

Software development has enjoyed a remarkably consistent foundation for over 40 years—but that era is ending. Just as we once leapt from assembly to high-level languages, we’re now entering a new phase: programming with large language models. This shift isn’t incremental; it’s a new layer of abstraction. For engineering leaders, the challenge isn’t just adopting new tools—it’s guiding teams through a fundamental change in how we build software.

In this talk, Geoff Huntleys explore why now is the moment to reassess your carefully crafted roadmaps, identify which assumptions no longer hold, and prepare your people for a different kind of work. We’ll talk about accelerating your team’s “oh-fuck” moment—the realization that things are changing faster than expected—and how to support them through the emotional and professional turbulence that follows.

This is a call to action for technical leaders: to steer teams beyond fear and into growth, to reframe up-skilling as a strategic imperative, and to embrace the messy, necessary reinvention of what it means to be a software engineer.

Did you know that 16% of the global population has a disability? That's 1.6 billion people with a spending capacity of $74.6 billion. But accessibility isn't just a legal obligation—it's a strategic advantage: 20% of organisations believe increasing accessibility can expand their customer base, while 63% say it improves the digital experience for all their users. Further, embedding accessibility into digital products leads to more resilient, secure, and scalable code.

In this talk, we will delve into the pivotal role Tech Leaders play in driving successful accessibility strategies. Through compelling case studies, we’ll demonstrate the transformative impact of strong technical leadership on accessibility initiatives. You'll gain practical insights into maximising impact while minimising effort and step-by-step guidance on crafting an effective accessibility strategy.

With only 3% of organisations in Australia meeting accessibility standards and a growing number of lawsuits worldwide, it's clear that many are falling short. Don't waste time and resources on ineffective tactics. Unlock the advantages of web accessibility so you can create leading, innovative and impactful digital products.

Traditional metrics and logs are decent at telling us if our servers are happy, but generally do a pretty poor job of telling us how our users (and by extension, our business) is doing.

But the state of the art has moved on significantly and with a unified data strategy focused on wide structured events and traces can give you insights not just into how your servers are doing, but also how your users are experiencing your services and thus how your business is doing.

CSS has undergone a radical transformation in recent years, in response to its vital place in architecting complex web applications and interfaces. From Cascade Layers, to new, more powerful, selectors, and sophisticated layout capabilities, catch up on what's changed about CSS and how it's the foundation for modern Web UIs.

What if websites could adapt their behaviour based on the electricity powering them? This talk explores the vision of a grid-aware web that responds dynamically to the availability of clean power sources. We'll examine the role that engineering leaders and decision makers can play in pioneering a web that operates with a sustainable focus.