Great leaders inspire, excite, and empower those in their teams. These leaders help create a team that is more than the sum of it's parts; in short, a great leader can be a force multiplier for the team.
But what makes these force multipliers? Is it simply raw talent? Charisma? How are these leaders different from the bad leaders who become bottlenecks and roadblocks?
In this session, we explore the answer to that question and identify the skills and principles that create force multipliers. Put these skills into action and you can be one too!
In an era where AI tools are reshaping the workplace, effective adoption strategies are crucial for both uncovering potential application and driving tool utilization to influence creativity, save time and drive ROI. This session will shine a light on the specific techniques we used to drive companywide user engagement and utilization of Microsoft Copilot, our internal AI tool of choice.
We will dive into 8+ key strategies that we found impactful in fostering a culture of adoption within our organization. We will discuss ideas such as: identifying Change Champions, conducting training sessions, and leveraging ondemand resources to empower users. Attendees will learn how to create a vibrant community around AI, share success stories, and utilize analytics to track progress and drive continuous improvement.
Participants will leave equipped with actionable ideas to help transform team members into enthusiastic advocates for AI tools. Whether you're a leader looking to enhance your team's capabilities or a practitioner eager to implement change management best practices, this session will provide stops for your respective roadmaps to drive awareness, education and change!
“How are you helping unite and bond your teams? What creative team buildings have you tried, both virtually or inperson, to connect the team on both a personal and professional level?”
Join this fun discussion on 12+ creative teambuilding ideas you can give a try to help take your team's connection to the next level! We’ll introduce ideas such as Values Exercises, Wellness Contests, Collaborative Team Development, SkillsBased Volunteerism, and unique games such as ‘Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader’ that our teams have loved!
Have you ever worked for a leader that withholds important information far too long? What about a leader that seems to change their mind from day to day? Perhaps you know leaders that are fully aware of corporate problems but do nothing about them. Then again, you may know a leader that is engaged, energetic, and empowering. Leadership styles differ but can be categorized into six different types.
This session will teach you how to identify those types of leaders and recognize the kind of followers they produce. We’ll discuss ways to determine which type of leader you are and how each type can grow, become better, and influence positive change in their organization.
This session will dive deep into the way that our mindset affects our peers, direct reports, supervisors, and customers.
We’ll talk about the “collusions” we collectively create in our organization that demolishes communication, progress, relationships, and results. We’ll discuss what being “in the box” means, how we carry those boxes into our relationships, and how that can create a biased view of corporate problems and our roles in them. Lastly, we’ll discuss a proven strategy to rebuild our relationships while simultaneously breaking down our corporate silos. Come ready to think about how you think!
Whether you want to effect culture change in your organization, lead the transition toward a new technology, or simply get more out of your team; you must first understand that having a “good idea” is simply the beginning. An idea must be communicated; a case must be made. Communicating that case well is as important, if not more so, than the strength of the idea itself.
You will learn 6 principles to make an optimal case and dramatically increase the odds that the other person will say “Yes” to your requests and suggestions, along with several strategies to build consensus within your teams. As a professional mentalist, Michael has been a student of psychology, human behavior and the principles of influence for nearly two decades. There are universal principles of influence that are necessary to both understand and leverage if you want to be more effective leader of change in your organization.
There are certain tech trends people at least know about such as Moore's Law even if they don't really understand them. But there are other forces at play in and around our industry that are unknown or ignored by the ever diminishing tech journalism profession. They help explain and predict the pressures and influences we are seeing now or soon will.
In this talk, I will identify a variety of trends that are happening at various paces in intertwined ways at the technological, scientific, cultural, biological, and geopolitical levels and why Tech Leaders should know about them. Being aware of the visible and invisible forces that surround you can help you work with them, rather than against them. You will also be more likely to make good choices and thrive rather than being buffeted uncontrollably.
Since the Scientific and Industrial Revolutions, there has been more to know every day. No individual can know it all and we have seen the entrenchment of the specialist for the past hundred or so years. When all of this tacit knowledge was locked in our heads, the specialist was rewarded for knowing details.
In our industry we have seen professionals gravitate to specific languages, specific tiers in the architecture (e.g. front-end vs backend), and specific libraries or frameworks. Sometimes they will even go so far as to list specific versions of specific technologies on their resume.
All of this specialization can be beneficial when you need resources that are deep within narrow confines. The ubiquitous glut of available information no longer requires us to know topics to this level of detail. Market realities are also such that nobody has the budget to employ only specialists any more. Developers have needed to learn to become designers, testers, data-experts, security-aware, AI-cognizant, and capable of communicating with various stakeholders.
When your industry epitomizes unfettered change, you need to rely on generalists, not specialists; synthesizers, not knowledge keepers. How can you attract, hire, and benefit from technologists who identify as problem solving value adders rather than programmers of a specific language? How can you encourage their growth and measure success? Even more, how do you lead them yourself?
In this talk we will discuss the rise of the generalist knowledge worker who creates value even in the face of information overflow and AI.
Unlock your full leadership potential with actionable insights and strategies to take you to the next level of your leadership journey. This immersive, hands on workshop promises no slides- just deep, meaningful discussions and real-world applications to elevate your awareness and capacity to lead.In this session, we walk the path of technical leadership - from solving problems to guiding programs to developing people - and the key challenges and changes required at each stage. Blending research with pragmatic and applicable practice, you’ll leave with new clarity and actionable steps to accelerate your growth as a leader.
Led by Pete Behrens, an engineer turned leadership trainer and coach, this workshop draws on 20 years of his experience developing technical leaders and transforming organizations for sustained performance and health.
Key Topics Include:
Note: This workshop is limited to 30-participants, ensuring an intimate, highly interactive experience for leaders at all levels.
Businesses are investing in Artificial Intelligence (AI) at an unprecedented scale. The transformative potential of AI is too great to ignore. But so are it's costs.
This talk explores the multiplying effect AI is making and why that might be a problem. What role do we play as leaders toward this outcome? What forces can we multiply to change it?
I may be “old”, but my career has lived at the forefront of every technology wave: software, data, agility, wireless, mobile, cloud, and now AI. Each brought new opportunities and sped growth. And now?
The AI wave is different from the rest. Bigger, sure. A tsunami. But who benefits? Past waves enabled content and capability building. They provided new rungs on our career ladder. This one replaces content and capability building. It's smashing the rungs altogether.
We formed the AI Leadership Lap in 2024 to better understand the impacts of Generative AI on business and leaders. Exploring productivity to performance, design to decisions, and goals to governance, we'll discuss insights and impacts to leaders.
As leaders, we're often are called upon to solve problems. Not just technical problems; business and organizational problems too. The problem is, many of those cannot be solved.
Here are a few examples of organizational problems that cannot be solved: plan vs. adapt, go quick vs. do it right, empower vs. align, hear people out vs. make a decision.
In fact, they aren't problems at all, they're tensions. They will never go away, and can only be managed. Any efforts to find “answers” to them only serves to surface more frustrations than fixes.
Understanding the difference between problems to solve and tensions to manage is crucial to effective leadership.
This session is designed for leaders seeking to improve their business performance and organizational health. It's not about implementing new frameworks or tools, it's about learning to manage tension better.
Influence is the essence of leadership. But what shapes our ability to influence?
This session explores multiple sources of leadership power including cultural, positional, prestige, and personal. It further helps leaders tune their own power for more impactful results. Understanding your default power as a leader and learning to harness a balanced power based on respect is the key to effective leadership at every level.
Titles grant authority to influence, but the best leaders influence others regardless of their title.
This session walks through the tension between authority and respect, influence and manipulation, empowerment and alignment, reflection and action, discussions and decisions, and more. Through discussion, we'll uncover practical strategies for better balancing your leadership power.
Key Topics:
Most leaders gain their position based on their expertise. That makes sense. However, it is that same expertise that often traps them into less effective leadership patterns. The expertise that got you into leadership is not the expertise you need for leadership.
Yet, letting go of your expertise has it's own challenges. It not only disconnects you from the real work; your teams are often left aimless. Letting go is only half the battle.
Effective leadership is not about stepping forward or back;
it's about stepping up.
This session guides leaders to better balance their expertise with openness by understanding how their focus is impacting their effectiveness. It further provides space for leaders to explore alternatives to re-blend their focus in ways to improve their impact as a leader.
Key Topics:
Do your software developers feel responsibility for the security of the systems they build? If so, are they designing security in? One of the reasons this is difficult is that they are incentivized to demonstrate that the system does what it is supposed to do.
How often do we make sure it doesn't do what it is not supposed to do?
By the way, what is security? Can you and they even define it? How will you know it when you see it? How will you know you have done enough?
How do we instill deep, meaningful, incremental improvements to an organization's security posture? How do we convince our executives to spend enough on security? By the way, what's enough?
In this talk I will help give you a tangible set of steps to do just this.
The best technical leaders do not just solve problems—they fall in love with them. Great coders embrace complexity, break down challenges, and iterate toward solutions. Great leaders must do the same—but instead of debugging code, they debug systems, organizations, and strategies.
In this session, we will explore the Leadership Paradox: The higher you rise, the bigger and more complex the problems become—and the longer they take to solve. Drawing from Gerald Bell’s research, we will discuss why organizations grow to the size of their senior leader and why scaling leadership capacity is essential for scaling a company.
Through real-world examples and actionable frameworks, we will cover:
Why today’s most pressing leadership challenges—AI, cybersecurity, technical debt, and talent retention—require long-term thinking.
How to transition from solving immediate technical problems to driving strategic, high-impact solutions.
The four-step framework for breaking down, iterating, and scaling leadership problem-solving.
Why the most successful organizations embrace problems as opportunities for innovation rather than roadblocks.
Key Takeaway:
The biggest problems yield the greatest opportunities—but only if leaders develop the mindset and discipline to tackle them strategically. If you are a technical leader looking to elevate your leadership capacity and scale your organization, this is a session you cannot afford to miss.
Technical debt has been a known challenge since Ward Cunningham introduced the term in 1992. However, focusing solely on technical debt ignores other, equally damaging forms of debt that accumulate within organizations—cultural debt, leadership debt, process debt, and data debt.
As companies navigate AI adoption, remote work challenges, and economic shifts, these hidden debts create bottlenecks, inefficiencies, and retention issues that technology leaders must address.
This session will expand the conversation beyond technical debt, providing a strategic framework for identifying, measuring, and mitigating most forms of organizational debt.
Key Takeaways:
Why technical debt is only part of the problem – and how other debts silently undermine growth.
The impact of cultural, leadership, and process debt – with real-world examples.
How today’s challenges (AI, remote work, and economic pressures) accelerate hidden debts.
A framework for identifying and managing organizational debt before it becomes a crisis.
Actionable steps for tech leaders to build a sustainable, high-performing organization.
Being a tech leader means balancing vision, strategy, and innovation—yet too often, the administrative burden of the role becomes a persistent obstacle, especially for those who found themselves thrust into leadership accidentally or reluctantly. If you're a technical expert navigating the transition into leadership, it's easy to feel overwhelmed by information overload, endless meetings, follow-ups, and scattered responsibilities.
In this practical, immediately applicable full day workshop, Michael introduces the Digital Knowledge Management (DKM) Tech Leader Toolbox—a proven approach to taming the chaos and reclaiming your clarity, productivity, and sanity. Leveraging Tiago Forte's “Building a Second Brain” methodology combined with powerful tools like Logseq, you'll learn structured workflows to capture, organize, distill, and effortlessly retrieve critical information exactly when you need it.
You'll discover how to streamline meeting notes, simplify administrative tasks, track decisions and outcomes, hold your self and your team accountable, and build your personal leadership knowledge base. With these tools and techniques, you'll not only master the administrative aspects of your role but transform them into a powerful advantage. Join us and take control of your leadership journey today!
In tech teams it's a constant firefight. We react. Then we react to the reaction… the cycle continues. In all this noise, in all this chaos, how do we move forward. How do we remain proactive?
A great leader must be an enabler for the team. At times this means insulating the team from the noise. At other times it means improving the environment for the team. At all times, however, it requires setting clear priorities and conditions for success.
This session is focused on the art of moving forward in even the noisiest environments.
Software projects can be difficult to manage. Managing teams of developers can be even difficult. We've created countless processes, methodologies, and practices but the underlying problems remain the same.
This session is full of practical tips and tricks to deal with the reallife situations any tech leader regularly encounters. Put these techniques into practice and create an enviable culture and an outstanding development team. At the same time, you'll avoid common management mistakes and pitfalls.
It has been said that everything rises and falls on leadership and that there are no bad teams, only bad leaders. As you serve your team as their manager and leader, one of the most critical decisions for you to make is what kind of leader you will be.
In this session, we will focus on one of the keys to good leadership; how you manage yourself. From cultivating healthy personal routines to developing a culture of feedback, during this session we will explore some best practices in self-leadership that will help you bring your very best to the team you serve.
We often hear “most problems are people problems” but great teams can move past problems quickly and produce results in spite of challenges. It comes to multiple things, attitude of individuals, motivations, incentives, and in particular the culture of the teams.
In this session we will focus on things we can do as leaders in order to cultivate the culture to make our current teams great, in delivering results and working effectively together as a team.
With the emerging prominence of AI, do we jump right into it, avoid using it, replace significant workforce with it, is it reliable,… there are so many questions that come to mind.
In this presentation we will talk about how to leverage AI as you lead a team of highly technical people and software developers, how to make effective use of it, and how to avoid some of the things that may lead to more problems than solutions.
Should we build Microservices, SOA, Monoliths, Modular Monoliths, Event Driven Architecture, and the list goes on. We hear so much from the developers and, at times it feels like they want to build them all.
As a leader, your focus is not on building stuff but delivering value to your business and customers. From that point of view, it is highly critical to understand why we should choose a particular architecture and when to facilitate your team to build one or more of a particular architecture.
This session will get directly to those questions, and help you to develop a clear understanding of why and when to use one architectural pattern over another and when to intermix them.
Is allegiance to the status quo paralyzing your organization? Are you tired of settling for compliance? Do you crave committed and needed change?
This session will illuminate the hidden human drivers of resistance and how to neutralize them in order to mobilize people. In this session, attendees will learn about proven, practical tools to influence change in individuals and across organizations. Participants will come to fully understand that to effectively influence others to change we must let ourselves be changed…and that one of the best ways to change ourselves is to truly focus on others’ needs, challenges, and objectives. By the end of this session, participants will have been introduced to tools that will help them change their own perspectives and then invite others to change in ways that reduce resistance and inspire commitment rather than compliance.
Ever find yourself slipping into endless distractions and losing hours on what started as a quick task? You're not alone, but it is possible to get much better at avoiding the cycle of going down the rabbit hole.
This talk explores why our brains are hardwired for distraction and gives you concrete techniques to stay focused, including baby steps in setting digital boundaries (yes, that means putting your phone down for at least five minutes!). You’ll also learn how to refocus your mind by practicing discernment, intentional breathing, and letting go—a skill that helps you release the mental clutter that pulls you off track.
Through practical exercises and real-world examples, you’ll leave ready to regain control, master your focus, and take back valuable hours of your day.
Tired of feeling trapped by too many demands and fearful of hearing—or saying—“no”? This interactive workshop dives deep into the transformative power of “no”—both in confidently asserting boundaries and receiving rejection with resilience. You'll learn how to respectfully say “no” to protect your time, priorities, and integrity while maintaining strong relationships.
On the flip side, you’ll gain tools to handle “no” without spiraling—by actually learning to let go. Letting go is a skill, not a mindset, and in this workshop you’ll practice using it in the moments when pressure builds—when your calendar’s packed, the ask feels unreasonable, or the “no” hits harder than expected. Through real-world scenarios, small group exercises, and practicing letting go techniques, you’ll leave equipped with tools to say and receive “no” effectively.
The typical path to senior tech leadership involves learning the
tools, tips, tricks, and artistry of using technology to further an
organization's business goals while satisfying the needs of its
customers. The collective experience of a leadership team benefits the
entire organization by providing them the vision and capacity to make
decisions in the face of technical and business change.
AI has emerged like a rocketship of disruption across our industry and
around the world. It has undermined the foundations on which this
collective wisdom has been forged with both promises of inconceivable
productivity and the fears of wide-scale obsolescence. The problem is
exacerbated by the wholesale failure of tech journalism to hold AI
companies and their advocates accountable for the wild claims they
have put out into the world.
This day-long workshop will help technology leaders evolve their thinking
to absorb these new realities into their collective wisdom. With a grounded
position on the realities of both the promises and pitfalls, I believe I can help
shape this discussion by facilitating discussion around the following topics.
Come have a deep, rich, and valuable discussion about AI that isn’t couched in greed
and fear. We will give you the tools to evaluate and select AI strategies that are reasonable,
profitable, lower risk, and based in reality.
If your to-do list keeps growing because “it’s just faster to do it myself,” this workshop is for you. Delegation isn’t just about getting things off your plate—it’s about building others up, focusing on the work only you can do, and staying sane in the process. You’ll learn the 7 T’s of Delegation—a clear, practical framework for identifying what to offload and why. From Tiny tasks like scheduling and logistics, to Time-Sensitive distractions, to the ones you're just Terrible At, this approach will help you delegate with strategy, not stress. You'll learn how to grow your team through Teachable tasks and avoid being the bottleneck on Time-Consuming projects that only need your eyes at the end.
You’ll also build two key FLOW skills that make delegation sustainable: how to Let It Go—quieting the perfectionism and control that keep you clinging to work—and how to Own Your Part when mistakes happen. Because they will. Instead of taking it all back or blaming your team, you’ll learn how to lead through those moments with clarity and trust. Walk away with a smarter approach to delegation, stronger team leverage, and more space to think strategically, lead proactively—and get home on time way more often.
For Tech Leaders, the fear of making mistakes can show up everywhere — from over-polishing a roadmap deck to rewriting your team’s code “just to be sure.” But leadership isn’t about getting it perfect — it’s about moving forward, learning fast, and helping others do the same. In this workshop, you’ll learn how to adopt a growth mindset: a practical framework that reframes mistakes as part of progress, not failure. We’ll explore how perfectionism sneaks into your leadership style — and what it’s quietly costing you.
You’ll also build two essential FLOW skills that help you lead through imperfection: how to Focus with Breath so you stay calm when fear kicks in, and how to Let It Go—releasing unrealistic expectations and the pressure to get everything right the first time. Through relatable leadership scenarios and peer-based practice, you’ll develop a more resilient mindset, sharper decision-making, and the confidence to lead with clarity — even when the outcome isn’t guaranteed (or perfect). You’ll walk away ready to apply these skills immediately in high-pressure moments, performance reviews, team decisions, and your day-to-day leadership rhythm.
Leadership isn’t just about making the right calls — it’s about staying steady while everything around you moves fast. From managing tension in meetings, juggling shifting priorities, and fielding last-minute requests, to navigating unclear direction or supporting a stressed-out team, software leaders are constantly pulled in multiple directions. That’s where FLOW comes in: a practical, four-part skillset designed to help you handle pressure, stay grounded in uncertainty, and show up with clarity when it matters most.
You’ll learn how to Focus with Breath, Let It Go, Own Your Part, and Weave FLOW into Your Day through real-world leadership scenarios and peer-to-peer practice designed to reflect the complexity of actual moments you face. These aren't abstract ideas — they’re trainable skills you can use right away to lead with more clarity, presence, and effectiveness. If you’ve been running on adrenaline, reacting on autopilot, or just trying to hold it all together, this workshop will help you become a more nimble, flexible leader who gets the job done — with a whole lot less effort and a lot more ease.
Leadership isn’t just about making the right calls — it’s about staying steady while everything around you moves fast. From managing tension in meetings, juggling shifting priorities, and fielding last-minute requests, to navigating unclear direction or supporting a stressed-out team, software leaders are constantly pulled in multiple directions. That’s where FLOW comes in: a practical, four-part skillset designed to help you handle pressure, stay grounded in uncertainty, and show up with clarity when it matters most.
You’ll learn how to Focus with Breath, Let It Go, Own Your Part, and Weave FLOW into Your Day through real-world leadership scenarios and peer-to-peer practice designed to reflect the complexity of actual moments you face. These aren't abstract ideas — they’re trainable skills you can use right away to lead with more clarity, presence, and effectiveness. If you’ve been running on adrenaline, reacting on autopilot, or just trying to hold it all together, this workshop will help you become a more nimble, flexible leader who gets the job done — with a whole lot less effort and a lot more ease.
Two and a half days of insightful sessions, inspiring ideas, and meeting your peers. Learn the skills and methods that will take your organization to the next level.
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