Michael Carducci

Personal Knowledge Management (PKM) for the Modern Knowledge Worker

9:00 AM MDT

Join us for a transformative handson workshop on Personal Knowledge Management (PKM), designed specifically to empower developers, architects, and knowledge workers alike to master information in this information age. Based on Tiago Forte's Building a Second Brain methodology and implemented using the Logseq PKM application, this course aims to equip attendees with the strategies, tools, and insights to streamline their knowledge management, increase productivity, and stimulate creativity. Attendees will learn to construct a personal knowledge graph, effectively annotate and reference digital assets, manage tasks, journal for success, leverage templates, and much more. The ultimate goal is to create a personalized system that enables you to instantly find or recall everything you know and learn.

Throughout this fullday, handson workshop, you will be guided to apply the concepts and practices learned to build your own personal knowledge graph. By the end of the session, you will have a comprehensive system to manage your knowledge effectively, enabling you to spend less time searching for notes or lost information and more time utilizing what you know and learn.

This workshop isn't just about learning new concepts or tools; it's about transforming your relationship with information and your productivity. The skills and practices you will learn are universally applicable, irrespective of the tools you use. We will show you how these methods work in Logseq, but the principles can be adapted to other platforms as well.

Join us for this transformative journey, and experience a significant shift in how you manage and utilize your knowledge, leading to increased productivity, creativity, and overall wellbeing in your personal and professional life.

Bring your curiosity, your questions, and your goals. We look forward to seeing you at the workshop!

Holistic Software Architecture

8:30 AM MDT

Architecture is often described as “the stuff that's hard to change” or “the important stuff (whatever that is).” At its core, architecture defines the very essence of software, transcending mere features and functions to encompass vital capabilities such as scalability, evolvability, elasticity, and reliability. But here's the real question: where do these critical capabilities truly originate?

In this session, we'll embark on a journey to uncover the secrets behind successful architectures. While popular architecture patterns may offer a starting point, it's time to unveil the startling truth – both monolith and microservicesbased projects continue to stumble and falter at alarming rates. The key to unparalleled success lies in the art of finetuning and tailormaking architectures to precisely fit the unique needs of your organization, environment, and the teams delivering the software.

Step into the future as we introduce a groundbreaking, problemcentric approach to defining and evolving system architectures. Our practical techniques will empower you to transform constraints, both architectural and environmental, into powerful enablers of robust, valuable, and longlived software systems.

Join us and elevate your architecture game to new heights!

Agile Architecture

10:30 AM MDT

Agile has become an overused and overloaded buzzword, let's go back to first principles. Agile is the 12 principles. Agile is founded on fast feedback and embraces change. Agile is about making the right decisions at the right time while constantly learning and growing.

Architecture, on the other hand, seems to be the opposite. Once famously described by Grady Booch as “the stuff that's hard to change” there is overwhelming pressure to get architecture “right” early on as the ultimate necessary rework will be costly at best, and fatal at worst. But too much complexity, too early, can be just as costly or fatal. A truly practical approach to agile architecture is long overdue.

This session introduces a new approach to architecture that enables true agility and unprecedented evolvability in the architectures we design and build. Whether you are a already a seasoned architect, or are simply beginning that path, this session will fundamentally change the way you think about and approach software architecture.

An Architect's Approach to API Strategies

1:00 PM MDT

Integration, once a luxury, is now a necessity. Doing this well, however, continues to be elusive. Early attempts to build better distributed systems such as DCOM, CORBA, and SOAP were widely regarded as failures. Today the focus is on REST, RPC, and graphql style APIs.

Which is best? The goto answer for architects is, of course, “it depends.”

In this session, we look at the various API approaches, how they attempt to deal with the challenge of decoupling client from server, evolvability, extensibility, adaptability, composability.

The biggest challenge is that needs change over time, and APIs must necessarily evolve. Versioning is challenging, and breaking changes are inevitable. You'll leave this session with a highlevel understanding of these approach, their respective tradeoffs and ultimately how to align your API approach with your architectural and organizational goals.

The Illusion of Logic: Technology Through a Magician's Eyes

7:15 PM MDT

“What you must learn is that these rules are no different than the rules of a computer system. Some of them can be bent. Others can be broken. "
-Morpheus

The world of technology seems logical, objective, and to operate by consistent rules. Reality can be illogical, subjective, and even random at times. Yet we accept subjective reality as-is; our single perspective is all we can really know.

In the end, reality constrains engineers and magicians reshape reality. Perhaps reality is not what it seems.

Join Michael Carducci, magician and software architect, as he takes you on a journey through the marriage of the logical and the illogical, the intersection of magic and technology. Discover what each has to teach the other, and how you can apply the lessons to transform your skills and your career.

With over 25 years of experience in both fields–and a lifetime of successes and failures–Michael shares his deeply reflective, unique, and authentically honest perspective on both careers, dealing with problems, challenges, wins, and losses.

This talk combines illusion, engineering wisdom, life lessons, and the stories that connect them. You'll be astonished, engaged, and leave with an entirely new perspective on technology and life.

Third Way Web Development with HTMX

9:00 AM MDT

When the world wide web launched in 1993, it presented a revolutionary new way to globally share information. The revolution didn't stop there. The web soon became a platform for building, hosting, and distributing entire applications. Today most applications are built as web applications yet the core capabilities of HTML remain mired in the Web 1.0 days. Ajax was the first of many “hacks” to build web applications that delivered the rich, responsive user experience that rivaled traditional fatclient applications. Early js libraries and frameworks overcame browser incompatibilities and provided the first abstractions to hide the hacks and today's frameworks are so powerful that conventional wisdom states they are the defacto best practice for building modern web applications. But at what cost?

We've gone fullcircle. Today's SPAs have more in common with the fat client applications of the 90s (albeit with simplified deployment) than they do with the web. The modern UX of today's frameworkdriven SPAs is what users demand, thus we follow the everchanging trends; but at what cost? Beyond the bloat, complexity, and ephemerality of the modern webdev toolchain; modern webdev practices have inadvertently abandoned the core ideas of the web that made the platform technologically, architecturally, and philosophically revolutionary.

Leading thinkers in the web development space have long proclaimed that “not everything should be a SPA” however the alternative of a web 1.0 vanilla html application has very limited utility in the year 2024. Are these our only options, or does a “third way” exist?

This session introduces that “third way” based on the revolutionary ideas that empowered the web. A meaningful, practical, and proven alternative to SPA frameworks providing a simpler and more lightweight approach to building applications on the Web and beyond without sacrificing the UX.

Web applications built following this “third way” boast more evolvability, longevity, and simplicity. SPAs will continue to have their place, but good software engineering is about using the right tool for the job. After attending this session, you will have more than just a hammer in your toolbox.

Third Way Web Development with HTMX

11:00 AM MDT

When the world wide web launched in 1993, it presented a revolutionary new way to globally share information. The revolution didn't stop there. The web soon became a platform for building, hosting, and distributing entire applications. Today most applications are built as web applications yet the core capabilities of HTML remain mired in the Web 1.0 days. Ajax was the first of many “hacks” to build web applications that delivered the rich, responsive user experience that rivaled traditional fatclient applications. Early js libraries and frameworks overcame browser incompatibilities and provided the first abstractions to hide the hacks and today's frameworks are so powerful that conventional wisdom states they are the defacto best practice for building modern web applications. But at what cost?

We've gone fullcircle. Today's SPAs have more in common with the fat client applications of the 90s (albeit with simplified deployment) than they do with the web. The modern UX of today's frameworkdriven SPAs is what users demand, thus we follow the everchanging trends; but at what cost? Beyond the bloat, complexity, and ephemerality of the modern webdev toolchain; modern webdev practices have inadvertently abandoned the core ideas of the web that made the platform technologically, architecturally, and philosophically revolutionary.

Leading thinkers in the web development space have long proclaimed that “not everything should be a SPA” however the alternative of a web 1.0 vanilla html application has very limited utility in the year 2024. Are these our only options, or does a “third way” exist?

This session introduces that “third way” based on the revolutionary ideas that empowered the web. A meaningful, practical, and proven alternative to SPA frameworks providing a simpler and more lightweight approach to building applications on the Web and beyond without sacrificing the UX.

Web applications built following this “third way” boast more evolvability, longevity, and simplicity. SPAs will continue to have their place, but good software engineering is about using the right tool for the job. After attending this session, you will have more than just a hammer in your toolbox.

Hypermedia and the rest of REST

5:00 PM MDT

REST is, undoubtedly one of the most maligned and misunderstood terms in our industry today. So many different things have been called REST, that the world has virtually lost all meaning. Many systems and applications that self-describe as “RESTful” usually are not, at least according to REST as defined in Dr. Roy T. Fielding’s 2000 Dissertation, “Architectural Styles and the Design of Network-based Software Architectures”.

The wild success of the architecture derived by Dr. Fielding led many to want to emulate it (even when it was inappropriate to do so). As a shorthand, organizations began referring to “RESTful” systems, which exposed “RESTful” APIs. Over time “REST” became a buzzword referring to a vague generalization of HTTP/json APIs that typically bear little to no resemblance to the central ideas of REST (and thus elicit few of the benefits). Hypermedia is the central pillar and defining characteristic of the REST architectural style yet it remains almost universally absent.

Hypermedia was a revolutionary idea that, while more relevant than ever, is almost forgotten in today's tech space. Consequently few reap the benefits of this idea and ever fewer know what they might be giving up.

Although not every system needs to (or should be) RESTful, it's helpful to understand the key–and often overlooked–ideas to be able to decide if they make sense for your current next project. This session introduces the key foundational ideas and shows what these ideas look like in practices. Although hypermedia and REST don't make sense for every project or system, you'll leave this session with a better understanding of these groundbreaking ideas, practical insights on how to adopt them today, and ultimately armed to approach the trade-offs of this approach mindfully and deliberately.

DataCentric in Action

8:30 AM MDT

In 2017, an organization known as The Semantic Arts published their “datacentric manifesto” leading with this paragraph.

&gt “We have uncovered a root cause of the messy state of Information Architecture in large institutions and on the web today. It is the prevailing applicationcentric mindset that gives applications priority over data. The remedy is to flip this on its head. Data is the center of the universe; applications are ephemeral.”

While the vision and ideas of this manifesto are compelling, implementation details are scarce leaving the potential out of reach of many busy developers and architects.

Datacentric is a major departure from the current applicationcentric approach to systems development and management. Migration to the datacentric approach will not happen by itself.

This session is full of practical and actionable examples, insights, and approaches to this new paradigm. If you’re ready to consider the possibility that systems could be more than an order of magnitude cheaper and more flexible, then check out this session to see firsthand a new way to think about software and information systems.

The Art of Innovation

10:30 AM MDT

Statistically speaking, you are most probably an innovator. Innovators actively seek out new ideas, technologies, and mental models by reading books, interacting with a broader social circle, and attending conferences. While you may leave this conference with the seed of an idea that has the potential to transform your teams, products, and organization; the battle has only begun. While, as a potential changeagent, you are ideally positioned to conceive of the powerful new ideas, you may be powerless to drive the change that leads to adoption. Your success requires the innovation to diffuse outward and become adopted. This is the art of Innovation.

Fortunately there has been over a century of study on the topic of how innovations go from novel idea to mainstream adoption. The art of innovation is difficult, but tractable and this session illuminates the path. You will get to the heart of why some innovations succeed while others fail as well as how to tip the scales in your favor. You'll leave armed with the tools to become a powerful change agent in your career and life and, ultimately, become a more powerful and influential person.