I wasn’t going to write about Enterprise Technology Leadership Summit (ETLS) until next week, but how can I think about any other newsletter topic after four days of immersion in this amazing community? Let me share a little about what makes this conference special and why I love it.

Just a little, or I'll be writing this for days...

Formerly DevOps Enterprise Summit, Enterprise Technology Leadership Summit is hosted by Gene Kim. Gene is, among other his other roles, one of the authors of both The Phoenix Project (which got me started on this whole journey) and also the Vibe Coding book I mentioned last week.

This was my third year in a row attending ETLS in person (I also attended virtually in 2022). Every year I wonder if they will pull it off again. Every year I've been blown away.

Things that make ETLS stand out:

• Right size - It's big enough to attract an interesting group of speakers and attendees, but not so big that you're in a sea of strangers.
• Lowers the "velvet rope" - something conference co-host Jeff Gallimore says each year: they take pride in eliminating barriers between speakers and attendees. You get to engage in real discussions with others regardless of whether they're wearing a speaker badge or not. More on that shortly.
• Enterprise focus - if your company says "that's fine for a tiny startup, but it won't work here where we are concerned with matters of consequence," that won't be a valid excuse here. People here are from big financial services companies, manufacturing, government, telecommunications, ecommerce... they get it.
• Welcoming community - You're "one of us" when you walk in, whether it's your first conference or your fourteenth.
• Honestly... Gene Kim, but not for his star power. Gene's a brilliant man and a kind soul, and getting to see him in his element is great. But his curiosity, capacity for learning, and ability to build connections with countless people are part of the "secret sauce" that allows this conference to attract wonderful speakers and set up such valuable programming.

Vibe coding workshop

The conference was three days, preceded by an optional workshop - I chose the vibe coding workshop led by Gene and his coauthor Steve Yegge. (Vibe coding: using AI to write code without manually changing the code yourself.)

Did Gene and Steve run a fun and informative workshop on vibe coding? Yes they did. Did they also vibe code a demo server in the cloud in the hours before the workshop to accommodate anyone who couldn’t install software on their company laptop? That too.

We got hands-on play time with vibe coding. Many of us were up late that night, and on subsequent nights, working on vibe coding projects.

The aha moment for me, though: Someone asked about how to get legal on board with AI and vibe coding, and one of the other attendees had a suggestion: use it to solve some of legal's own pain points. Once they see what it can do, they may be looking for ways to make it happen rather than reasons to block it.

Speakers

I was a bit star struck by some of the speakers for sure, but whether the names were familiar to me (Tim O'Reilly, Kent Beck, Mik Kersten) or not, the talks were fantastic.

We heard experience reports and saw demos of interesting products. We heard plenty about AI, ranging the gamut: scary, frustrating, promising, fascinating, mind-blowing.

The 2025 DORA report was released during the conference. Nathen Harvey, who leads the DORA team (and who might be my new role model as a speaker) presented the results.

I am reading the book Sooner Safer Happier this month (finally, after having had it recommended to me at this conference in 2022). So I was excited to attend a Sooner Safer Happier workshop by Jonathan Smart, the primary author of the book.

Conversations

Conversations at breakfast and lunch, at the workshops, at social events in the evenings, walking between sessions...

Two speakers mentioned the Grace Hopper Celebration, which I'm attending in November, and I gave a tiny cheer. Later, I introduced myself, and suddenly, I had two new connections.

After the last speech of the conference, I joined up with them and a few others, and we went out to get drinks and a bite to eat. (Hi to those of you who are now subscribers. ) The group then met up with more people, eventually including Gene.

Gene asked us at the table for a "magical moment" from the conference. I said that there were many, but the most magic for me was in those conversations.

Yes, there was polite chitchat. But I also had longer conversations, listening to people's stories, comparing notes, getting advice, and genuinely connecting. The polite chitchat is just the awkward path that can lead you towards something more meaningful.

Learnings

So, what did I learn? A few highlights, both serious and silly:

• Good practices matter. The DORA report said it well. AI will be an amplifier of whatever you're doing now. If it's good, you'll get better. If it's bad, you'll get worse.
• The good practices aren't new. Continuous delivery, automated testing, version control, breaking down silos, theory of constraints... go read Accelerate and Sooner Safer Happier. Really.
• AI has a lot of potential for both harm and good. It's going to be challenging to use safely.
• Las Vegas is... chilly? Sure, it was 85+ degrees Fahrenheit outside. So? You're outside for all of 5 minutes. Those conference rooms are cold. Bring a sweater!

Oh, and I'm pleased to announce that I'm now a Certified Really AI Practitioner (this is actually the CRAP2 certification: CRAP1 was Certified Really Agile Practitioner), thanks to Jon Smart who taught us all this way of working with AI. It's one size fits all, there's no human in the loop needed, and it's 100% guaranteed that you'll get results. Of some kind.

Drop me a note

I would love to hear from you. Hit reply and let me know what's on your mind, or if you want to go in on a bulk buy of the Vibe Coding book.

Forgive me if I've trailed off mid sentence or said something nonsensical here... sleep has been in short supply.

Another conference note: On Monday, I mostly sat around. Uber. Airport. Almost six hours on the plane. More Uber. About three hours in a workshop. I had 10,000 steps before dinner.

This newsletter is approximately weekly. In addition, I post to my blog on my website, which also appears on Medium and Substack.

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​Beyond Writing Code is a newsletter from Leaf (Jessica Roy).

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