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Went to the All Things Open conference last week, which I do every year along with our local DevOps Days, and it feels like these conferences are dying while trying to cling to AI. The structure changed this year so day 1 was a workshop day. 1/N

Stephen M.

@lattesandvim.dev

I attended a workshop called “AI agents in production” but it was an introduction to using Claude Cowork. Not quite what I assumed as someone who has built agents, harnesses, and lights out factories. The workshop ran from 9-430, and it was great if you’ve never used Claude before. 2/N

Stephen M.

@lattesandvim.dev

It feels like these conferences have abandoned what we do on a day to day basis. A attended a talk on a k8s tool and it was the most packed talk I attended. The other talks I attended were sparse in attendance and rightfully so, they mostly seemed to be a solution looking for a problem. 3/N

Stephen M.

@lattesandvim.dev

I’m not sure I’ll be heading back next year to either of my local conferences. My local DoD struggled to get sponsorship in 2025 and didn’t hold an event. 2026 there was a fraction of sponsors and it felt if something doesn’t change it won’t be around much longer. 4/N

25/10/26, 1:13 pm0 reposts0 likes

Stephen M.

@lattesandvim.dev

We are still solving the same problems in the cloud native space but it feels like we’ve entirely abandoned that while trying to make AI the center of attention instead of treating it as an accelerant for the problems we still see day to day. 5/N

Stephen M.

@lattesandvim.dev

I think one talk that got close to this was Dynatrace’s blue box agent, bringing observability closer to the code being written. Even still, this feels like it requires Dynatrace, it’ll be another bill, and the agent is dependent upon whatever LLM they’ve chosen. Meh, the excitement feels gone.