Spec-Driven Development: Building Smarter with AI

The way we write software is changing — and the developers who thrive won't necessarily be the fastest coders, but the clearest thinkers. Spec-Driven Development (SDD) is a methodology that puts detailed, structured specifications at the center of your workflow, enabling AI coding tools to do the heavy lifting while you focus on architecture, intent, and quality.

In this talk, we'll walk through what SDD looks like in practice: how to write specs that AI tools can actually execute on, and how shifting your planning mindset up front dramatically reduces back-and-forth, hallucinations, and rework. We'll explore how to weave specs directly into your version control pipeline — treating them as living documents that evolve alongside your codebase and serve as a source of truth for both humans and AI alike.

We'll also dig into the power of standardization. When you commit to consistent frameworks, conventions, and tooling, you're not just helping your team — you're dramatically improving the quality and predictability of AI-generated output. AI tools perform best when they have clear patterns to follow, and a standardized stack gives them exactly that.

You'll leave with practical tips and tricks for getting started: how to structure a spec for maximum AI leverage, where SDD fits into your existing Git workflow, and how teams of any size can adopt it incrementally. Whether you're a solo developer or leading an engineering org, Spec-Driven Development offers a path to shipping faster, more consistently, and with greater confidence.

The AI-Enhanced Developer: Lessons from Daily Practice, Not Theory

AI is everywhere in developer conversations—but much of what’s discussed is either speculative or disconnected from real-world workflows. This talk offers a practical perspective from a working developer who uses AI tools daily—not as a researcher, but as someone shipping real software.

We’ll explore how AI is actually changing the development process in practice. Instead of writing every line of code manually, developers are increasingly guiding, reviewing, and refining AI-generated output. That shift sounds simple, but it has real implications for how you structure problems, validate solutions, and maintain quality.

You’ll see concrete examples of patterns that work: spec-driven development, breaking problems into AI-friendly chunks, and using tools effectively without becoming dependent on them. We’ll also cover where AI falls short—subtle bugs, overconfidence, and gaps in context—and how to catch those issues early.

This session includes a look at the actual tools and workflows I use, along with how my approach to problem-solving has changed over the past few years. The goal isn’t to convince you that AI replaces developers—it’s to show how to use it deliberately to move faster, stay focused, and produce better results without adding noise or complexity.

Building Rapid Web Applications with Laravel + Filament

Modern web development often involves stitching together multiple tools, frameworks, and UI libraries just to build standard business functionality. But in the Laravel ecosystem, there’s a different path: a cohesive, batteries-included approach that dramatically reduces that overhead.

In this talk, we’ll explore how combining Laravel with Filament enables you to build data-driven, workflow-heavy applications with far less code than you might expect. Filament provides powerful abstractions for forms, tables, and admin panels, all tightly integrated with Laravel’s conventions—so you can focus on business logic instead of boilerplate.

We’ll walk through how these tools encourage consistent patterns that make applications easier to build and maintain. From resource definitions to form schemas, you’ll see how common tasks become predictable and fast.

We’ll also touch on how this ecosystem pairs naturally with AI-assisted development. Because Laravel and Filament are so convention-driven, they work especially well with modern AI tools, allowing you to scaffold, refine, and iterate quickly.

The session includes a live demo showing how to go from idea to a working application in a short amount of time. You’ll leave with a clear understanding of when this stack shines—and how to use it to build real-world applications faster without sacrificing structure or quality.

Managing Anxiety in Software Development

Software development has always been a high-pressure field—but the pace of change today is unlike anything many of us have experienced. The rapid rise of AI tools and products over the past few years has fundamentally shifted how we work, what’s expected of us, and how quickly we’re expected to adapt. For many developers, that shift has introduced a new layer of uncertainty and pressure that’s easy to feel but harder to articulate.

Whether it’s imposter syndrome, fear of falling behind, decision paralysis, or the constant sense that there’s always more to learn, anxiety shows up in real and practical ways in our day-to-day work. And while those feelings aren’t new, the intensity and frequency can be—especially in a landscape that seems to change every few months.

This talk takes a grounded look at where that anxiety actually comes from—not in abstract terms, but in the realities of modern development workflows, expectations, and team dynamics. We’ll explore how common these experiences are (you’re not the only one), and why many of them are natural responses to the environment we work in today.

More importantly, this session focuses on what to do about it. You’ll leave with practical mental models and tactics you can apply immediately: how to narrow focus in an overwhelming landscape, how to evaluate when you actually need to learn something new, and how to work more confidently even when you don’t feel fully “caught up.” This isn’t about eliminating anxiety—it’s about understanding it, managing it, and continuing to do meaningful, effective work in the middle of rapid change.

Developing for Accessibility

In this talk, we’ll be talking about prioritizing accessibility when developing for the web. Despite what we envision, not every user is 100% comfortable as far as mental and physical capabilities go – and there’s no excuse for ignoring that. Building an accessible product almost always leads to a much more well-architected product – so it’s a win-win.

We’ll cover the tools and strategies you can use to aid users with visual, auditory, cognitive, and motor impairments. We’ll discuss contrast, colors, content, keyboard flows, screen readers, section 508 – as well as skip menus, the accessibility tree, hover and focus indicators, ARIA properties, and more.

There’s a lot that developers and designers can do to aid users with impairments – so let’s do it!

I’ve worked with Accessibility pretty extensively back from 2014 - 2017, and also gave a talk about it in 2019 at OKC Design + Tech (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YHiEeSl2C4c&t=1s). I work with a bunch of talented front-end devs that are experts in a11y, and I would plan to combine my research with their experiences when building this talk.

Data Querying Best Practices

This talk will involve how to handle querying your data in ways that keep your application functioning as fast as lightning. We can do that by understanding concepts such as when (and when not) to use table joins, eager and lazy loading, database indexing, and expanding into concepts such as server-side caching (including cache busting) and beyond. You might think you know the ins-and-outs of how to handle accessing your data - but there are lot of underlying concepts and strategies that we’ll talk through that can up your game considerably.

If you’ve ever had that long-running database query that took 10+ seconds, then this talk is for you.

We’ll have some live before-and-after examples using Laravel, a powerful data-driven web application framework, that showcase how your data queries can drastically change by making some efficient decisions in how you architect your code.