Transcript — Welcome to AI Native DevCon

Speaker-label warning: This transcript was captured via Granola and has no per-speaker labels. The overwhelming majority is Simon Maple delivering the opening; the final paragraph transitions to Guy Podjarny (Tessl founder & CEO) taking the stage. The transcript also contains speech-to-text artifacts — e.g. "Tessell" for Tessl, "Geico" / "guideposts" likely for Guy / Guy Podjarny, "kilo" likely for keynote, "a wonderful beginner" likely a misheard speaker name from Thoughtworks. These are preserved verbatim below; do not silently correct them when quoting.

Participants named in the transcript: Simon Maple (presenter), Alan (app maintainer — "Alan, I'm sure will love. Live fixing this on the go"), Samantha (conference lead — handles Code of Respect issues), Guy Podjarny (Tessl founder & CEO, takes the stage at the end).

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Opening & event framing

Tomorrow. Have workshops with you need to sign up for. I'll talk about that in just a second. Also have two book signings that are happening across today. Plus an Agentic Genius Bar where you can go talk to technical experts and engineers about some of the deepest problems even personal issues. Just go for counseling. Whatever you want, just go there. There and talk to them about that. Of course, at the end of today, we also have our party, which is happening just outside our talk a little bit about that in more depth.

Sponsors & community partners

So, a line eighteen DevCon is an event run by Tessell. Tessell is the company behind that. We're very, very proud run such a such an impressive and large community event we can bring the best speakers of the most talented attendees from New York and London to our event. So we're we'll continue this big conference. Push. Over London and New York coming up beyond just today and tomorrow as well. We're very very happy to have a wonderful set of sponsors, not just Tessell, we have Neo we have SLEEP, have Paper Compute, Code. We have Resolute. We have Autonomy AI. Resync, Cogirant and AnyShift. I massively, massively suggest during the breaks, during the lunches, you go into the expo center and you talk to them. Those folks. Really, really amazing folks, engineers all the way through. And know talk to them, get some advice, really study to discuss what do they do, how can they help you, It's a really important part of the conference. And also a big thank you to our community partners for helping share our events

The DevCon app (QR code onboarding)

Okay. We have This is one of the most important parts of of my opening here. It's really, really important to get the app. It's a very, very small app that actually fires off to a web page. So everyone get phones out. Scan that QR code, that is the app that you need. I'm gonna leave this up for five, ten seconds for everyone. I'm not gonna I'm not gonna not gonna move on from this side until everyone gets their phone out. This QR code. Code. I'll wait. You already Okay? Excellent. You need to scan that QR code and I'll show you the app in just a second. You've got five seconds. 4321. Okay. Gonna show you this app because and the reason why this app is very, important and by the way, if you do make changes, just shut the app down and and and restart the app, turn it off and on again, and you'll get some of the latest updates. I'm gonna show you how this app works and what you can do from it. So, from the DevCon app, of most important things is to go to your profile and in. When you sign in, you need to sign in with the email address that you used when you signed up this conference. When you do that, you can then access all the all the necessary parts. So, couple of things, important things. Can explore the schedule. From here, you can identify which of sessions that you want to go. We have three tracks that I mentioned, will cover a little bit more in-depth. You can save these when you save these, it'll appear in the mind category. So you track your day much, much more easily. From here, you can also identify whether you wanna see the, you the keynotes, the talks, workshops, and so forth. This goes through all the all the way through.

Schedule overview

Coffee breaks. Coffee breaks thirty minutes. Chat to each other. Go grab a break. Grab some coffee, etcetera, etcetera. We have more sessions and then we have a lunch break. We also have a book signing, which happening during lunch in the Expo Centre as well. We then have our keynote in this room after lunch. Followed by a bunch more sessions. And then the party after lunch. I'll talk about

Connect feature

Okay. We have the connect. With a connect, what you do is you press scan QR code, you allow it to access camera, and then you scan someone's QR code. You scan someone's QR code, you're essentially swapping dates, swapping information with someone that you can then connect with afterwards. You have to make sure that when you go to your profile once you're signed in, there's a QR code there and that's what you can scan for other people to connect directly with you.

Exhibitor booths & Agentic Genius Bar booking

Okay. We also have if I go to my welcome also have a couple of things here that are important. You can visit the exhibitor booths here in the middle You can go there and you can scan QR codes there and that's important because there's actually gonna be some prizes depending on how much people get points in the app and things like that. And finally, one of the other things that I wanted to mention is over here you can book a slot at the Agentic Genius bar. That'll take you to a Calendar, where you can pick from a number of slots, that will guarantee you time in the agent bar. Also go there and just chat to people directly, but this will guarantee you a slot. So there's a bunch that you can do. Feel free to click around, tell us if there's something that you want, you know, if there's a bug in there or something. Alan, I'm sure will love. Live fixing this on the go.

Workshop registration flow

One last very, very important piece. If you go to the schedule click on day two, Filter on workshops. These workshops are first time first serve based on registration. If you want to go to a workshop, you click on that workshop, and then here where this is loading, that will say sign up to or register to this workshop. You'll click register to this workshop and it will say you're registered. That is the screen you should show us on the door. There you go. Reserve my seat, six left. If I click on that, it will say reserving It will say you have reserved the seat. Walk, show that screen. That will get you into the workshop. If I'll cancel out to someone, someone can actually actually join that, If you wanted to join but you didn't quite make that first that top 60, what you need to do is you need to just queue up at the time for that workshop. And if the 60 who signed up originally don't get in or aren't there to get in, we automatically open that up to the queue outside. Make sense? Awesome. Get the app and start registering for things there.

Session skills via Granola

We're also recording every single session skill with Granola. And what happens is as soon as that Granola sorry. Every single session transcript we Granola. As soon as Granola finishes that recording, we actually create a skill it, an actual agentic skill. That agentic skill is gonna be uploaded to AI Native DevCon 2026 That work that workspace in Tessell and you can then download that skill. You have one plugin every single skill in in the confidence You can download that skill and ask you know, load it into Claude or or or Codex or whatever, and start asking questions of the confidence conference. And you can then, you know, ask maybe I love this session but I wanna learn more about it. How do I do this in practice? Guide me on on creating this process internally. It'll ask you questions and take you through it. So session skills will all be made available almost instantaneously once the session has ended. And this is me just playing around with guideposts session, which is the next kilo being pulled. I say, hey, Geico mentioned a CDLC. What the heck is that? Look through my transcripts using the skill and then provide me answers how I can actually get started with that.

Three tracks named for LLM concepts

Okay. So I've already gone through the agenda, but just note one thing I wanna say here is that there are three tracks. This is the context window, Just to warn you, when the context window gets very very full, we do do compaction. Okay? Just to just to let you know. Now what this means is it will happen at a very awkward time and you will lose all memory of everything that happened in that session. So I just wanna warn you we do have recordings. The latent space and the tool pool are back towards reception. So if you take a not reception. Sorry. The the registration If you take a right first on the left, will be the Wonder Rooms. And then downstairs, the registration, there is the the third room there. So you can go to each of those rooms pretty much from registration. I don't just go through the wall, but I kinda went through a little bit of that in the app.

Evening party

But the the the party, we have some some beers, some wine, some soft drinks, well. This is a really good way of kinda like connecting with everyone you know, chatting with folks, talking to the speakers, It's a it's a really important time to to kinda reflect on everything that's happened. And also wind down Cause we've got a ton of sessions and a ton of content, it's important we also a little bit of time to enjoy ourselves and relax What is hopefully be a nice non rainy evening. Tonight.

Day two preview

Okay. Day two. Can still rest up all the way through, but there is still still some space, make sure you register for your workshops day two. We have two workshops running side by side. If I jump to those side by side, have two workshops running side by side, and then we have another track in this room those who wanna come to those sessions or you know get into a workshop. Have a complete track also running as well. And then we finish off with our keynote from wonderful beginner, from Thoughtworks, and after that, we have an amazing giveaway of a whole ton of different amazing swag including some wonderful aren't just Ray Banner's, those are some meta glasses. We have some wonderful drones. Have some cool Keytron keyboards, some stream decks. There's a ton, thousands of pounds worth of prizes to give away. So make sure you stay to the end because we do not post do not mail these prizes If you are not here, it goes on to the next person. Everyone is automatically in the draw these prizes by having a ticket. We also give prizes for the best social. So make sure you take some photos. Make sure you you share that with other folks. As well as the people with the highest score in the app.

Housekeeping

Okay. Some housekeeping. We're getting to the end. You can tell we're getting to the boring stuff now. WiFi. On the back of your badges, you do have all the WiFi details. I should have mentioned that. Just before I I everyone to download the app. There is WiFi and it's conference WiFi so it's guaranteed to be good just like the coffee The schedule click your home in the back of your badge, you'll get to schedule or Lunch and coffee, actually the the lunches are be absolutely amazing. If you go into the expo center where you can visit all the booths and our sponsors, you will see all the coffee all the lunches laid out there. So whenever there's coffee breaks and things like that, head to the expo center, grab yourself. Coffee, some water, things like that. That's where all the snacks are. That's where all the lunches are as well. Okay. Swag. Who likes swag? Five people. You're a duck. We have 150 But we have our very own conference t shirt. That's gonna be given at lunchtime today in the expo center as well. Little bit of fun there for some t shirts. Getting around. Okay. This is an interesting one. This is a little bit of a maze. This this this But hopefully we've put enough science for you to kind of, you know, go through. You also, you'll also find people in these blue shirts, light blue shirts. We picked a very common color. That is very easy for you to spot us. So if you see someone in this blue DevCon shirt, they're either working for DevCon through as a volunteer, helping out. Ask them. They'll get directly to any room and give you help about anything by the app or the schedule. As well. We also do have a code of respect and we hold that very, very highly. We do want this to be a good event for everyone no exceptions. So we do ask you to take a look at our code of respect and if there are any problems please there is information in the code of about how to. Go about talk to people. We have a couple of people, including Samantha, who's the leader of the conference. That you can talk with, and we will resolve that as soon as possible. Okay. Need a tea. Yeah. As I mentioned, there's a ton of people is actually the New York picture, but there's a ton of people in these similar blue shirts We're all very friendly, so please please do come and come and ask us. Be stranded, knocked out on learning what to do or where to go.

Why are we here?

I'm gonna I'm gonna wrap up by really kinda giving some little bit of advice from someone who's been into the conferences and spoken at conferences for twenty plus years. Whereby I want real people to get the most out of this event. And of the questions we need to ask is, okay, why are we all here? Well, here, and this isn't a deep question, this is generally why are we in this room? We're in this room because we're generative developers. We are people who wants to learn about how we can really improve get the most out of our software development workflows and processes. Using agentic methods. We're very AI curious. Maybe some are a little bit skeptical. Maybe some are completely bullied. How can I do AI to do everything in my But we want to understand how we can use it best. When we should, when we shouldn't. Use it. We believe in a better way of making software and we believe that AI is a gateway for us to actually improve on that ourselves. And across the room, may us hold that very similar goal We're called like minded, agentic developers, like minded developers Many of us have the same problems. You look to person to the left, gonna be a geek as well. They're gonna have maybe the same workflow problems. You look to the person to the right. They're gonna have experiences with Codex or Claude or OpenAI or whatever it is. If you're unlucky, one of them may be an Arsenal fan. Yesterday was easier. They all came in plain sight. Today's holiday. What would rather Like you and I. So just be just be mindful of that. But, yeah, everyone is, you know, other like minded developers And and what is the person to the left or right of you may be two weeks ahead of you in your journey, two weeks know, behind you in your journey. It's really important to say, oh, how did you do this? Because people will have opinionation opinions on the destination that you want to get to. But they are also in the same trenches as you are, and it's really important to get that noise from each other.

The hallway track

There's one thing that we call hallway track. Who's heard of the hallway track at a conference? Not many. Okay. A few people. So a hallway track is exactly that. It's the track outside of sessions. Can go to sessions and you can learn and then hear from the speaker. Talk to the speakers afterwards But some people say the most valuable piece of a conference is outside of the session talking to the speakers, talking to other people, cause you will get absolutely real information about how you can progress journey of life.

Three-part attendee challenge

So my challenge is at the conference talk with three people that you haven't talked with before. I don't count as one of them. So you need three additional people Identify three topics throughout this conference that you think, ah, do you know what? Feel like this is something I really wanna research. Something that I really think will take take my life, my work great forward. I'm gonna go ahead and do some work on that. Build a project around that. And then the third thing join the AI Native Dev Discord community. Because one of the things I hate is Join our community and talk with each other continuing beyond beyond this event.

End-of-week follow-up rule

Now, one of the important things is after the after the conference, another challenge for you which is by the end of this week, make sure it's tidy. If you leave it, it typically typically won't get done. By the end of this week, take one of those, you know, the most important thing that you're most passionate about. Your topics. Actually start it, kick it off and try and get some work done there by the weekend or around the weekend. And carry on that conversation. Tell us what you're doing in the DOS, in the Discord, Tell us what you tried, what you were worth, what felt, and share it with each other. Because again, that's how we as a community. Grow together. Want us to join our AI Native Dev community? Have like please please join that and be active in there because it's really important way us to kinda like share what's happening in the AI Native Dev community, and also hear from you about what's what's happening in your world.

Social & wrap

Wanna follow us on social, you can. A I N D at DevCon is our handler of Tessell there, of course. But hashtag A I N D DevCon for the event. Share all your learnings. Share pictures of sessions and things that you enjoy. About the conference, and don't like maybe we can kinda like learn from that. The best tweets and LinkedIns and things like that with that hashtag we'll win prizes at the end. So please please do share and enjoy being at DevCon. And that's everything I have. I won't bore you any further with my my my boring schedule announcements things like that. But I've got an exciting next session for you. It really my pleasure to invite up the founder and CEO of Tessell Guy Pajani. And Guy is gonna really talk about how in fact, skills are the new code How can we use context? In our agentic workflows but not just as this throwaway thing but as something that we give the same value to as you know, the code and the workflows as we have in years gone by. So, without further ado, I will pass over to Guy Pajani. Please give Guy your time to a huge as well.

Handoff — Guy Podjarny takes the stage

Hello, everyone. Good morning. I I wanna say to all those people sort of standing in the back, you know, you've got enough innovation.