InfoQ - QCon London 2026

Presentation: The Socio-Technical Staff+ Engineer: Architecture, Culture and Organisational Change

Vanessa Formicola — Fri, 06 Nov 2026 11:00:00 GMT

Vanessa Formicola shares how technical leaders can move beyond "wishful architecture" by practicing holistic socio-technical engineering. She discusses why engineering leaders must account for organizational maturity, reward structures, geopolitical climate, and team dynamics, framing the staff-plus role as designing the conditions for technology to thrive rather than just picking tools.

By Vanessa Formicola

Presentation: Panel: Who Builds the Frontend Now? (And What Breaks When They Do)

Luca Mezzalira, James Hall, Danielle An, Ivan Zarea — Wed, 04 Nov 2026 11:00:00 GMT

The panelists explain how AI tools and vibe coding reshape frontend and mobile engineering. They share insights on evolving junior developer roles, managing AI-generated code review fatigue, designing systems for autonomous agents, enforcing architectural guardrails, and navigating economic shifts in open-source software sustainability.

By Luca Mezzalira, James Hall, Danielle An, Ivan Zarea

Presentation: The Ladder is Missing Rungs: Engineering Progression When AI Ate the Middle

Alasdair Allan — Fri, 30 Oct 2026 11:00:00 GMT

Alasdair Allan discusses empirical research from METR and Anthropic on AI coding adoption. He explains the "supervision paradox," where reliance on AI tools disrupts junior skill development, risks institutional context loss, and threatens the long-term engineering pipeline needed to oversee autonomous systems effectively.

By Alasdair Allan

Presentation: Wrangling Telemetry at Scale: a Guide to Self-Hosted Observability

Colin Douch — Wed, 28 Oct 2026 11:00:00 GMT

Colin Douch shares battle-tested strategies for building and scaling self-hosted observability stacks. He explains how to effectively correlate metrics, structured logs, and distributed traces using open-source tooling like Prometheus, VictoriaMetrics, and Jaeger, while navigating the engineering trade-offs of avoiding SaaS vendor lock-in.

By Colin Douch