Tuesday, September 15, 2026
TechConnect Summit 2026
Where Builders Meet: Two Days of Insights, Connections, and Ideas That Move Fast
Register NowConfirmed Speakers
Meet the Lineup
Maya Chen
The Future of AI-Native Infrastructure
Maya Chen is VP of Infrastructure at Vertex Systems, where she leads a 200-person team building the next generation of AI-native cloud platforms. Previously a Principal Engineer at Google and Apple, she has shipped systems that serve billions of daily requests. Maya is a frequent keynote speaker at SREcon and QCon, and co-author of "Designing for Failure at Scale."
James Okafor
Shipping Faster Without Breaking Things
James Okafor is Director of Platform Engineering at Launchpad (Series C, $220M raised). He rebuilt their release pipeline from monthly deploys to 40+ per day without any downtime incidents. James speaks regularly at DevOpsDays and is a core contributor to the open-source Shipwright project.
Priya Sharma
Design Systems That Actually Scale
Priya Sharma is Principal Design Engineer at Confluence, where she built and scaled a design system now used by 12 product teams across 4 time zones. Before Confluence she was staff designer at Figma. She writes about component architecture and design engineering at priyasharma.dev and speaks at Config, Clarity, and Design Systems conference.
David Park
Zero-Downtime Database Migrations (Workshop)
David Park is CTO of Reframe Analytics and a longtime infrastructure practitioner with 20 years of experience across fintech, health-tech, and SaaS. He has led teams through four zero-downtime database migrations at scale and is a regular panelist on the Software Engineering Daily podcast.
Sofia Reyes
State of the Ecosystem — Panel
Sofia Reyes is Head of Product at Nucleus (YC W23), a developer tooling startup. She spent five years at Stripe building monetization infrastructure before making the jump to the founding team at Nucleus. Sofia is a frequent panelist on the topics of developer experience, API design, and product-led growth.
Alex Rivera
Observability Without the Overhead
Alex Rivera is a Staff Engineer at Cloudmesh and an open-source maintainer who has contributed to Kubernetes, Envoy, and OpenTelemetry. With a background in distributed systems research at MIT, Alex bridges the gap between academic theory and the everyday realities of production engineering.
Program
Event Agenda
08:00 AM
—
09:00 AM
break
Registration & Breakfast
Pick up your badge and grab coffee before the day kicks off.
Main Lobby
09:00 AM
—
10:00 AM
keynote
Opening Keynote: The Future of AI-Native Infrastructure
Maya Chen — The Future of AI-Native Infrastructure
Maya Chen explores how AI is reshaping the way we design and operate modern systems — from edge deployments to hyperscale backends.
Grand Ballroom · Main Stage
10:00 AM
—
10:30 AM
break
Coffee Break
Networking break with exhibitor demos.
Exhibition Hall
10:30 AM
—
11:15 AM
talk
Shipping Faster Without Breaking Things
James Okafor — Shipping Faster Without Breaking Things
James Okafor walks through the CI/CD and feature-flag practices that keep deployment anxiety low and velocity high.
Room A · Engineering
11:15 AM
—
12:00 PM
talk
Observability Without the Overhead
Alex Rivera — Observability Without the Overhead
Alex Rivera from Cloudmesh shows how to get full distributed tracing and metrics coverage using OpenTelemetry without blowing up your infrastructure bill or adding latency to the hot path.
Room B
12:00 PM
—
01:30 PM
break
Lunch Break
Catered lunch. Round tables open for unconference discussions.
Grand Ballroom
01:30 PM
—
02:15 PM
talk
Design Systems That Actually Scale
Priya Sharma — Design Systems That Actually Scale
Priya Sharma breaks down the component architecture, token strategy, and governance model behind a design system serving 12 product teams.
Room B · Design & Frontend
02:15 PM
—
03:30 PM
networking
Afternoon Breakouts & Demos
Self-directed time across three sponsor demo stations plus open roundtables on AI tooling, platform engineering, and product-led growth.
Exhibition Hall
03:30 PM
—
04:30 PM
talk
Lightning Talks — 5 Speakers, 5 Minutes Each
Five practitioners share their sharpest insight from the past year. Fast, dense, and surprisingly useful.
Grand Ballroom
05:00 PM
—
07:00 PM
networking
Networking Happy Hour
Meet fellow attendees, speakers, and sponsors over drinks and snacks.
Rooftop Terrace
09:00 AM
—
09:45 AM
panel
Day 2 Opening: State of the Ecosystem
Sofia Reyes — State of the Ecosystem — Panel
A rapid-fire panel covering the most important shifts in infrastructure, frontend, and AI tooling over the past year.
Grand Ballroom · Main Stage
10:00 AM
—
12:00 PM
workshop
Workshop: Zero-Downtime Database Migrations
David Park — Zero-Downtime Database Migrations (Workshop)
Hands-on workshop walking through patterns for schema changes with live production traffic. Bring your laptop.
Room C · Engineering
12:00 PM
—
01:30 PM
break
Lunch & Unconference
Catered lunch with open unconference tables. Propose a topic, join a table, or just catch up with new friends.
Grand Ballroom
01:30 PM
—
02:30 PM
keynote
Closing Keynote: What We Build Next
Maya Chen — The Future of AI-Native Infrastructure
A forward-looking conversation about the next wave of developer tools, AI-augmented workflows, and the infrastructure decisions that will define the next decade.
Grand Ballroom
02:30 PM
—
04:00 PM
networking
Closing Reception & Farewell
Celebrate two days well-spent with drinks, snacks, and plenty of time to swap contacts.
Rooftop Terrace
About This Event
About
TechConnect Summit brings together 500+ engineers, founders, and product leaders for two days of deep-dive talks, hands-on workshops, and meaningful networking. Whether you are building your first product or scaling an enterprise, you will leave with actionable insights and new connections that stick.
Join us September 15–16 in San Francisco for a world-class speaker lineup, hands-on workshops, corridor conversations, and the kind of serendipitous collisions that change careers.
Organized by TechConnect Foundation
TechConnect Foundation is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit dedicated to advancing the practice of software engineering through community, education, and open knowledge sharing. Since 2018, the Foundation has hosted six annual summits with a combined 4,200+ attendees across North America and Europe.
Venue & Getting There
Moscone Center West · 747 Howard St, San Francisco, CA 94103
Closest BART stop: Powell Street (4-minute walk). Street parking is extremely limited — we strongly recommend BART, Caltrain (connecting at 4th & King), or rideshare. A paid parking garage is available at 5th & Mission (750 spots, ~$35/day).