STARWEST 2026 - Business User
Customize your STARWEST 2026 experience with sessions covering topics for business users.
Monday, September 21
Become an AI Power User
Impostering a bit in the AI-verse? Overwhelmed by daily AI announcements? Unsure you're using AI most effectively? Tiny bit of FOMO? Jeremiah has you covered! In this workshop, he'll help you become an AI Power User. Become a boss at your job, whatever your role or industry! He'll show you where AI shines and where you'll want to be careful, plus toss you lots of hands-on practice. In the time together, Jeremiah will help you pinpoint YOUR niche, build a custom AI assistant, and develop a comms strategy to show off your new skills. You'll walk out with cutting-edge knowledge, a...
Testing AI Systems That Refuse to Sit Still: Practical Evals, Red Teaming, and Oversight for AI Agents
NewModern AI systems don’t behave like traditional software. The same prompt can produce different outputs, models can drift without code changes, and AI agents may hallucinate, misuse tools, leak context, or confidently invent facts while appearing completely functional. In this hands-on tutorial, Jeremiah Marble will show attendees how to test and harden modern AI systems using practical, lightweight techniques teams can apply immediately. Participants will build tiny AI agents, intentionally break them through prompt injection, unsafe outputs, hallucinations, and memory drift, then create...
Wednesday, September 23
How Technical Program Management Became the Architecture Layer of Modern AI Execution
As Generative AI moves from prototypes to production, one truth is emerging across every major tech organization — scaling AI responsibly isn’t just a data, science or engineering challenge but also an orchestration challenge. Behind every AI system that ships reliably, there’s a hidden architecture of alignment: between model builders, applied scientists, data engineers, security, compliance, and product teams. In that architecture, Technical Program Management (TPM) is becoming the connective tissue — the execution layer of modern AI. In this talk, Raj Karan shares lessons from leading...
The Future of Test Automation: Trends, Challenges, and Your Burning Questions - Panel
Test automation is evolving at an unprecedented pace, driven by AI, continuous testing, and the ever-increasing complexity of modern software development. Join us for an engaging panel discussion where industry experts will explore the latest trends in test automation, including AI-powered testing, low-code/no-code automation, and the role of testers in a rapidly changing landscape. This session will also serve as an open forum for attendees to ask any lingering questions from the conference. Whether it’s about the future of automation, best practices, or the impact of AI on testing roles...