STARWEST 2026 - IT Technology Leader
Customize your STARWEST 2026 experience with sessions covering IT technology.
Sunday, September 20
Fundamentals of AI—ICAgile Certification (ICP-FAI)
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...
Tuesday, September 22
Agentic AI: From Rules to Reasoning
NewAI agents have existed for decades, but generative AI has fundamentally changed what agents can do and how they are designed and built. Come and explore the evolution of AI agents across two major waves. First, learn the foundations of Agentic AI through agents built using rules, heuristics, and traditional machine learning, examining where these approaches excel and why they struggle with complexity, ambiguity, and scale. Then dive into the second wave of agents powered by generative AI and multimodal large language models. These modern agents can reason, plan, use tools, and interact...
Wednesday, September 23
Quality at Machine Speed: The Progressive AI Maturity Model for Testing and QA
Engineering teams now ship code faster than any test organization can verify it. The bottleneck in software delivery has moved — and it's moved to you. Ryan Lee introduces the Progressive AI Maturity Model for Quality Engineering, a five-level framework for closing that gap and reclaiming quality as the control point of AI-native delivery. Ryan walks through each level and what it actually looks like in practice: Level 1 (Foundation, 33%) using AI to draft cases and defects; Level 2 (Literacy, 75%) engineering context from specs, diffs, and production telemetry; Level 3 (Fluency, 300%)...
Tester 2.0—Becoming Indispensable in the Age of AI
Over the past few months, it has become clear that human testing expertise isn't going anywhere. However, surviving the AI era is not the same as thriving in it; simply "not being replaced yet" isn’t the same as being future-ready. With code being produced faster than ever and teams getting leaner, there seems to be a growing gap between code velocity and code quality. Are we just going to have to live with the fact that software quality is in decline? The answer is "no, but..." While some things stay the same, testers of tomorrow need to prepare for the trials ahead. Advocates for quality...
Thursday, September 24
AI-Native Delivery: Why the Future Belongs to Those Who Specify and Validate
AI in software delivery is no longer just about experimenting with copilots or generating code faster. It is about changing how software is imagined, specified, generated, validated, governed, and improved. As AI continues to be used for producing prototypes, requirements, code, tests, documentation, deployment artifacts, and operational insights, the software lifecycle shifts from a sequence of handoffs into a continuous learning loop. The real opportunity is therefore not only about leveraging AI tools, but adopting a new working model for transforming intent into trusted outcomes. Join...
Friday, September 25
AI in Testing Is Not a Tool Strategy: A Leadership Workshop to Build Vision, Governance, and Measurable Impact
AI is no longer a side experiment in testing; it is a leadership mandate. Yet many organizations remain stuck in tool demos, disconnected pilots, unclear ROI, and "automation theater." Quality and engineering leaders are being asked to “bring AI into testing,” but few have a practical blueprint for turning that ask into a scalable business strategy. In this high-impact session, we move beyond the AI buzzwords to deliver a strategic playbook for championing an AI testing strategy. Leaders will learn how to transition from reactive tools-first adoption to a 360-degree vision that connects...
Think Tank Discussion Parts I, II, III, and Wrap-Up
Think Tank Discussion Part I: Problem Definitions | 11:15 AM
Join with your peers in an engaging and highly interactive session to discuss the issues that affect you most. Using answers to the question “As a Leader, What is Keeping You Up at Night?” posed at Thursday’s evening reception, participants will form small groups to work on finding solutions to pressing leadership & management issues. Discussions will review identified issues, barriers to change, and focus on innovative strategies and practical next steps. At the end of the think tank, all feedback will be collected and...