We recently attended Stir Trek 2026, and we wanted to share some of our adventures.
Sadukie’s Favorite Session - Designing Data Pipelines That Don’t Hate You Six Months Later
Having spent a good part of my career working with data, building a data bootcamp, and training others in the arts of data sorcery, I was curious to see what Chris Birie had to say about these data pipelines. Chris has had a career in data engineering, and he brings a lot of his work experience as well as his kung fu experience to his storytelling in this presentation. There were many scenarios where Bruce - the data engineer in his story - would be woken with issues at 3:00am. He kept falling asleep to different movies. Chris weaved movie storylines, movie quotes, and tales of 3:00am data engineer on-call support woes. There were 5 things to consider in data pipeline building and debugging - schema evolution, idempotency, observability, testability, and design for change. In each of these mini-stories, there were movie quotes, Bruce Lee quotes or kung fu quotes, and a lot of tips on how you can make sure your data and pipelines are solid for work. If you have troublesome data pipelines that need to be done better - or even if you just want a great data presentation with awesome storytelling skills, I recommend this talk!
Barret’s Favorite Session….s
I couldn’t pick just one. Of the sessions I attended (and I’m sure there were many great sessions I couldn’t fit in), there were two that really stood out for me. When these sessions are released on the StirTrek YouTube channel, you will definitely want to catch both of them.
First up was Guy Royse’s session “Agents & Arbiters - An Adventurer’s Guide To Multi-Agent Collaboration With LangGraph.JS”. Guy’s session was all about creating a Zork like text adventure game using AI agents to make it more interactive, complex, and flexible. He walked through the various architectures of how you can use LangGraph.JS to get teams of AI agents to coordinate with one another to go beyond the simple commands and static descriptions of the classic Zork game to a dynamic, interactive hosting system that could easily run any type of text-based adventure game by simply loading in a new adventure template file.
My other favorite session was Kathryn Grayson Nanz’s session “The Life Changing Art of Being Wrong”. In her session she talked through the many ways that we, as creators of applications, make incorrect assumptions about the users of our apps and their needs. She really brings to light how we can cause unintentional harm by jumping to all the wrong conclusions, and she walks through a number of ways that we can shift our thinking and our approach to ensure that we’re creating better, and more useful, software.
Kyle’s Favorite Session - Panel: Will AI change who gets to be a developer?
Stir Trek is always a great opportunity to hear about the latest trends and technologies in software development. This year, one of the sessions that stood out to me was the panel discussion on “Will AI change who gets to be a developer?” lead by Jeff Blankenburg featuring Cory House, Jamie Hughes, and Kate Holterhoff. I was intrigued by this session because it was the first year that I had seen a panel discussion format presented at Stir Trek. I was curious to see how the panelists would approach the topic of AI and its impact on the software development industry. All the panelists had unique and interesting perspectives on the topic and it left me with a lot to think about regarding the future of software development. I highly recommend checking out this session when it’s released on the Stir Trek YouTube channel.
Outside of the sessions, I also had a great time catching up with friends and colleagues as well as meeting new people. Conferences like Stir Trek are key to staying connected as a remote worker and I am thankful for the chance to meet up with my peers. I can’t wait to attend again next year!
Jeff’s Favorite Session - Why Tech Debt Never Gets Prioritized (And Why “Explain the Business Impact” Won’t Fix It)
With AI dominating so many conversations lately, I welcomed the conference sessions that focused on practical technologies and real problem-solving. Getting tech debt prioritized has always been a challenge, so you can imagine it was a topic that resonated with everyone in the room. Christine Miao’s talk, “Why Tech Debt Never Gets Prioritized (And Why ‘Explain the Business Impact’ Won’t Fix It),” tackled this head-on. Engineering leaders can see critical infrastructure problems with painful clarity, yet they constantly struggle to get buy-in to fix them. Her central argument was that the problem isn’t engineers’ inability to articulate ROI — it’s that engineering work is fundamentally invisible to stakeholders. She pointed out that no other function is expected to write a business case justifying obviously needed work the way engineering is, and that cramming messy, ambiguous tech debt projects into tidy ROI frameworks actually sabotages the teams doing the work. Her proposed solution was to make the work itself visible through visual maps of resourcing, architecture, and maintenance that anyone — even non-technical stakeholders — can immediately understand. It was a compelling reframing: stop trying to sell the business case and start making the reality of engineering work something everyone can actually see.
I’d also like to call out the amazing job organizers and volunteers continue to do every year. Thank you!
Conclusion
This year, all of NimblePros attended Stir Trek 2026. Four of us had presentations - Ardalis, Barret, Michelle, and Sadukie. We all were scattered throughout the theaters the entire time, though we did catch up for a team pic at lunch:
We enjoy when we can get together as team, learn from each other, and share our knowledge as well. Stir Trek 2026 was a great experience. We look forward to next year’s Stir Trek!