notes from o11ycon 2026

I spent the day at o11ycon 2026 today. Spent most of it talking to people. Watched a few talks. I am beat but want to share a few of my notes before they disappear into the ether of "things I ought to write about sometime."Stop Building FeaturesThe biggest idea from the conference for me hit in the first half an hour: AI allows people who aren't software engineers to build meaningful software. Those of us who are software engineers at companies should stop building features and focus instead on building systems that allow people on the sales team, the factory shop floor, etc. etc. etc. to ship safely.Every time I talk to other engineers about AI and what they're doing with it I feel tired. Every time I talk to people who are engineer-adjacent about the software they can build now I start getting excited.But there's this strong "Wile E. Coyote stepping off of a cliff" feeling, too. What's the blast radius here? What kind of systems do we need to do this "safely?"This is a weird…