It's no secret that leaders face a diverse set of challenges while leading engineering teams. Join your peers and bring your real-world use cases to explore possible topics such as managing a multi-generational workforce, fostering innovation amidst rapid technological change, attracting and retaining top talent, navigating the evolving legal landscape of data privacy and worker rights, and building inclusive cultures that support mental well-being. The conversation is led by you and your fellow peers who attend, and you will most likely leave with great ideas on how to empower your team, embrace different leadership styles, and ensure your organization thrives in the ever-evolving tech landscape.

At QCon, we learn from the best and share with the best. We get the opportunity to hear about new and interesting ways to tackle the technical challenges we face. We come with passions and ideas that we want to share with each other and leave energized and eager to apply some of the solutions and alternatives that we’ve learned with our own teams. However, it can be difficult to connect the dots between the compelling stories we hear about technological transformation with new technology, our peers’ experiences, and the work we do day to day.

What is a Connecting the Dots Session?

A Connecting the Dots session is a participant-driven meeting. Attendees come together, bringing their challenges and rely on the experience and know-how of their peers for solutions. A facilitator is there to help keep the discussion moving forward, but where it goes is up to the participants and the four speakers who are in attendance.

It's a facilitated peer group that avoids the hierarchical aspects of a conventional conference, such as a top-down organization. Only the broad themes are predetermined. Everything else is just space for attendees and the speakers to sound off ideas together, relate to shared challenges and rewards, and identify new ideas and goals. 

The event is open to participants of the conference. There is limited seating, and separate registration is required. 

Why Are We Doing Connecting the Dots Sessions?

We have designed QCon for senior software practitioners. That role comes with demanding challenges and complex problems. 

Connecting with your peers in a structured environment allows you to:

• Broaden your perspective with the benefit of the experience of others.
• Challenge how you've been doing things by breaking out of your bubble.
• Learn from peers who have already overcome the challenges you're facing now.
• Benchmark your solutions against other teams and organizations.
• Get real-world perspectives on challenges that might be too novel or specific to find solutions in books or presentations.
• Validate your technical roadmap with real-world research.
• Connect with others like you and build relationships that go beyond the event.

How do Connecting the Dots sessions work?

In these sessions, we will have four tables with a speaker at each and space for eight attendees to join them. There is the opportunity to change tables throughout the session - or if you’re enjoying the conversation you are free to stay at the same table the entire session.

What’s next?

Bring your passion and ideas to the QCon Connecting the Dots session! There is limited seating, and you can register above. See you there!