[Chi-2025] Update speaker info for Chicago 2025

Author: caward24

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@@ -7,4 +7,16 @@ Type = "talk"
 Speakers = ["leigh-capili"]
 +++
 
+Nix is a unique package manager for configuring systems!
+It's reproducible and declarative and makes reliable systems.
+What does it look like to use Nix in the Cloud Native world?
 
+Do I Nix my development environment?
+Do I use NixOS to run production?
+Can Nix replace my Dockerfiles for building containers?
+
+In what fun ways can we use Kubernetes and Nix together?
+
+This workshop session will have something approachable for everyone, whether you are beginning developer, a mentoring practitioner, or a manager looking to contextualize Nix for your team.
+
+Come join in for a primer and tour of the Nix universe as it applies to us cloud-native nerds!

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@@ -7,4 +7,12 @@ Type = "talk"
 Speakers = ["mic-mccully"]
 +++
 
+The adoption of open-source AI software introduces a new family of vulnerabilities to organizations. Some components in AI, like model serving, include Remote Code Execution (RCE) by design, like when loading pre-trained models from external sources.
 
+Traditional SCA and SAST approaches are not built for the AI ecosystem leaving a huge & insecure attack surface. The irony is that in the AI ecosystem, security issues such as remote code execution are actually a feature and not a bug, often specified explicitly in the docs, which most devs don’t read.
+
+AI models are often downloaded from the public web, from untrusted sources in common platforms like HuggingFace using the “trust_remote_code=True” flag when loading models.  So how do we better secure our AI stacks?
+
+In this talk, we’ll examine some of the common security anti-patterns prevalent in AI engineering, such as security issues that are not classified as CVEs by design, or patched security issues that introduce breaking changes and therefore are not practically implemented.
+
+We’ll review the methods introduced for better security hygiene such as new checkpoint formats (model files on disk) - like SavedModel and SafeTensors. While SCA, SAST, and traditional approaches don't analyze model checkpoints, leaving these silent vulnerabilities in your stacks, we’ll demo through real code examples, why the runtime context is crucial to detect these security issues––and how this can be achieved by leveraging eBPF and open source tooling providing real-time security context to improve the security of your AI applications.

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@@ -7,4 +7,7 @@ Type = "talk"
 Speakers = ["michael-stahnke"]
 +++
 
+The core metrics for measuring team effectiveness with DevOps have been around quite a while now and they’re a great starting point. What measurements matter after those are established? What should software delivery metrics be telling us?
+
+In this ignite talk, I’ll pull out some research from time leading engineering at Puppet, CircleCI and Flox to talk about some different measurements that should help elevate your teams. I'll share insights around measuring time to spin-up for engineers, looking at team and departmental throughput, and measuring the effectiveness of your engineering platform.
 

content/events/2025-chicago/program/leigh-capili.md

@@ -7,4 +7,6 @@ Type = "talk"
 Speakers = ["peter-zaitsev"]
 +++
 
+Observability is a critical aspect of any infrastructure as it enables teams to identify and address issues promptly. Nevertheless, achieving system observability comes with its own set of challenges. It is a time- and resource-intensive process as it necessitates the incorporation of instrumentation into every application.
 
+In this talk, we will delve into the gathering of telemetry data, including metrics, logs, and traces, using eBPF. We will explore tracking various container activities, such as network calls and filesystem operations. Additionally, we will discuss the effective utilization of this telemetry data for troubleshooting.

content/events/2025-chicago/program/mic-mccully.md

@@ -7,4 +7,6 @@ Type = "talk"
 Speakers = ["reid-savage"]
 +++
 
+Siloes and boundaries are natural and useful; they constrain the problem space, make it possible to reason in the face of overwhelming complexity, and give space for ideas and people that don't fit within the majority. However, those boundaries can also become so deeply entrenched and solid that they become counterproductive (thus, DevOps) - and yet the cycle repeats itself, where "DevOps Engineer" becomes a new way to say "infrastructure engineer" in many companies, someone who is holed away creating the platonic ideal of a well-managed Kubernetes cluster.
 
+At Honeycomb, our Site Reliability Engineering team does financial modeling and product management, embeds with our Customer Support team (who is critical to tuning our SLOs), and still finds time to be Terraform wranglers. In this talk, we'll walk through the benefits and occupational hazards of breaking down barriers, why all your managers should strive to be accomplished sociologists, and how to touch grass with your SLOs.

content/events/2025-chicago/program/michael-stahnke.md

@@ -7,4 +7,8 @@ Type = "talk"
 Speakers = ["robert-snyder"]
 +++
 
+If you're like most innovation teams, you're obsessed with speed. You manage by principles, values, four adjectives (RACI), and an infinite number of verbs in your project plan. You drive your team with meetings and email. Documentation is mostly a CYA and you will soon delegate a lot of documentation to AI. Your idea of agility is the frequency of go-live events. Your culture is a communication traffic jam, you surrender to VUCA and leave behind a vague library of meeting minutes. It's a culture of low discipline and low empathy.
 
+What if you changed ALL of that?
+
+Imagine if you were obsessed with synchronization. You manage by metaphors - avoiding traffic jams, bumper cars, and whiplash. Instead, you resemble a symphony, an improv team, and a dance couple. Instead of governing with Four Adjectives, you manage an "elegant expectation factory" of Five Verbs (Draft, Review, Revise, Approve, Distribute). You know meetings and email are wonderful servants but horrible masters. You define agility as the "ease to pivot." Your Five Verbs govern ruthless discipline and graceful empathy. You leave behind an elegant, highly trusted portfolio of institutional knowledge, ready to pivot and innovate more. You've replaced VUCA with Elegance.

content/events/2025-chicago/program/peter-zaitsev.md

@@ -7,4 +7,6 @@ Type = "talk"
 Speakers = ["tracey-barrett"]
 +++
 
+DevOps is more than a technology initiative; it's a change initiative - and far too often, these stall inside large organizations. Good intentions up front are lost among deadline pressure, competing priorities or simple resistance to change. How can you recapture momentum and encourage continuous improvement?
 
+This talk will explore techniques and case studies for reigniting DevOps initiatives so that your organization can finally make the progress it needs.