A recap of interesting points and quotes from the May 2024 WSO2CON opensource application development conference. Focuses primarily on keynotes and panel sessions.

1. My Favorite
Quotes
from a
Development
Conference
highlights from the event that inspired me
By Jennifer Lim, Microsoft S-ATS

2. Introduction
I attended the
conference to learn
from experts in the
software development
field and gain new
insights and
perspectives.

3. Agenda
5/22/2024 3
This presentation covers the highlights from
a recent development conference by
sharing my favorite quotes & insights.
The conference featured a diverse range of
expert speakers. Most slides and videos
are posted at: WSO2Con 2024 - Agenda
I hope the content shared inspires you as
much as it did me. I added links in the notes
section if you find a particular topic
interesting.

4. Session
1:
Our digital enterprise platforms have become “Atlas”.

5. “Unique Digital
Experiences that
you Create are your
competitive
advantages. So why
aren’t you spending
more time on
them?”

6. “It just works”
Workplace collaboration
systems like Google
Workspace or Microsoft’s
Office 365. Prior to them
you spent most of the
time operating the system
with software
maintenance, spam and
antivirus, backups &
restore.
Now "it just works" and
you are focused on using
the system. The people
that support it are now
focused on etiquette,
sharing, knowledge
management.

7. Session
2:
“Dark matter makes up
30.1% of the matter-
energy composition of the
universe. The rest is dark
energy (69.4%) and
“ordinary” visible matter
(0.5%).”
“Yes, you only see .5% of
what exists.”
“Dark Matter is
everywhere. But most
people don’t think about
it and don’t worry about
its actions on visible
matter.”
Dr. Sanjiva when
thanking her after
her keynote: “The
majority of your
enterprise
shouldn’t focus on
the Platform
engineering
features. [Platform
functions] should
disappear from
their concerns
similar to Dark
Matter.

8. Session 3:
"automated technologies" was the phrase she used to describe robotics and AI
She studies "why & how do people treat automated technology like its alive despite all evidence to the contrary? "
Is it generational? Those who grew up with Star Wars, do they personalize because of movies as fact?
It's been proven we are biologically trying to make nonhumans have human feelings. Dogs, stuffed animals, etc.
Studies show we are also hardwired to humanize objects with movements even more. Rumba gets named, and they want it fixed not replaced.
Naming the robot for people makes a big difference in treatment of the robot. Sending it with a sticker that says the robot has a name makes people humanize it
faster.
This is and should influence our design choices.
There is a field of study called "social robotics" which is giving robots instruction to respond to social cues on purpose. Example - pet robot dinosaur to encourage
kids to interact with its "lifelike responses"
What's really changed in the last couple of years? People are starting to know they're interacting with AI. AI has been around a long time (manufacturing, Netflix
recommendations). AI is now in a "shared space" with humans & not in the background any more
People will behave as if a system or a robot is sentient even if they "know" it's not. Yet robots can't keep secrets. And robots can influence behavior. We should be
more mindful of how we allow and encourage people to interact with them.
We consciously and subconsciously compare AI to human brains as if they were a 1:1 relationship between the two. Search for an image of AI, and you often get a
picture that looks like a brain with circuitry in it. But an AI machines actually can solve faster and broader questions than a human can. But it can also make really
dumb mistakes that a 2 year old human wouldn't make (like classifying a cat as a loaf of bread).
Why do we have a goal to use AI to mirror something we already have, a human? Why don't we make it into something that we don't have, something new?
Open your mind and challenge the "replace humans" narrative.

9. Quantum
Computing
5/22/2024 9
Session 4:

10. What can we do with
Quantum
Computing?
New Business Opportunities:
1. Qubo problems can be solved -- Quantum
optimization "optimal choice between many
choices“. Eg. Gate assignment for planes, task
allocation among many things, traveling
salesman optimal paths, train routing..
2. Current encryption patterns can be broken --
Mosca's inequality formula -> estimate is that
by the end of the decade before at least 1
machine that can decrypt all number algorithms
(what our entire security infra is built upon)
3. Data entanglement will drastically reduce the
amount and method by which testing data will
be required in models
4. Quantum computing will enable businesses to
run linear equation-based simulations to
stabilize current products like combustion
processes in engines or discover new
pharmaceuticals
5/22/2024 10
We are in the NISQ era….Noisy
Intermediate Scale Quantum computing. To
create precise answers, we need 1000's of
the Quantum chips and we have 100's
available.

11. Session 5:
Platformless Horizons
for Digital Adaptability
Cell Based Architecture is different than
Domain Driven Design. Domain Driven
Design is different than Cell Based
Architecture.
APIs, Events, and Data are equally
important in enabling your business
applications.
At the end of the day, it all comes down to
value. “Some organizations understand
how to do this properly”
11

12. “You need to define value and
then understand how
technology can enable it.”

13. Communities
thrive where
Expertise
meets
Contribution
Ideas:
- Architecture Exchanges
- Meet Ups
- Internal TedEx
- Advisory hours
- Podcasts
5/22/2024 13

14. Quotes from
People who do
things
The next few pages capture quotes from the “customers”
side of technology – people who are responsible for
implementing or running the technology at enterprises.

15. “The Customer of the future expects us to
meet them in their digital world."
“We are democratizing the VIP experience.”

16. “You can’t be ‘platformless’ without a platform.”
“I’m part of a CTO club in the SF Bay - we've realized we're spending too much energy into the platforms and not
business features.”
“A developer platform is not ever "finished". An enterprise develops one to simplify the development experience.”
“Flow efficiency = Work time vs. Wait time. A Developer Platform should improve their enjoyable work time.”
“If we can use AI augmented experiences to increase the productivity of the developer, then sure, it would be
useful.”
“Security approach is now ‘Shift Left and Shield Right’. You have to do both, you can't just do one and protect
your systems.”
5/22/2024
Statements heard during one of the Panels
16

17. What’s the hardest part
about migrating to a new
development platform?
“Not understanding the requirements of who is
going to use your platform. These are
engineering platforms made for developers to go
faster. But getting developers to communicate
their wants for a developer platform is a
challenge. And if you don’t build what they want,
they will just do their work outside of the
platform.”
5/22/2024 17

18. Challenges they’re facing in the Financial Industry:
• Cognitive Load
• Data permissions
• Identity management
• Geo political & regulation impacts technology choices & data
locations (they don't have a lot of control of these impacts)
• In emerging markets they have to really think about the
infrastructure for the user like network connectivity, phone
storage size
Needs mentioned during the panel q&a
• response time & stability
• tracing & accountability to their customers for incidents
• distributed ecosystems [i.e. cloud] vs managing growth on prem
… they're both challenging and need to be simplified
• mainframe cannot lift and shift, they need help to modernize on
the way to the cloud
They require a “Secure foundation with guardrails so that
compliance can be met at the foundation / platform level”.
Where will you apply AI first? Only solid answer was the contact
center. Rest of answers was evaluation / not sure.
5/22/2024 18

19. Industry References
5/22/2024 19

20. Important Terms 1: “Scale to Zero”
The ability for your platform
to take down
your infrastructure scale
to zero
when it’s not in use.

21. Important Terms #2:
“Quantum Safe” &
“Store Now and
Decrypt Later”
The latest hacker attack “phenomenon” of
stealing the encrypted data now, knowing they
can break the encryption later. Quantum
computing is close to being broadly available,
some say by the end of the decade. Quantum
computing can easily decrypt numbers-based
algorithms, upon which almost all of our
current computer security infrastructure is
based upon.

22. Important
Terms #3:
Platformless
What was once "devops" then turned into "platform
engineering". But now we're spending too much time
on the underlying platform and not enough on
creating the value add experiences.
So now the push is to go "platformless" or offload that
non-unique stuff for your business into a SaaS
solution, letting your developers develop on top of
something provided to them and focusing on business
& user experiences.
Internal Developer Platform should contain
•API Manager
•Identity and access manager
•Integration (i.e. ESB)
•"visual experience to develop"
•"AI / Natural Language interactions"
•"AI / Natural Language helps map source to target"
22
“Platformless” was also defined as the “next step in
the Evolution of Integration Approaches”
1) point to point 2) ESB 3) Microservices 4) API Led 5)
Cloud Based / Platformless

23. Martin Fowler
Don't get locked up into avoiding lock-in (martinfowler.com) 23

24. Industry
References
“enterprises need to inject security checks as early as
possible in the API lifecycle and continuously test and
apply proper policies as existing API evolves and new APIs
are built. ” 42 Crunch reference
https://42crunch.com/42crunch-announces-the-launch-of-the-first-api-security-
platform/
“every company is a software company. ” - McKinsey study
reference
https://www.mckinsey.com/capabilities/mckinsey-digital/our-
insights/every-company-is-a-software-company-six-must-dos-to-
succeed
Gartner says an average of 125 SaaS vendors is being managed per
enterprise. It is complex.
Key takeaways from the 2022 Gartner® Market guide for SaaS
Management Platforms | BetterCloud
"Composable business" == digital business platform (unique). The better
your digital business platform, the better the experiences you can build on
top of them. The Future of Business Is Composable - Gartner
Keynote

25. Conclusion
Key Takeaways
The presentation covered several topics that could be
useful for our team to explore further. The quotes and
insights shared can serve as an inspiration for future
projects and ideas.
Further Exploration
If you found any of the topics presented interesting, I
encourage you to explore them further. There is always
more to learn, and the insights gained can help us in our
work.