Last week, I had the pleasure of speaking at Codemotion Madrid!

The event was really cool. I think I heard the organizers say that there were at least a couple thousand developers there, and there were multiple talk tracks throughout. I got to meet some internet friends in real life for the first time, and see some old friends I hadn’t seen in years.

I delivered the keynote talk, which I titled, “Our Brains in the AI Era” (slides here). The video should be online soon, and I’ll update this post when it is!

Luckily, the talk seemed to go well. I appreciated this feedback and summary from an attendee:

A few takeaways I’m still reflecting on:

• Forward-thinking hiring practices. Especially investing in junior talent
• The importance of guardrails when working with AI
• Learning in public now matters more than ever
• If your tools go down, what remains? Your knowledge, your team, your documentation
• And perhaps most importantly: juniors being “mentored” by AI can be both a blessing and a risk, we still need human mentorship more than ever.

We’re clearly at an inflection point. The tools are evolving fast, but how we design systems, share knowledge, and support each other will define what comes next.

• Cleyra Uzcategui

Talking about AI these days feels both touchy, and like the elephant in the room. I’ve been trying to approach it (now that I’ve spoken at three events this month about it in Korea, in Chicago, and now here, ha) in a balanced way to show that… it’s not all black and white. It’s easy to be very AI-pilled and very anti-AI, and that gray in between is an interesting space where we, as tech workers, can be stewards of this technology and how the workforce changes.