When working with complex, distributed systems, the art of "connecting" is not a one-time feat but an ongoing journey. That journey covers everything from the essential role of APIs and protocols as the building blocks of connectivity, to the necessity of observability for understanding how a system behaves.
This track features a diverse array of perspectives and stories from experts that have built, maintained, and evolved the connections that weave together to become the fabric of distributed systems. As systems become more complex, we'll provide critical knowledge to help you master the art of connecting systems.
From this track
From Fan-Out to Fast: Sub-100ms API Design in Distributed Systems
Monday Mar 16 / 10:35AM GMT
A “simple” API request rarely stays simple. In distributed systems, one call quickly turns into fan-out across gateways, services, caches, and databases — and your p99 becomes the sum of every hop and every flaky dependency.
Saranya Vedagiri
Senior Staff Engineer @eBay
Uncorking Queueing Bottlenecks with OpenTelemetry
Monday Mar 16 / 11:45AM GMT
Queues are the backbone of scalable, asynchronous systems, but they can easily create a tangled web of complexity. When things slow down, the bottleneck could be anywhere, from producer lag to consumer exhaustion, and standard metrics often fail to show the full picture.
Julian Wreford
Team Lead of Operability Team @Gearset, Software Engineer Turned Accidental SRE
Oli Lane
Engineering Team Lead @Gearset, Focusing on Engineering Culture, Observability, and Platform Reliability
APIs for Agents: Rethinking API Programs in the MCP Era
Monday Mar 16 / 01:35PM GMT
As API programs mature, a familiar gap emerges: some teams operate with strong standards, reusable platforms, and clear governance, while others rely on informal guidance and best-effort consistency.
Jim Gough
Distinguished Engineer, API Platform Lead Architect @Morgan Stanley, Co-Author of Optimizing Java
Andreea Niculcea
Vice President @Morgan Stanley
Unconference: Connecting Systems
Monday Mar 16 / 02:45PM GMT
Enchant Your AI and APIs with eBPF Magic 🪄
Monday Mar 16 / 03:55PM GMT
It is a common occurrence to see applications thrown over the fence, landing somewhere in production without a second thought about their lifecycle or how they may need maintaining in the future to connect to more efficient API endpoints.
Dan Finneran
Principal Community Advocate at Isovalent @Cisco
Managing Asynchronous APIs at Scale
Monday Mar 16 / 05:05PM GMT
When event-driven architectures are small, teams can reason about events through word-of-mouth. They know who publishes what, who consumes it, and how messages flow through the system. Teams manage their own infrastructure or raise tickets to request changes.
Ian Cooper
Senior Principal Engineer @Just Eat Takeaway
