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QCon AI New York 2026 Announces Initial Sessions, Focuses on AI Systems Engineering
Key points
- QCon AI New York 2026 announced 23 initial sessions.
- Conference focuses on AI systems engineering challenges.
- Topics include agent authorization, guardrails, and AI evaluation.
- Keynote by Nancy Wang addresses identity for AI agents.
- QCon London 2027 is scheduled for April 13–16.
- QCon London 2027 announced 15 tracks.
- QCon London 2027 will feature over 75 speakers.
- QCon AI New York 2026 is scheduled for December 15-16.
- QCon AI New York 2026 will be held at The Westin Jersey City Newport.
- QCon AI New York 2026 will feature senior engineers from AWS, LinkedIn, and DoorDash.
- QCon AI New York 2026 will cover LLM cost management.
QCon AI New York 2026 Program Details
QCon AI New York 2026 has confirmed 23 of its more than 30 planned sessions. The conference, scheduled for December 15–16, 2026, at The Westin Jersey City Newport, targets senior engineers, architects, and technical leaders involved in production AI systems. Initial talks will cover identity and authorization for autonomous agents, guardrails for operations agents on Kubernetes, shared model-serving platforms, and post-deployment evaluation of AI decision systems.
Shift to AI Systems Engineering
According to Conference Chair Hien Luu, the program reflects a significant shift in AI engineering towards systems engineering. The focus is moving from individual model behavior to the broader system behavior of AI. This includes managing bounded execution authority for agents, handling context and state, and integrating probabilistic models within deterministic control planes.
Core infrastructure now includes harness engineering, continuous evaluation, observability, and policy enforcement. Architectural constraints increasingly incorporate inference economics such as latency, token usage, model routing, and cost.
Interdisciplinary Approach
Luu noted that the evolving discipline of AI engineering is drawing from fields like distributed systems, security, platform engineering, and site reliability engineering. The goal is to ensure AI systems are reliable, observable, controllable, and economical to operate in production environments.
Keynote on Agent Identity and Authority
Nancy Wang, CTO at 1Password, will deliver a keynote titled "When Software Becomes a User: Identity and Authorization for Agents in Production." This session will explore how traditional identity and authorization models must adapt when software agents become active users of production systems.
The keynote will address challenges such as agents acting for multiple users, invoking unenumerated tools, creating subagents, and operating without direct supervision. Topics will include delegated authority across agent chains, auditability for multi-hop tool calls, and methods for granting agents necessary access without exposing underlying credentials.
Updates
- QCon AI New York 2026 is scheduled for December 15-16.
- QCon AI New York 2026 will be held at The Westin Jersey City Newport.
- QCon AI New York 2026 will feature senior engineers from AWS, LinkedIn, and DoorDash.
- QCon AI New York 2026 will cover LLM cost management.
- QCon London 2027 is scheduled for April 13–16.
- QCon London 2027 announced 15 tracks.
- QCon London 2027 will feature over 75 speakers.
✨ This summary was generated by AI from the outlets' reporting listed below. It is not independently verified and may contain errors — check the original sources. How BrevFeed works →
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How outlets covered it
The QCon AI New York 2026 conference, scheduled for December 15-16, will focus on practical challenges in production AI, including agent identity, authorization, evaluation, and cost management. Senior engineers from companies like AWS, LinkedIn, and DoorDash will present solutions and case studies from their experiences. The conference aims to provide insights for technical leaders making decisions on production AI systems.
QCon London 2027, scheduled for April 13–16, announced 15 tracks focusing on production AI, architecture, and engineering at scale. The conference will feature over 75 speakers discussing real-world production systems, trade-offs, and lessons learned.
QCon AI New York 2026 has confirmed 23 sessions, highlighting a shift towards AI systems engineering, including topics like agent authorization, guardrails for operations agents, and AI production evaluation. The conference program emphasizes managing AI systems in production, moving beyond just model behavior to system-level challenges.