Last month, we released the results of our Greater Cincinnati AI Adoption Survey, where we discussed the impact AI is having on developers in our community. It was clear that our developers are eager for practical, hands on input for how to better leverage AI as well as interested in the long term effects AI will have on software development as a craft.
“How much AI-focused content do we want in Momentum 2026?” has been an important question we’ve reflected on as we plan Momentum 2026 and prepared for our Call for Speakers (open through May 31st). These survey results have played an important role in that process.
Below, we lay out how we want AI to be represented in the talks chosen for Momentum 2026.
What the survey told us
Attendees told us AI matters, but not at the expense of variety. They still want strong content on software craftsmanship, quality, and the other topics Momentum is known for.
So we want to make sure we’re featuring AI in roughly the same amount as prior years, but we want to make sure we’re emphasizing the right sessions. Around 70% of respondents indicated that the biggest value they’ve seen from AI has been productivity improvement. This tracks with our practical experience as well.
Our most popular AI topic of interest by far was practical development workflows involving AI, followed by AI and architecture / design tasks (this tracks with how popular our architecture talks have been in the past), followed by debugging, code review, evaluation, and testing.
Like at many conferences, attendees showed a strong interest in intermediate-level content. The lack of interest in introductory content was unusual, as was the strong interest in advanced material.
This is very different from most development conferences in the region where there’s often a higher interest in introductory topics, whereas advanced topics are slightly less popular.
What this means for our Call for Speakers
If you’re thinking of submitting for Momentum this year that’s fantastic! We’re looking for a variety of content related to software craftsmanship topics and would love to hear the things you’re passionate about.
We’re particularly interested in intermediate and advanced content that would be interesting to a large portion of our audience, though beginner sessions are also valuable. There’s a misconception with many speakers that conferences don’t want advanced content. This isn’t precisely true, but what conferences want is content that’s going to be valuable to a decent chunk of attendees and the trade off is that as you get more advanced, you often get more specialized and nuanced and the quantity of attendees that advanced topics are relevant to diminishes, making it a challenge to find advanced content that’s relevant to many different attendees.
We expect the AI sessions to be competitive and we want every selected talk to earn its spot. We encourage speakers who are submitting sessions on AI tooling to differentiate themselves by doing things like:
- Showing examples involving a breadth of AI tools
- Using live demos involving intermediate or advanced-level tasks (with pre-recorded backups, just in case)
- Drilling deep into intermediate or advanced features of AI tools, including customizations and tweaks likely to be relevant to our audience
- Sharing real-world examples of how you’ve overcome challenges most teams will deal with
You don’t need to do all of these suggested areas, or even any of them, but we do expect the AI tooling content we select to be some of our most agonizing choices this year, so we encourage you - if you’re submitting content related to AI, get practical, get interactive, and give us something that’s going to truly wow our reviewers and our attendees.
But if AI isn’t your thing, that’s great - most talks accepted this year won’t be purely AI focused. The best talk is the one that you’re excited to give and will pour yourself into preparing. Bring us that energy, whatever the topic.
If you haven't yet, checkout our original article with a deep dive into the survey results