Atlas
Talks
I've been giving public talks and keynotes for about thirty years. When I gave my first talks in 1993, my eyebrows would wiggle uncontrollably from nervousness. Now, a hundred-plus talks later, I can captivate any audience. When I wiggle my eyebrows now, it's because I want to, dammit.
I have been invited to companies, conferences, universities, and private events. Most of my talks were never recorded, or the recordings have been lost. But I've managed to find a few of them. This page has them, grouped by venue.
I like to think I'm a pretty good speaker. After I gave my first live talk onstage at Sourcegraph, I overheard our head of Comms tell our head of Press: "It turns out Stevey has yet another superpower we were unaware of." It was unintentionally one of the nicest compliments anyone has ever paid me.
Long-form podcast conversations live on the Podcasts page.
AI2 Incubator
AI House, Seattle · May 2026
The Future of Software
An evening panel hosted by the AI2 Incubator, drawing a crowd of more than 240. Ajit Banerjee — founder and CEO of SageOx — and I talked through where software is heading: why a stack of prompts and skills is not a moat, what is worth building while the models catch up, and how steady a team's cadence should stay in a fast-moving market. No public recording; the link goes to a write-up from the night.
AI Engineer Code Summit
AI Engineer NYC · 2025
2026: The Year The IDE Died
Fall keynote with the Vibe Coding co-author. Year-ahead reading of where the workflow goes after the editor.
IT Revolution · ETLS
ETLS Las Vegas · Sep 2025
Beyond the IDE: Toward Multi-Agent Orchestration
The 2025 ETLS keynote — argues that the IDE is no longer the unit of work; the workspace is.
ETLS · 2025
Vibe Coding Workshop for Leaders
Workshop format, not a public recording. Hands-on session for executives navigating AI-native engineering.
ETLS Las Vegas · Sep 2024
The Death of the Junior Developer, and Other Lessons Learned
Talk version of the Sourcegraph essay of the same name, delivered at the height of the hiring debate.
Sourcegraph
Sourcegraph · 2025
Stop Writing Code — That's What LLMs Are For
The Chat-Oriented Programming (CHOP) talk. The naming of the workflow that Vibe Coding later built on.
SPHERE.IT
SPHERE.IT Connect #2, Krakow · Feb 2025
AI in DevEx — how does the landscape change?
Conference panel with Anita Zbieg (Network Perspective) and Paweł Dolega (VirtusLab). Video on YouTube; Anita's writeup unpacks the 8 Levels framing that came out of it.
Google-era talks
Emacs Conference · 2013
Project Grok
A talk on Grok — the cross-language code knowledge graph I built at Google — given to the London Emacs Conference. Companion to the Stanford EECS talk from the year before.
Stanford EECS · Oct 2012
Grok: Cross-Language Source Analysis at Google
Internal-tools talk on the code knowledge graph I built at Google. Distinct from the 2008 dynamic-languages talk. · Stanford abstract.
OSCON Data · 2011
What Would You Do With Your Own Google?
The "leaving Google" talk. Delivered the same year as the accidentally-public Platforms Rant.
Google I/O · May 2008
Server-Side JavaScript and the Java Virtual Machine
My talk at the first-ever Google I/O — Mozilla Rhino (JavaScript on the JVM) versus Java Tiger, and what dynamic tooling makes possible. Known on my blog as Rhinos and Tigers. The video had been buried under a new URL; thought lost, now refound.
Stanford EE380 · 2008
Dynamic Languages Strike Back
Computer Systems Colloquium. Argues that JavaScript and the dynamic family are about to eat the enterprise — they did. Companion essay: blog post version. · Stanford abstract.
no recording found
Reflections · Projections, UIUC · Oct 2007
Compiling JavaScript for the JVM
Invited talk at the 13th annual ACM @ UIUC student conference — Mozilla Rhino, the Ruby-on-Rails port my team was running inside Google, and a deep dive into Rhino's bytecode compiler. The precursor to the Google I/O talk six months later. I shared the bill with Randall Munroe of xkcd, who gave Meet the President of the Internet. No public recording survives; the link goes to the archived speakers page.