I have been to a handful of tech conferences in person in the last decade: Intel Developer Forum, An Event Apart, Lesbians Who Tech, and Google I/O. Attending The Commit Your Code Conference 2025, has been one of the loveliest experiences which makes it hard to believe that it is one of the most affordable conferences one can attend (aside for the plane ride out to Dallas). At just $49, attendees have 3 days of events, free food, water and snacks, and all the talks are livestreamed for free. Because I could, and because it was for charity, I opted to pay for the $149 tier — which is still an unbelievable price for the amount of perks and programming.
How did I end up at a conference in Texas, SPEAKING in front of a hundred people, and meeting some of the best people? Well, let me tell you.
I can’t say when exactly I noticed Danny Thompson on the LinkedIn-sphere, but he kept on popping up: His stories about fried chicken at the gas station, his meetups, and then I caught wind of his cohorts. I love me a good cohort. I had tried something like it with The Little Tech Book Club but found it hard to manage without a clear deadline. It felt like it was my project and the folks were there for the ride vs the other way around. That’s how I found myself drawn to Danny’s cohorts and I applied to lead one at the beginning of the year. As fate would have it, I was paired with Jasmine P. Vo, one of the most badass women I have met in a while. I love ambition, thoughtfulness, and organization, and she has all 3 in heaps.
Danny’s LinkedIn posts I loved!
In February, we were put into our squads and as co-leads, Jasmine and I, helped a group of engineers build a smart property management application that featured: parking passes, smart locks (with programmable pins for guests and family members), smart mail and package pickup system, issue reporting AI tool and much more. That was my primer to entering the Dallas Software Developers world via the Discord and the wonderful people involved. After that I was eager to see my new friends in person and there truly was no better opportunity than the conference.
(As a quick aside, I was not planning to attend the conference this year due to a personal issue, but circumstances changed and I found myself planning my trip (and my slides!) just two weeks before the start of the conference)
Conference Day 0: I missed this, boo! 😦 But I heard beautiful things about the pickleball event and the Truck Yard party. When it comes to travel and time off, I try to minimize it to impact my husband and my work as little as possible. However, I think when I return to this conference I’ll make sure to come a little earlier and leave a little later to combat any jet lag and allow moments of serendipity to thrive.
Here’s images of what I was doing Day 0. Admiring the Texan sky and visiting a Buc-ee’s ❤ Big fan!
Conference Day 1: Even as early as 8 am I could feel the energy in the space. People were talking to the vendors, the volunteers, the organizers, each other, and everyone had a smile. I walked into the venue with my friend, Alex Cai, and at the check-in we got a networking card. Truly, everything Danny thinks of is new and different and moves the needle in a positive direction.
9am: The conference kicked off with a wonderful fireside chat with the CTO of Yum! Brands, Matt McDole on the importance of business and product insight in the age of AI and an inspiring speech by Danny Thompson about earning his scars as a developer in order to better inform engineering decisions he makes with AI tools. Much how coding bootcamps can quickly pivot and distill up and coming technology as compared to traditional universities. This nontraditional conference quickly distilled the current landscape of AI and laid the groundwork for engineers of every level.
11am: After the keynote and some networking in the halls, I went to my first talk: Slots, Slots Slots! with Abbey Perini. It was so much fun and the live demo was great:
At 11:30am I sought snacks and water and bought an early release copy of The Developer’s Guide to AI:
12pm-1pm lunchtime: Sadly, I did not get in line early and didn’t get any fried chicken. I had a slice of pizza and a tortilla.
1pm-2:25pm: I was on a binge of Leadership talks. Starting with Katarinya Hughes and her talk: So You Want to Be a Manager? Welcome to Meetings, Metrics, and Mayhem.
Did this talk make me decide if I wanted to be a manager? No. Did it confirm some feelings I had about the role and whether I might be well-suited for it. Definitely.
Listening to Kat’s talk about what it means to be a manager showed me that I gravitate towards a “support” role in my own team. I WANT to unblock people, I WANT to figure out process and communicate with stakeholders. I like making decisions and bringing clarity to chaos. As IC’s we’re taught to fear or even scorn the idea of becoming people managers, but turns out I have been naturally seeking people manager opportunities in my technical volunteering outside of work, in my non-technical volunteering outside of work and in my volunteering AT work. Thanks, Kat!
After Kat’s talk I listened to the 5 Laws of Workplace Bliss and The Leadership Panel led by Tracy Lee. Both talks and presentations that further showcase what it means to be a leader in the technology space.
At the end of Day 1, I was slated to speak in the Purple room, one of 6 available rooms. Each room sat around 100-150 people and as someone who missed the tech check on Day 0, I snuck in during the lunch break to plug in and check my slides. The volunteers made everything painless and stress-free. I’m very glad my talk was on the first day because I would have stayed up late one more night to keep polishing my slides. With my talk I wanted to accomplish two main objectives: 1) Share my love for chess and 2) Inspire one more person to believe in their potential.
After my talk I received so many messages from people letting me know that my talk helped or inspired them in some way and it truly made the mad dash of those 2 weeks to cobble together a coherent presentation worth it. And I have to thank Danny again for inviting me to speak. I was not thinking of speaking or putting myself out there but he believed in what I had to offer and I wasn’t about to let down someone I admire! Just goes to show that when we stretch, we grow.
All the lovely feedback that was sent directly to my inbox!!! I was so amazed and thankful:
Conference Day 2: After all my energy left my body I overslept. That is why next time I am booking an extra day for shenanigans.
11am: On Day 2 I made ABSOLUTELY SURE that I arrived on time to watch Jasmine’s talk – Blueprint for Architecting a Scalable Component Library.
It was her first talk and she did a beautiful job. I think she should give this talk again at other conferences to keep preaching the gospel on reusable components.
11:25am-1pm: After Jasmine’s talk, I finally met the fabled Yoon and her yummy cookies! We were joined by the precious Jei. We were looking for a healthier lunch and headed off to get some poke.
1pm: Bring Your Applications to Life with 3D CSS Animations with Sarah Shook
1:30pm: Agentic Fundamentals: How language models and code can communicate with Jacob Orshalick
2-2:30pm: I took a little personal break from running around and chatted with folks.
2:30pm: Leveling Up: Building Retro 2D Games with JavaScript and Phaser with Jeremy Morgan
3-4pm: Another break to chat with folks, relax the brain, and snack.
4pm: I could not miss one of my favorite talks by Mike Chen on using the scientific method to validate ideas:
If I am very very honest (and I like to be), I spent much of day 2 trying to find Quincy Larson. So anytime I was on a break I was probably using my limited height advantage to look for Quincy. Quincy is the founder of freeCodeCamp, a platform and tool that I used early on in my career to explore if software engineering was something I would enjoy doing. Now I know that software engineering is more than moving pixels on a page, but it CAN involve moving pixels on a page.
Along the way I also managed to nab a headshot from the photographer! (Another incredible perk bundled into the $49 price tag). As you can see by my eyebags I was exhausted, but by my smile you can tell I was elated to be at the conference.
5pm: The Closing Keynote — At this point each of these badass men told the crowd why they are petty and how that pettiness has allowed them to build the community and help people achieve their tech adjacent dreams 🙂
After this, we went to a lovely venue where the speakers had a dinner together:
And that’s it! I left pretty soon after because I had a flight out of Austin the next day.
Overall, it was a 9.99999 out of 10 experience. The only sad moment for me was not getting fried chicken for lunch. Both the speakers and attendees were a diverse bunch (which matters to me!), the venue had plenty of sitting, the vendors were friendly and approachable, the swag was awesome even if I did destroy it in the washing machine, and every. single. person. was top notch. Hats off to all the volunteers, speakers, attendees, to the building, and to the paid actor that is the gorgeous sky in Texas. And Buc-ee’s, I love you.
Illustrated by Meli 