Pittsburgh TechFest 2026

Over my long career, I've made it a point to collect short phrases that I call: Tim's Rules.   These rules are designed to convey an idea with enough "room" for individuals to assimilate the message into their own operational framework.  The genesis of this idea struck me as I was listening to Kenny Rogers sing "The Gambler."  The lyric, "you have to know when to hold 'em and know when to fold 'em" became the first rule which sought to convey the idea that no two situations are the same and solutions need to be flexible and adaptive.  Many rules followed.  


This session will use these rules as a starting point to discuss strategies for a successful career in Tech (and more imporantly, life). 

I have long held a firm belief in the power of long-term code ownership and deep knowledge.  A recent nearly-catastrophic security bug initially underlined my belief in ownership and the risk of code tourists.  But a bit of reflection forced me to consider whether universal tourism might be the wave of the future.  If so, what will that mean for how we build? Growing up in a tourist town, and subsequently traveling the world for work and pleasure, I've seen tourism from both sides. I'm going to squeeze this analogy until it begs for mercy. 

For years, enterprise software tried to replace spreadsheets with dashboards, BI platforms, and purpose-built applications. But spreadsheets never really went away. They remained the place where people modeled scenarios, explored data, built forecasts, and made decisions.


AI agents are changing that relationship. Instead of replacing the spreadsheet, AI can now automate the tedious work that made spreadsheets difficult to build and maintain: writing formulas, creating PivotTables, cleaning data, explaining calculations, and assembling complex workbooks.


In this session, we’ll look at why spreadsheets are becoming an increasingly natural interface for AI-powered enterprise applications, how AI changes the role of traditional BI, and what this shift means for developers building the next generation of data-driven software.