The #ObservabilitySRE Journey So Far

The idea for the Observability & SRE Summit came about, as good ones often do, while we were working on something else.

Back in mid-2024, we were looking into launching a QA event. There'd been a run of high-profile outages where buggy updates had shipped without proper testing, and we thought there might be something in it. But the more we looked, the clearer it became that QA already had a decent conference circuit - and it wasn't what engineers were actually asking for.

Instead, the thing that kept coming up in conversations was Observability. Not just tools and dashboards, but how to build systems you can understand and trust. It didn't have a home of its own, so we decided to give it one. At the same time, Developer Experience was getting flagged as a growing priority, so we launched both events in parallel.

We also made a conscious call to focus on enterprise engineers and developers. Most developer conferences lean heavily towards startups and open-source projects, but we kept hearing from in-house teams at bigger companies that they wanted something built for them - something grounded in the real-world mess of legacy systems, scale, and organisational complexity.

The response told us we were onto something. 173 engineering leaders joined us in London, backed by sponsors like Honeycomb, Sentry, and Datadog. Off the back of that momentum, we expanded the series last year with Platform Engineering. It was a natural next step. As more organisations looked to scale developer productivity, standardise internal tooling, and reduce friction for engineers, platform teams were emerging as a key enabler - building the internal foundations that make everything else work better.

Now, in year three, the series is evolving again. This year, Platform Engineering and Developer Experience are coming together as one co-located summit alongside Observability & SRE, reflecting how closely these functions now overlap in practice. And as AI reshapes engineering work, observability and SRE are becoming more important than ever.

As systems grow more complex and teams introduce AI agents, copilots, and automation into production, the need for clear signals, stronger governance, faster recovery, and better decision-making only grows.

Join us on our journey
See how we're shaping the future of Observability & SRE

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