Next week we will have about 250 folks gathering for our OSHEAN Member Conference (OMC26). I pause today to reflect on the conference, that hasn’t happened yet, from the perspective of my observations participating in its creation and watching the team do their parts to build what I expect will be a great couple days of learning.
Those of us in Information Technology can empathize with the challenge of picking and choosing what topics to highlight, given the dynamic nature of our field, especially in 2026. This is why we chose “Complexity is a Team Sport” as our theme. BTW, yes, I did use AI to help with the theme selection”. This theme permeates everything we do, including building an OSHEAN Member forum. It speaks to the core of our purpose. The diversity and expertise of people collaborating to make these 2 days special are nothing short of extraordinary. You can address a subject like AI, for instance, as a generic topic. But AI has many, many tentacles, perspectives, opinions and impacts to all facets of our Member and vendor partner community. I have thought all along our OMC26 journey that many of our covered subjects are worthy of, and have, entire conferences by themselves.
One of the things about our profession is that it is viewed by many as existing in the background and “it just needs to work”. That is why I believe we all need visibility to the applications we enable. We decided to have our main stage full audience talks centering around the amazing work of people who are the recipients at the application layer. To that end, we have a keynote Nobel laureate life sciences researcher, a healthcare innovation panel and a fireside chat with a gaming world executive who will highlight their worlds to provide context for the work we do.
Our partner community has been exceptional helping create the event, and they are really looking forward to next week. They are contributing time, money and expertise to provide the level of content that I believe will be second to none. They are an integral part of the OSHEAN ecosystem year-round and I can’t thank them enough, although I am going to try.
Lastly, as I reflect on this process on the Friday before OMC26, I turn the corner from nervous and anxious to grateful. Grateful for having the honor to steer the OSHEAN ship and the privilege to do so with such wonderful people.