The AI-Enhanced Developer

Duration: 35 min - See the slides!

This talk was originally given on October 22, 2025 at the Innotech 2025 conference in Oklahoma City, at the Oklahoma City Convention Center.

Abstract

While AI has quickly become one of the most talked-about tools in software development, its real value emerges not from abstract theories or flashy demos, but from daily use in actual projects. This talk explores how integrating tools like ChatGPT, Claude, and Cursor can reshape your development process without replacing the parts that make coding enjoyable and creative. Drawing from over 15 years of hands-on experience, I’ll share how to determine which parts of your workflow to delegate to AI and which to keep under your direct control, as well as how to build prompts and outputs that fit naturally into your existing stack—whether that’s code, diagrams, or data models.

You’ll see concrete, practical lessons for making AI an asset rather than a distraction: how serializing your outputs can bridge the gap between chat tools and your IDE, why version control becomes even more essential in an AI-assisted workflow, and how simply asking AI to ask you questions can dramatically improve collaboration. Whether you’re a developer looking to sharpen your workflow or a non-developer hoping to better understand how AI empowers technical teams, this session offers grounded insights you can apply immediately—no hype, no jargon, just lessons learned from real projects and real code.