When: Thursday, October 1, 2026 at 8:30am
Where: Scotts Valley, CA
Space is limited to approximately 30 attendees, so register soon to secure your seat.
Build smarter. Ship faster.
Put AI agents to work across the software development lifecycle.
Join SPK & Associates and GitLab for a hands-on workshop exploring how AI can support real software development workflows. You’ll work through practical GitLab Duo and Duo Agent Platform use cases across planning, code review, pipeline troubleshooting, and security remediation. The session will also cover how to introduce AI responsibly with appropriate human oversight and governance. This workshop is designed for development, DevOps, platform engineering, security, and engineering leaders who want to move beyond AI hype and understand how these capabilities can be applied in day-to-day software delivery.
Space is limited to approximately 30 attendees, so register soon to secure your seat.
Cost: Free
Format: In-person, hands-on workshop
Thursday, October 1, 2026
8:30am – 2:30pm PT
SPK and Associates
5011 Scotts Valley Drive
Scotts Valley, CA 95066
Why Attend?
AI agents are rapidly changing the way software is planned, built, tested, secured, and delivered. But the real question for development teams is no longer simply, “What can AI do?” The question is how can we put AI to work inside the development lifecycle in a practical, secure, and measurable way?
A practical, hands-on workshop showing how GitLab Duo and the Duo Agent Platform can support real software development work—from planning and code review to pipeline troubleshooting and security remediation. The session will focus on guided workflows, practical examples, and meaningful discussion rather than a traditional feature tour.
Attendees will leave with:
- Firsthand experience using GitLab AI capabilities in realistic software delivery scenarios.
- A clearer understanding of where AI can provide value in their own workflows.
- A prioritized list of potential use cases to explore.
- Initial criteria for measuring the success of an AI evaluation or adoption effort.
Who Should Attend?
This workshop is designed primarily for software development and engineering professionals in the San Francisco Bay Area, including:
- Software Developers
- Software Engineers
- DevOps Engineers
- Platform Engineers
- Engineering Managers
- Application Security Engineers
- DevSecOps Professionals
- Technical Architects
- Development and Engineering Leaders
Whether your organization already uses GitLab or you are evaluating how AI could improve your software development lifecycle, this workshop will provide a practical look at what agentic development can mean for your team.
8:30 - 9:00am - Welcome and Networking
Meet fellow developers, engineering leaders, and GitLab experts from across Silicon Valley.
9:00 - 9:10am - Welcome: The AI-Enabled Software Development Lifecycle
Carlos Almeida, VP of Software Engineering for SPK and Associates will open the workshop with a look at how AI is changing software development and why organizations should be thinking beyond individual AI coding assistants toward AI-enabled development workflows.
9:20 - 9:40am - The Workshop Overview and Logistics
Matt (Matty G) Genelin, GitLab Senior Ecosystem Solutions Architect, will share the general structure of the workshop ensuring all attendees have access to GitLab and can participate in the exercises.
9:40 - 11:30am - The GitLab AI Overview & Guided Hands-On Exercises
GitLab AI overview
- Provide a concise overview of GitLab Duo and the Duo Agent Platform.
- Show how AI can support work across planning, coding, review, delivery, and security.
- Explain the role of human oversight and governance in AI-assisted development.
Guided hands-on exercises
- Explore agentic chat: Ask questions and act on project context, including issues, merge requests, and pipelines.
- Plan with the Planner agent: Turn an idea into a structured plan and identify stale backlog work.
- Analyze with the Security agent: Review vulnerabilities, dismiss false positives, and receive remediation guidance.
- Automate with agentic flows: Run issue-to-merge-request and code-review workflows to reduce manual handoffs.
- Map use cases to value: Identify the use cases most relevant to the organization and define measurable success criteria.
Practical workflow discussion
- Discuss where AI-assisted workflows can reduce delivery friction.
- Explore how teams can introduce AI while maintaining appropriate review and control.
- Consider how AI fits with existing development, delivery, security, and collaboration processes.
11:30 - 12:30pm - Lunch
SPK and Associates will provide a catered lunch.
12:30 - 2:00pm - Optional Supporting Topics and Closing Discussion
Optional supporting topics
Depending on attendee interests, the workshop may also include selected examples of:
- Build and deliver: Creating and improving an end-to-end GitLab CI/CD pipeline.
- Secure and comply: Applying security scanning, policies, compliance frameworks, and audit-ready evidence within the delivery workflow.
- Onboard and consolidate: Connecting AI adoption to broader platform standardization and toolchain improvement.
Closing discussion
- Review the most valuable use cases identified during the session.
- Discuss potential next steps for continued evaluation or adoption.
- Share practical resources for applying the concepts after the workshop.
Matt (Matty G) Genelin
Senior Ecosystem Solutions Architect @ GitLab
Matt Genelin is a Senior Solutions Architect on GitLab’s Ecosystem team, where he supports technical, alliance, and channel partnerships and helps organizations apply GitLab across modern software development and DevSecOps environments. He brings more than 19 years of software engineering experience, ranging from startups to Fortune 10 companies, with deep expertise in Git, CI/CD, security scanning, GitLab Flow, cloud technologies, and implementation services. Matt also holds numerous GitLab certifications spanning CI/CD, security, implementation, migration, professional services, and project management, giving him a strong combination of hands-on technical experience and customer-facing solution architecture expertise.
Carlos Almeida
Vice President, Software Engineering, SPK and Associates
Carlos Almeida is Vice President of Engineering at SPK and Associates, bringing more than 25 years of engineering operations and leadership experience to his role. He focuses on combining software engineering best practices with operational continuous improvement and is responsible for helping shape the technical and business strategy behind SPK’s customer SDLC engagements and SaaS offerings. Carlos has deep expertise across software development, DevOps, ALM, engineering systems integration, regulated environments, and AI strategy, with a career that also includes senior engineering leadership roles at Cadence Design Systems. More recently, he has expanded his work around enterprise AI and agentic development, including certifications in the Claude API, Claude Code, agent skills, and Model Context Protocol (MCP).
About SPK and Associates
SPK and Associates is an engineering and technology services company that helps organizations accelerate product development by improving the tools, platforms, infrastructure, and processes used by engineering teams.
For more than 23 years, SPK has worked with product development organizations to modernize engineering environments spanning DevOps, ALM, PLM, cloud infrastructure, software development, AI, data, and engineering applications.
SPK works closely with technology leaders including GitLab, Atlassian, PTC, Microsoft Azure, AWS, and other engineering-platform providers to help customers implement, integrate, optimize, and manage the technology environments that support modern product development.
SPK’s services include:
- GitLab consulting and implementation
- DevOps and DevSecOps transformation
- CI/CD modernization
- Engineering platform managed services
- ALM and requirements management
- Cloud infrastructure for engineering
- Engineering systems integration
- AI strategy and implementation
- AI Launchpad services
- Application Managed Services
Our goal is simple: help engineering organizations remove friction, improve productivity, and get better products to market faster. Learn more about SPK and Associates here.
