Welcome to SlashNew

Why we're here, who this talk is for, and the one question we keep coming back to.

Hello, SlashNew

Thanks for being here. I'm Michelle Sandford, and I want to talk to you about something that has been on my mind a lot: we are shipping AI faster than we are learning to govern it.

That isn't a doom statement. I'm wildly optimistic about where this is going. But optimism without rigor is just marketing. So this talk is the rigor I wish someone had handed me eighteen months ago.

Who this is for

Engineers and platform teams adopting Copilot, agents, or LLM-backed features.
Tech leads who have to answer "is it safe to ship?" on a Friday afternoon.
Anyone whose name is on the change that goes live on Monday.

The one question

Would I trust this system to make this decision about me, my family, or my customer?

That's it. That's the whole talk. The next 21 chapters are just different ways of getting to a confident yes.