Signal & Noise 2026: Applied AI Summit
Signal & Noise 2026 brings together 600 builders, researchers, and product leaders working on applied AI. Two tracks over three days — one for engineering, one for product — with hands-on labs in the afternoon and curated networking each evening.
Tickets include all sessions, catered lunches, and the welcome reception on day one.
Schedule
Engineering — Grand Hall
09:00 - 10:00
Opening keynote: What "applied AI" actually means in 2026
A grounded look at the year in AI products — what shipped, what failed, and why.
Maya Chen
10:30 - 11:30
Deploying ML at scale — what actually breaks
Battle stories from five years of running inference at production scale.
Maya Chen, David Okafor
14:00 - 15:00
Retrieval pipelines that don't make you cry
A practical framework for designing RAG systems that survive real traffic.
David Okafor
Product — North Room
10:30 - 11:30
Researching AI features when users don't know what to ask for
Mixed-methods techniques for researching features users can't yet imagine.
Sarah Vasquez
14:00 - 15:00
Designing for uncertainty — interfaces when the model might be wrong
Patterns for communicating confidence, trust, and error in AI-driven UIs.
Aisha Nanda
15:30 - 16:30
Pricing and packaging AI features
What we've learned pricing AI-heavy features in B2B SaaS.
Aisha Nanda
Engineering — Grand Hall
09:30 - 10:30
On-device models: a field report
What we learned shipping a 3B-parameter model to 2 million mobile users.
Maya Chen
11:00 - 12:00
Eval harnesses that actually catch regressions
Building an evaluation pipeline you trust enough to block deploys on.
David Okafor
14:00 - 15:00
Cost engineering for LLM features
A pragmatic playbook for keeping per-request costs under control.
David Okafor
Product — North Room
09:30 - 10:30
Prototyping with prompts before touching code
How our design team de-risks features with prompt-only prototypes.
Aisha Nanda
11:00 - 12:00
Research operations for an AI-first team
Restructuring the research function around rapid-learning loops.
Sarah Vasquez
14:00 - 15:00
Panel: What we got wrong about AI product strategy
A candid panel on ideas that seemed right a year ago and now feel dated.
Aisha Nanda, Sarah Vasquez, Marcus Reinholt
Engineering — Grand Hall
14:00 - 15:00
Closing keynote: The next eighteen months
A forward look at the infrastructure, tooling, and product shifts we expect next.
Maya Chen
Workshops — Labs A+B
09:30 - 12:30
Hands-on: Building a retrieval pipeline from scratch
Three-hour hands-on workshop. Limited to 30 participants.
David Okafor
09:30 - 12:30
Hands-on: Designing AI-assisted workflows
Three-hour design studio. Limited to 30 participants.
Aisha Nanda
Speakers
Maya Chen
Head of AI Research
Memcore Systems
David Okafor
Principal Engineer
Ferrous Cloud
Sarah Vasquez
Senior UX Researcher
Harbor Labs
Aisha Nanda
Product Design Lead
Loop Inc.
Marcus Reinholt
Founder
Plainfield Design Co.
Get Tickets
Starting at $149.00
- Early Bird $599.00
- Regular $599.00
- Student $149.00
- VIP $1,299.00