Start at the Beginning; Automating Network Design#

Claudia de Luna (Opening Keynote)

• Why: This sets the thesis the rest of the conference keeps echoing: automation's next bottleneck is upstream of operations, in design. If the PM's teams produce monolithic diagrams and Word documents, this names the problem precisely.
• What: An argument that the fixation on "source of truth" is a symptom of starting midstream; the real anchor is programmatically consumable design data — patterns, data models, structured data — from which diagrams, documentation, configurations, and build guides all derive.
• How: Conceptual keynote, not an implementation: reframe design artifacts as structured data that everything else flows from, and spotlight existing work in that direction. (From abstract only.)
• Where applicable: Universal framing; pairs naturally with the Design-Driven Automation and Abstraction talks below.