# QCon AI Boston 2027

> A two-day conference on production AI for senior software engineers, software architects, Staff+ engineers, ML and MLOps engineers, platform and security engineers, and engineering leaders. Senior practitioners share the alternatives they considered, the trade-offs they accepted, what happened in production, and what they would do differently now. The 2027 program covers agent runtime design, context engineering, evals and observability, MCP and tool access, zero-trust agent security, and inference cost and latency. July 8–9, 2027, at Boston University, George Sherman Union, Boston, MA.

Organized by C4Media, the team behind InfoQ and QCon.

[Pricing](https://boston.qcon.ai/pricing-table/boston2027) · [Website](https://boston.qcon.ai/conference/boston2027)

## Key facts

- **Event:** QCon AI Boston 2027
- **Dates:** July 8–9, 2027 (2 days)
- **Venue:** Boston University, George Sherman Union, 775 Commonwealth Avenue, Boston, MA 02215
- **Audience:** senior software engineers, software architects, Staff+ engineers, ML and MLOps engineers, platform engineers, security engineers, and engineering leaders making decisions on production AI
- **Format:** in person, led by senior practitioners, program chosen by a Program Committee
- **Program status:** in development. Track hosts, speakers, and sessions are added as they are confirmed
- **Organizer:** C4Media, the team behind InfoQ and QCon
- **Current price:** $995 until November 10, 2026. The price rises at each published deadline, to $1,695 from June 16, 2027
- **Contact:** info@boston.qcon.ai
- **Payments:** payments@boston.qcon.ai
- **Website:** [boston.qcon.ai/conference/boston2027](https://boston.qcon.ai/conference/boston2027)

QCon AI Boston is not affiliated with Boston University. Use of Boston University facilities does not imply endorsement or support by Boston University.

## What the 2027 program covers

The 2027 program is being developed around six areas.

| Area | Question | Focus |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Agent runtime design | Who owns state when an agent runs for minutes, hours, or days? | State ownership, recovery, replay paths, durable execution, and approval boundaries for long-running agents |
| Context engineering | How do you keep company context useful without flooding the prompt? | Memory, retrieval, context lifecycles, stale information, permissions, and deciding what belongs in context |
| Evals and observability | What do you need to see before deciding whether a change should ship? | Tracing what the system saw, called, decided, and cost, and turning production behavior into checks that inform release decisions |
| MCP and tool access | How much access should an agent have to internal systems? | Scoped permissions, tool ownership, audit trails, failure handling, and approval boundaries |
| Zero-trust agent security | Where do identity and permissions belong when an agent can take action? | Least privilege, bounded retrieval, sandboxing, approval points, and kill switches |
| Inference cost and latency | Which requests need the most capable model? | Routing, caching, batching, context size, token budgets, latency targets, and the cost of different model choices |

## How the program is built

QCon hand-picks speakers for the first-hand production experience they bring to the engineering questions in the program. Sessions cover what the team considered, what they chose, what changed once the system was running, and what they would approach differently now.

Sponsored sessions are identified separately from the editorial program. There is no formal call for papers. Speakers are usually invited directly, and a submission form is open for unsolicited proposals.

## Past program examples

The 2027 speakers are not yet announced. These sessions from QCon AI Boston 2026 (June 1-2, 2026) show the kind of production detail the program covers.

- **Keeping ChatGPT Fast as AI Development Accelerates** (keynote, OpenAI): performance across client work, networking, authentication, CPU-side orchestration, context assembly, model routing, inference, streaming, and observability. [Session](https://boston.qcon.ai/keynote/boston2026/keeping-chatgpt-fast-ai-development-accelerates)
- **Context Engineering at LinkedIn: How We Built an Organizational Context Layer for AI Agents with MCP** (LinkedIn): an organizational context layer for AI agents, including tool discovery and skills that encode institutional workflows. [Session](https://boston.qcon.ai/presentation/boston2026/context-engineering-linkedin-how-we-built-organizational-context-layer-ai)
- **Building GenAI Platform at DoorDash** (DoorDash): shared infrastructure for routing, observability, fallbacks, batch inference, and multi-step AI workflows. [Session](https://boston.qcon.ai/presentation/boston2026/building-genai-platform-doordash)
- **Building Reusable Evaluation Frameworks for Agentic AI Products** (Elastic): tracing, evaluation datasets, offline evaluations, LLM-as-judge, rules-based checks, and ML metrics for production agents. [Session](https://boston.qcon.ai/presentation/boston2026/building-reusable-evaluation-frameworks-agentic-ai-products)

Full 2026 program: [schedule](https://boston.qcon.ai/schedule/boston2026) and [speakers](https://boston.qcon.ai/speakers/boston2026).

## What each role takes back

| Role | What the program covers for this role |
| --- | --- |
| Software architects | How other teams decide where probabilistic behavior belongs, where deterministic code takes over, and how AI changes system boundaries |
| Staff+ engineers | Approaches to recovery paths, degraded behavior, observability, and fitting agentic systems into the systems teams already run |
| ML and MLOps engineers | How teams handle evals, model routing, context pipelines, inference, and monitoring in production |
| Platform engineers | Approaches to shared model and tool access, eval infrastructure, observability, and cost controls |
| Security engineers | How teams define identity, permissions, data boundaries, tool access, and approval points |
| Engineering leaders | How other organizations handle ownership, shared standards, infrastructure choices, and reliability expectations across teams |

Teams can split across the program and compare what each person heard.

## Who attends

Senior engineering leaders, software architects, and team leads making decisions on production AI.

- 76% are senior developers or higher (architects, leads, and engineering management)
- 46% engineering managers, senior management, and architects
- 30% senior developers and engineers
- 24% developers
- Speaker-to-attendee ratio: 1:11

Past QCon AI attendees have included senior engineers from Amazon, Apple, Google, Meta, Microsoft, Netflix, Uber, JPMorgan, Goldman Sachs, and NASA.

## Pricing

All amounts in USD. The price increases at each published date. Pricing is subject to change without notice.

| Price period | Price |
| --- | --- |
| September 14 - November 10, 2026 (current) | $995 |
| November 11, 2026 - January 12, 2027 | $1,095 |
| January 13 - February 9, 2027 | $1,195 |
| February 10 - March 9, 2027 | $1,295 |
| March 10 - April 13, 2027 | $1,395 |
| April 14 - May 11, 2027 | $1,495 |
| May 12 - June 15, 2027 | $1,595 |
| June 16 - July 9, 2027 (full price) | $1,695 |

Full table: [boston.qcon.ai/pricing-table/boston2027](https://boston.qcon.ai/pricing-table/boston2027)

## Group and alumni discounts

**Until February 9, 2027:** groups of 10 or more receive $100 off each in-person ticket. No other discounts apply during this period.

**From February 10, 2027:**

| Group size | Discount per ticket |
| --- | --- |
| 3-6 attendees | $50 |
| 7-10 attendees | $75 |
| 11-15 attendees | $100 |
| 16+ attendees | $125 |
| QCon alumni | $100 off |

Group registration deadline: June 18, 2027. For team registration, email info@boston.qcon.ai.

## Payment and deadlines

- **Refunds:** registration fees are non-refundable.
- **Transfers:** tickets can be transferred to a colleague free of charge until Monday, July 5, 2027. Email info@boston.qcon.ai.
- **Payment methods:** PayPal and major credit cards. C4Media is based in Canada, so card issuers outside Canada may charge foreign transaction fees.
- **Invoice:** pay later by invoice online until June 11, 2027. The invoice amount reflects the ticket price in effect on the payment due date, 30 days after the order. After June 11, email payments@boston.qcon.ai.
- **Admission:** only participants who have paid in full before the event start date are admitted.
- **Visa letters:** email info@boston.qcon.ai from a work email address. Fees are not refunded if a visa application is refused.

## Recordings and slides

Attendees get access to recordings of most sessions, available 2 weeks after the conference for 12 months. Most slides are published on the schedule page after the conference. Sessions that will not be recorded or will not share slides are marked in the schedule.

## Venue and travel

**Boston University, George Sherman Union**, 775 Commonwealth Avenue, Boston, MA 02215. Near the Charles River and Fenway Park.

- **Airport:** Boston Logan International (BOS), about 8 miles (13 km) from the venue.
- **Taxi:** about $45 from the airport, 20-45 minutes depending on traffic. Uber, Lyft, and Curb also serve Logan.
- **Subway (MBTA "T"):** free Logan shuttle bus to the Blue Line Airport station, Blue Line inbound to Government Center, then Green Line B branch outbound toward Boston College. Boston University Central is a 3-minute walk from the venue.
- **Bus:** Commonwealth Ave & University Rd (route 57) is a 1-minute walk.
- **Parking:** visitor parking is available on the Charles River Campus.
- **Hotels:** book through the QCon AI Boston hotel page, run by BCD M&E, at [hotelmap.com/MQR9G](https://hotelmap.com/MQR9G). No booking fees. Group rates for 9 or more rooms. Accommodation questions: rooms@bcdme.com.
- QCon will never email attendees directly about hotel bookings or expiring room rates. Only venue and hotel information on the official venue page is approved.

Venue details: [boston.qcon.ai/venue](https://boston.qcon.ai/venue)

## FAQ

**What is QCon AI Boston 2027?**
A two-day production AI conference for senior software engineers, architects, Staff+ engineers, ML and MLOps engineers, platform and security engineers, and engineering leaders. It takes place July 8–9, 2027, at Boston University, George Sherman Union in Boston, MA.

**Is it an introductory AI conference?**
No. The program covers engineering decisions around running AI in production: architecture, reliability, security, evaluation, infrastructure, and cost.

**Who is behind QCon AI?**
C4Media, the team behind QCon and InfoQ. More than 1 million people read InfoQ every month, and more than 4,500 attend QCon and InfoQ Dev Summit each year.

**When will speakers be announced?**
The 2027 program is in development. Speakers and sessions are added as they are confirmed. Sign up for updates on the [event page](https://boston.qcon.ai/conference/boston2027).

**How much does it cost?**
$995 until November 10, 2026. The price rises at each published deadline to $1,695 from June 16, 2027.

**Are team discounts available?**
Until February 9, 2027, groups of 10 or more get $100 off each ticket. From February 10, groups of 3 or more get $50 to $125 off per ticket depending on size, and QCon alumni get $100 off. The group registration deadline is June 18, 2027.

**Can I get a refund?**
Registration fees are non-refundable. You can transfer your ticket to a colleague free of charge until July 5, 2027.

**Why attend in person?**
You can ask speakers why they chose one approach over another, hear different solutions to comparable constraints, and continue the technical discussion with engineers from other companies.

**How do I get approval to attend?**
Use the [convince your manager](https://boston.qcon.ai/convince-your-manager) template or AI prompt to build a request around the sessions, production examples, and costs that apply to your work.

## Links

- [Event page](https://boston.qcon.ai/conference/boston2027)
- [Pricing table](https://boston.qcon.ai/pricing-table/boston2027)
- [Venue](https://boston.qcon.ai/venue)
- [FAQ](https://boston.qcon.ai/faq)
- [Convince your manager](https://boston.qcon.ai/convince-your-manager)
- [2026 schedule](https://boston.qcon.ai/schedule/boston2026)
- [2026 speakers](https://boston.qcon.ai/speakers/boston2026)
- [Code of Conduct](https://qconferences.com/code-conduct)
- [Terms](https://boston.qcon.ai/terms-conditions)
- [Privacy notice](https://qconferences.com/privacy-notice)

## Related events

- QCon San Francisco 2026: November 16-18, 2026 (conference), November 19-20 (training), Hyatt Regency San Francisco. [qconsf.com](https://qconsf.com)
- QCon AI New York 2026: December 15-16, 2026, The Westin Jersey City Newport. [newyork.qcon.ai](https://newyork.qcon.ai)
- QCon London 2027: April 13-15, 2027 (conference), April 16 (ICSAET training), The QEII Centre, London. [qconlondon.com](https://qconlondon.com)
- InfoQ online certification cohorts: [certification.qconferences.com](https://certification.qconferences.com)

© 2026 C4Media Inc. · QCon AI Boston · July 8–9, 2027 · Boston University, George Sherman Union