The Day My Farm Burned Down

In January 2026, my farm burned. Not metaphorically. Not “startup failed” burned. Actually gone. Buildings, tools, infrastructure, memories… years of work reduced to ash in a matter of hours. This talk isn’t about cloud architectures or the latest framework. It’s about what happens when life completely resets your environment without asking for permission. Because here’s the unexpected part: the same mindset we use in tech, problem solving, iteration, systems thinking, resilience, turns out to be incredibly useful when you’re rebuilding your life from scratch. I’ll share what it’s like to navigate loss at scale, how to deal with the mental load of starting over, and how staying positive isn’t about pretending everything is fine, but about choosing what to build next. Along the way, we’ll look at how technology became both a tool and a lifeline. From rebuilding infrastructure on the farm, to creating content that connected me with a global community, to using automation and systems thinking to regain control in chaos. This is a story about failure you didn’t choose, recovery you have to design, and how the skills we use every day as developers can help us, and others, get back up again. If you’ve ever faced setbacks, big or small, this talk will give you a different way to think about resilience… and maybe a few ideas for how to rebuild stronger than before.