Talk Proposal: What Makes Agents Different?

[usize]

Talk Information

• Draft Title: What Makes Agents Different?
• Length:
  • [ x] Lighting talk/Demo (10 min) (I can happily condense the talk if necessary)
  • [ x] Full Presentation (20 min)
• Links: Short blog post covering the same topic
• Which dates, particularly Tue/Wed/Thu during the 3rd/4th week of a month, are you likely available? I don't have any standing dates that won't work after December 2025. Otherwise, I'm busy the week of December 15th.
• Short Summary of your talk:

In this presentation, I argue that a "software agent" -- especially one built on an LLM -- isn’t just another backend service; it’s fundamentally a different kind of system, defined by runtime identity, stochastic behavior, and context-dependent decision loops. I’ll show why an agent is properly viewed as a gestalt of components (model, tool-set, memory/context, goal) rather than just glue code, and how that distinction matters for deployment, auditing, and reliability.

Speaker Bio

• Name: Morgan Foster
• Mini-bio:

Morgan works in Emerging Technologies for Red Hat, where she focuses on developing areas of active research into usable products. She is a maintainer of the Kagenti project, and participates in the AI Gateway Kubernetes workgroup, extending the Kubernetes Gateway API to better support AI use cases (e.g. Guardrails).

• Picture for slides: https://www.cascadiadaily.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/01-Morgan-Foster-Public-Data-20250404-SO-1536x1025.jpg
• Would you like help with your presentation? Sure
• Social media link(s): github.com/usize usize.github.io/usize https://www.linkedin.com/in/morgan-f-3151a7170/
• Do you agree to the CNCF Code of Conduct?
  • [ x] I agree

[frozenprocess]

Hey @usize,
Thanks for the presentation pitch. Would you be able to do a session in January?
I don’t have exact dates yet, but it will likely be in late January.

[usize]

Hi @frozenprocess Absolutely! I'll likely be gone through the first half of January for travel so late would be ideal.

I appreciate you considering the talk, I'll be excited to meet everyone in the community as a newcomer to the area. :]

[frozenprocess]

@usize We have an event scheduled for February 23rd. Would that date work for you?

[usize]

@frozenprocess Yes! That should work just fine. Thank you.

[frozenprocess]

Amazing, you are listed https://community.cncf.io/events/details/cncf-cloud-native-vancouver-presents-2026-februray-cloud-native-vancouver/