.NET@Noon - Virtual - Resilience Isn’t a Buzzword

Agenda
This will be a Zoom meeting at Noon

11:50am-12:00pm - Pre-Session Waiting Room
12:00pm-1:00pm - Presentation, JetBrains giveaway

# Resilience Isn’t a Buzzword: Real-World + Research-Backed Tactics for Building Stronger Teams

Most technical teams don’t fail because they lack talent — they fail because they don’t recover well.

While training for a week-long, 500-kilometer running race and conducting doctoral research on team resilience, I’ve reached the same conclusion in both domains: sustained performance is driven by recovery, pacing, and system design — not grit alone. After 25+ years leading technical teams through deadline-driven delivery, shifting scope, and high-pressure product development, I’ve learned that resilience is a buildable capability, not a personality trait.

Resilience isn’t just a personal trait — it’s a critical capability for modern technical teams. Drawing on decades of real-world leadership experience and current research into burnout, cognitive load, and team recovery, this talk explores why even highly skilled teams struggle under sustained pressure — and what actually helps them adapt, recover, and continue delivering value.

This session offers an unfiltered look at real-world team dynamics — from startups to long-established organizations — paired with practical frameworks grounded in research. You’ll see how hiring practices, workload design, prioritization, training, and team culture can be intentionally shaped to reduce burnout, improve retention, and strengthen long-term performance. Rather than treating resilience as a soft skill or personality trait, we’ll examine it as something teams can deliberately design for and improve over time.

To bring these ideas to life, the talk draws parallels from long-distance endurance training, where recovery, pacing, and adaptation matter far more than raw effort. These same principles apply to technical teams navigating constant deadlines, evolving requirements, and sustained delivery pressure.

Attendees will leave with concrete, actionable techniques they can apply immediately — whether they lead teams or contribute as individual developers — to build healthier, more resilient teams that perform better when pressure becomes the norm. This talk is energetic, practical, and grounded in experience, making it ideal for developers, senior engineers, tech leads, and engineering managers who want their teams to thrive over the long haul.

Speaker - Jason Erdahl
Jason Erdahl is a technology leader and doctoral candidate researching technical team resilience. With over 20 years of experience leading software teams ranging from 7 to 77 members, he brings a practical, systems-oriented perspective on how teams perform under sustained pressure.

Jason has served for nearly a decade as an Organizer of the Minnesota Developers Conference, is the current Co-Organizer of the Twin Cities .NET User Group, and previously served on the content selection committee for NDC Minnesota.

A former couch potato who didn’t begin running until his 40s, Jason has since completed more than 60 marathons, Ironmans, and 100-mile ultramarathons. These experiences inform—but do not replace—his research-backed approach to building sustainable, high-performing technical teams.

Platinum Sponsor – QCI

Since 1995, QCI has grown to be one of the largest, Iowa-based, technology consulting firms, one client at a time. There is no secret to our success. We simply hire the best people and support a culture that is obsessed with delivering excellent service to our clients. In QCI, our clients have a partner that is large enough to provide highly skilled consultants across a wide area of expertise. Our dedication to client service has resulted in a long-term relationships through which we understand that placing the interests of our clients first is the key to being a trusted partner.

For more information, visit https://www.qci.com

Platinum Sponsor – Source Allies
Source Allies is a local technical consultancy who values collaboration, craftsmanship, and an ownership mentality. We provide a home to our teammates where we encourage each other to grow not only technically, but as peers & consultants. This is evident in the quality software we deliver to clients.

Learn about our “ownership mentality” at: https://www.sourceallies.com