DevOpsDays Austin just finished up on May 5, and it was an extraordinary conference.
I am so pleased that I was able to attend and participate.
I am always impressed with the group of attendees at this conference and with the level of thoughtful, earnest discussion on complicated topics. The ignite talks are also a special treat, and packed with interesting info.
Here are some of the highlights from my DevOpsDays Austin experience this year.
Keynote Sessions
In the opening keynote, “DevOps Kaizen: Finding and Fixing What is Really Behind Your Problems”
Damon Edwards (@damonedwards), discussed how companies and organizations can master the ability to improve.
Deming’s Plan-Do-Study-Act recipe for improvement is important, but the work must be visible to lead to improvement.
I am really looking forward to seeing Damon in the DevNet Zone at Cisco Live in San Diego.
Damon will be part of this incredible DevOps Panel including Damon Edwards, Mitchell Hashimoto, Adrian Cockcroft and Gene Kim, and he will also give a presentation during the DevOps in Depth special session.
The second keynote, Gums, Germs, and Microservices by John Willis (@botchagalupe), introduced the idea of Data Gravity, and how in the (near) future, data will not be movable, so we need to think about how to center compute, and other resources around where the data lives. Containers and Microservices are a key part of making this transition.
DevOps + Security
The theme of how to incorporate security into DevOps culture and systems was everywhere this year.
There were several excellent talks on this topic, and it was also a theme in many of the Open Spaces discussions.
In the IoT Security Open Spaces discussion, I learned about http://builditsecure.ly/, an organization of researchers and developers who are working on IoT security best practices and guidelines.
I am also really excited about digging into Gauntlt http://gauntlt.org/. Gauntlt makes it easy to incorporate security testing tools into your CI/CD pipeline.
Josh Corman (@joshcorman) discussed how we need to take a supply chain view of software, and be more informed about the security, version and 'patchability' of the packages that we use to create our software.
Configuration Management and Containers
The technical track of sessions offered loads of good information on tools like Chef, Puppet, and Ansible, and also on containers and Docker.
Last year, Docker was a big topic, and Docker was even more prevalent in discussions this year. Last year, I felt like most people were just starting to experiment with Docker and this year, there were more discussions about they are using it in their teams.
The “Smack Down: Containers vs Config Management” session was a fun, good-natured, lively discussion between Matt Ray (Chef - @mattray) and Boyd Hemphill (Stack Engine - @behemphi) about the pros and cons of both technologies.
The audience ended up participating in the debate almost as much as the speakers!
Don’t miss Matt Ray in the DevNet Zone at Cisco Live discussing "Network Infrastructure as Code with Chef and Cisco”.
OpenStack, IPv6, Diversity, and more..
There were so many good Open Spaces discussions that I wanted to be in multiple places at once.
The OpenStack discussion was great, and I was happy to participate.
I heard a great IPv6 session getting started, but was unable to stay. If you were in that group, connect with me on Twitter @mandywhaley because I would love to know what was discussed.
The discussion on how to bring more diversity into the DevOps community was also really thoughtful and encouraging. Proud to be a part of this group.
Fun Stuff, Ice Cream, Mariachis and BBQ
The hospitality, food, and fun stuff was phenomenal. Kudos to the event organizers for really pulling together a great event. The Mariachi band on Cinco de Mayo was my favorite.
(picture credit: Nick Galbreath on Twitter: "finally! #devops and mariachi #devopsdays Austin http://t.co/uACC…)
Thanks for showing off cool Austin local businesses like Amy’s Ice Cream! and congrats on always having such awesome event t-shirts.
A great conference overall.
I definitely recommend coming to this event next year. Austin in the spring is beautiful, and the best thing about this event is really the people. Looking forward to doing it again in 2016.
I will post the link to videos of all the talks when it is available.
Thanks!
Amanda Whaley
@mandywhaley