Devoxx UK – 1st time for everything

I’ve never been to Devoxx but had heard good things about it.  This year I did a joint talk with Daniel Bryant @danielbryantuk about moving to a DevOps mode.  Slides are here   , talk is here

The talk itself covers the business drivers behind DevOps (these things don’t happen without a good reason)  and how to get going.  I assume at some point the video will get posted by the Devoxx team.

Some  observations about Devoxx UK. 

A well organised and attended technical conference.  Well done to everyone. A real model of how to run a developer conference.

I learnt a lot.  Now what that actually means is I learnt a lot about the audience and what they are interested in.  The sessions  I attended where a little random in content and presentation but believe me I’ve seen much, much worse at some of the bigger conferences.  As someone in computer tech a good reason to go to  a conference is to see what the attendees make of the sessions. If the conference has it right then what gets presented is a reflection of what the attendees are interested in.  Conferences that don’t attract people go out of business and since Devoxx is still going strong it was time to come and have a look.

I was quite surprised to be honest that the level of understanding of PAAS and similar tech was less than I expected.  I’m used to be talking about bleeding-edge, on-the-front-of-the-curve tech but expected more awareness of DevOps and Cloud tech.  Ah well,  maybe thats why we got invited to speak.

Lessons learnt

1 – Do more at Devoxx

2 – New talk on how to make the argument for DevOps & Cloud  (thanks to the anonymous person who suggested it to me after the talk)

3 – Run more hands-on  talks and hack days around DevOps & Cloud tech.