I recently had the pleasure and privilege of traveling around Europe for a series of conferences and events focused primarily on DevOps to help me understand how DevOps is faring in Europe and to see what customers and others are doing to engage with DevOps principles and strategies.
DevOps is hot in Scandinavia
It was not just Scandinavian attendees either – many international companies with local roots and/or local operations were also there to present as well, including Maersk, Liberty Global, Schneider Electric, VossCon and Atmel Norway.
The speakers I saw were all fantastic, with exceptional ‘real-world’ experience on show. The enthusiasm in the audience was also apparent, with many questions focusing on practical advice for actionable next steps.
Not surprisingly CA Technologies was there with sponsorship and demos (and sweet treats too!). We saw a stream of interest in our solutions for continuous delivery, especially CA Release Automation. I had excellent feedback on my plenary keynote, “DevOps and Cloud: Tips & Techniques to Revolutionize Your SDLC.”
DevOps is hot in Germany
My next stop was Berlin, Germany where I saw a fantastic crew in attendance for DevOps Days Berlin.
The attendees were mainly from small organizations, but a handful of enterprises were there too. It was great to meet my counterparts in vendors like Chef and Puppet, as well as some startup vendors doing very cool things.
Of course CA Technologies is filling gaps in the DevOps toolchain with innovative solutions too – we basically invented Service Virtualization!
DevOps is hot in Belgium
You may be starting to see a theme here…
DevOps Days in Ghent, Belgium was the biggest of the three events, with over 500 attendees. With the backdrop of some sharp criticism of ‘tool vendors’ from the main stage and elsewhere, it was not without trepidation that I presented my Ignite at the plenary session in both Berlin and Ghent on, “Five Minutes for 10 DevOps Tools.”
As it turned out, the DevOps Days people are incredibly inclusive, and my presentation was (mostly) well received. I had many people give me positive feedback on Twitter and in person – several asked for copies of the slides, thanking me for bringing light to the tools and technology discussion as well.
Concepts for keynotes, execution for open spaces
Which brings me to a personal realization – at both DevOpsDays events most of the keynotes focused on cultural aspects of DevOps, with presentations on DevOps and surrealism, graphic arts, cybernetics, communications and organizations. Meanwhile, breakouts covered more practical aspects like DevOps and training, scalability, code management, security, governance, audit, mobile, tools and data.
Perhaps this was just a facet of the five-year anniversary of DevOps (and I know Patrick DeBois and his team were specifically looking for more thought-bending plenary sessions). However, I think this is also somewhat indicative of where DevOps is at right now.
There is a lot of interest in the philosophical concepts amongst the movement, particularly from organizers and other practitioners at its center. However, there is a (much larger) segment of the DevOps population that is still on the entry lane. I even heard one attendee stop someone mid-stride and ask, “Before you go on, what is a working definition of DevOps?”
This highlights a quandary for the DevOps movement – how to stay relevant while still moving the ball forward. We need to be sure not to get so far ahead of the pack that we stop making sense to the newbies and the stragglers.
That said, this is perhaps the greatest strength of the DevOps Days format (and its organizers) – there is room for both in this type of conference, and the Open Space/Unconference approach especially ensures that the conference focuses significant time on topics the attendees really want to hear.
At CoDeCPH and both of the DevOps Days events in Berlin and Ghent, the food was superb – especially the Danish smørrebrød and Belgian chocolates!
Of all the giveaways at the CA Technologies booths – candy, drinks, pens, USB keys, chargers, and cables – the T-shirts were clearly the winner on the day, even earning an outing on the main stage in the closing plenary session!
As an aside, there was so much interest from attendees and sponsors like CA Technologies that the organizers had money left over, which they decided to donate to support education in Ethiopia. As an attendee and a sponsor, it feels good to know our money is going to people in need.
A final thank you
With three exciting and important conferences in less than a week (and a total of seven cities in 10 days), it was a frenetic but fantastic trip. So I want to close by saying thank you the many, many people who helped to make it such an outstanding visit. You are too many to mention, I hope you know who you all are.
Originally posted at http://blogs.ca.com/2015/01/09/impressions-devops-europe/