devopsdays chicago

Day 2 of the First DevOpsDays Chicago

Matty and Trevor record in front of a room on day 2 of the first DevOpsDays Chicago, the second in the Midwest after Minneapolis, and Trevor's first DevOpsDays. Joining them are J. Paul Reed, who is "defecting from The Ship Show" for one episode, Michael Ducy, who is named the show's "special field correspondent" for events the hosts can't attend (Michael's reaction: "I'm the Walter Cronkite of DevOps now"), Jason Hand of VictorOps, and Mark Cornick, an Ignite speaker who has been on a self-described DevOpsDays tour this year.

Mark's summary for anyone who hasn't been: it's highly focused on learning, full of ways to participate, and inexpensive, since Mark hasn't paid more than $100 for a ticket. It's usually two days, with invited talks in the morning and an open space in the afternoon, and the sponsors are "just here to be part of it on the same terms as everyone else."

The Midwest's Turn

Michael says the Midwest tends to lag in technology adoption, going by data from RedMonk, with New York a little faster and San Francisco "so far in the future." Over the last two years, though, DevOps meetups have taken off, with Minneapolis one of the largest in the country, and Michael thinks the Midwest is doing a lot of cool things without getting together to talk about it. Paul says that on the coasts people are building "Airbnb for your cat," while these cities host industries that are the backbone of the country, like Target in Minneapolis and the futures exchange in Chicago. Michael lists the enterprises that turned up this week, including Allstate, Kroger, McDonald's, Kohl's, and Crate and Barrel.

Paul tells of talking to a Crate and Barrel attendee after having ordered wine glasses two weeks earlier. When Paul mentioned the checkout hadn't gone smoothly, the attendee said the feedback was useful, since they'd changed how they handle cookies, and handed over a test credit card number to try again. Jason adds that at both Minneapolis and Chicago, a large majority of the room raised a hand as first-timers.

Converted by Open Spaces

Matty, one of the organizers, admits to having sold Chicago short during planning. Matty proposed a blameless postmortem open space, thinking nobody knew about them, and heard that it "got really advanced really fast": "nope, dummy, we know that." They sold out at over 300 people and turned some away, and day 2 turnout was nearly the same as day 1. At the evening event, at least half a dozen people told Matty they'd thought open spaces sounded dumb and changed their minds.

Jason was skeptical too, and now open spaces are Jason's favorite part. Mark, a self-described introvert, says one of Mark's first open spaces was Tom Duffield on enjoying tech conferences as an introvert, and that "as a result, here I am": an Ignite talk followed, and now a spot on this podcast. Justin, a developer from Chicago at a first DevOpsDays, expected someone talking at the audience and then drinks, and instead found topics too small for a full talk but worth discussing. Matty notes that badges say participant, not attendee, because the conference is meant to be interactive.

The 37th Floor and the Arcade

The venue was on the 37th floor of the Sears Tower, which Justin still calls Sears and Paul calls "the name that shall not be spoken," and Paul says it's the highest DevOpsDays anyone's been to. The hashtag was #DeepDishDevOps, and the evening event was an arcade with Dig Dug, Joust, and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, which Paul says is a lot harder when you're not 10 years old and crowding around the machine.

How Chicago Got a DevOpsDays

Matty says the email to Michael went out in spring of the year before, asking why Chicago didn't have one. Michael says the Chicago meetup was one of the first in the country but "a little flaky at times," a remark an organizer has ribbed Michael about, and that in Minneapolis, at a social mixer with four people standing around, Bridget Kromhout put a hand up and said "I'll organize it." Nobody in Chicago had been passionate enough to take it on. Matty asked Patrick Debois for the names of people who'd shown interest in 2013, held a kickoff meeting and sent a SurveyMonkey survey, and ended up with a group in maroon shirts who mostly didn't know each other. It was, Matty says, very flat.

Matty thanks Minneapolis for its 18-page postmortem document, and says you have to make it your own, though it's nice "when someone else has made a couple mud pies." Early on there's little to do and at the end there's a lot, so around six weeks out Matty asked for a reaffirmation of a loyalty oath they had never actually taken. Shannon, another co-organizer, compares it to planning Shannon's own wedding, and says what stands out is that everyone is a volunteer with no ulterior motive. Aaron says organizing gave more than attending would have. Organizers weren't allowed to give talks, first because of conflict of interest and then because they'd have no time, and they ran an on-call rotation on an email address, an idea borrowed from Minneapolis. Michael adds that Amsterdam went all out with headset walkie-talkies.

Compliance, and DevOps Equals 42

Michael says the talk to look up is the compliance one, since there's "a lot of fear and uncertainty when you talk about moving faster" and the community rarely discusses audits. Paul liked that it defined the auditors' vocabulary, given that operations people speak their own jargon at everyone else: an auditor asks whether you have a control for something, and ops people have no idea what that means.

Steve Pereira, a consultant visiting from Toronto, says Paul's talk "DevOps == 42" was a highlight, because Steve had expected a talk claiming DevOps was the answer and got one about not knowing the right question. Paul says Matty came up with the title, that the schedule link went to no abstract, and that it seemed so appropriate that the abstract stayed empty.

Check-Outs

Michael learned about the twelve-factor app methodology in an open space on hybrid cloud, where most of the developers hadn't heard of it. Paul recommends the #DeepDishDevOps hashtag and the Giordano's pizza served at lunch. Trevor recommends a terminal library that plugs into the Jimmy John's API so you can literally "sudo make me a sandwich," and the local Daisy Cutter beer from Half Acre. Steve mentions rollout.io, which is about pushing hotfixes to a mobile app without waiting on App Store approval. Matty's is DevOps Against Humanity, a Cards Against Humanity-style deck of DevOps jokes started by Bridget Kromhout, played at the after-party where a few people won Raspberry Pis.