Dave McAllister
NGINX, Sr. Open Source Technologist
Redwood City, California, United States
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Currently providing technical OSS insights for NGINX, Dave talks about the advantages of open technologies in solving software challenges. Dave has been a champion for open systems and open source from the early days of Linux to today's world of clouds and containers. Named one of the top ten pioneers in open source by Computer Business Review, having been involved before the phrase "open source" was coined, Dave often speaks on topics associated with emerging software, data and observability and how open source innovations power today's world.
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The Subtle Science of Misleading with Statistics
"Lies, damned lies and statistics." While true, only statistics allow you to lie to yourself.
Let's explore how statistics can sometimes trick us into believing something untrue. This isn't always done intentionally; we mislead ourselves without realizing it. We'll look at how focusing solely on recent events, choosing specific data to look at, and making assumptions about the size of a group can lead us to the wrong conclusions. We'll show examples of how graphs and numbers can be used in misleading ways. The presentation aims to teach you to look at statistics more critically, understand their limits, and avoid fooling yourself with numbers.
The Art of Disrupting Team Unity: A Guide for Tech Communities
Let’s explore the most effective ways to systematically dismantle team unity in tech (or other) teams. Team unity is crucial to delivering superior results. However, teams are easily disrupted. From instituting daily three-hour standups, micromanaging every project, or setting impossible deadlines to induce panic, teams are fragile and require attention. Individual members can join the fun, from hoarding and hiding essential information to failing to give credit when it is due.
From project to product to community, the lack of a viable team will block your achievements.
By understanding these behaviors, attendees will learn how to recognize and laugh at them and how to avoid them, thus fostering a healthier, more collaborative, and productive team environment. This talk promises to deliver humor-filled examples, followed by practical advice for building a culture of trust and mutual respect.
Come find out the successful tricks needed to disrupt your team.
How To Stabilize Open Source Inflection Points
Open source projects frequently encounter inflection points, from initial releases to pivotal governance decisions.
These junctures can alter a project's course and its technical focus.
A recurring challenge is balancing community-driven innovation with the stability enterprises seek. While innovation propels a project's evolution, stability is paramount for its broad-scale adoption and trustworthiness.
In this session, we will explore these vital inflection points, underscoring the need for equilibrium between innovation and stability, and provide strategies for effective project navigation.
15 Essential NGINX Metrics to Monitor
NGINX is a wildly popular webserver and reverse proxy. But NGINX, for all of its great features, can get into trouble if left alone too long.
Let's take a look at some of the basic metrics to monitor within NGINX and what they can indicate. A layered approach to monitoring, starting from the application layer and moving down through process, server, hosting provider, external services, and user activity. By monitoring these metrics, you’ll get coverage for both active and incipient problems with NGINX.
We will also dig into how OpenTelemetry tracing using the OTel module for NGINX can aid your understanding of NGINX behavior.
Know your data: The Stats behind the Alerts
Quick, what's the difference between the mean, the mode and the median? Do you need a Gaussian or a normal distribution And does your choice impact the alerts and observations you get from your observability tools?
Come get refreshed on the impact some basic choices in statistical behavior can have on what gets triggered. Learn why a median might be the choice for historical anomaly or sudden change. Jump into Gaussian distributions, data alignment challenges and the trouble with sampling. Walk out with a deeper understanding of your metrics and what they might be telling you.
The Murphy's Laws of Observability
We’re all familiar with Murphy’s Law. “Anything that can go wrong, will go wrong.” And over time, Murphy’s Law has been extended, abstracted and applied to numerous disciplines.
Within Observability, the extension of data and monitoring focused on deep insights in our complex apps and environments, Murphy’s Law also reigns supreme. But what laws apply and how do we mitigate impact of points like:
- Anything that can go wrong, will go wrong, at the worst possible time.
- Computers always side with the hidden flaw
- You can never run out of things that can go wrong
- Availability is a function of time
We’ll look into examples of the laws in practice and highlight practices that might just give you the one-up on Murphy.
The What's and Why's of Distributed Tracing
Tracing can be very powerful. It gives the ability to connect the customer experience to the backend services several hops away. This comes down to what information is in your traces. There isn't one standard set of tags to add for EVERY application. It comes down to how traces are used and what matters to your organization. During this session we will discuss the need for tracing, dive into the why (and what) you would want to trace via distributed tracing, and delve into the OpenTelemetry specs and architecture on how we can tailor (or tag) our traces. You’ll leave with an understanding of the semantic context in OpenTelemetry and how it might help you understand your applications.
90DaysOfDevOps - 2024 Community EditionSessionize Event
Open Source Experience 2023Sessionize Event
2023 All Day DevOpsSessionize Event
Mautic Conference Global 2023Sessionize Event
WTF is SRE? A Conference by SREs for SREs 2023Sessionize Event
Nashville DevOpsDays 2023Sessionize Event
CodeStock 2020Sessionize Event
DeveloperWeek 2020Sessionize Event
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