It's Not Rocket Science, It's a Flywheel: Engineering OS Communities with DevEx

It's no secret that building and sustaining thriving open source communities requires moving beyond sporadic contributions and fostering an ecosystem of engaged members. That process is not simple, and requires a lot of time and effort, which is not often something a maintainer has, which more often than not leads to maintainer burnout or project stagnation.

In this talk, Jeremy will connect the principal of a "flywheel" that we see in everyday life with the principles of Developer Experience, and discuss what a "DevEx Flywheel" should look like. He will explore how things like feedback loops, "time to joy", onboarding, and documentation all contribute to an experience that can enhance contributions, which in turn improves project health, value, and more.

This session will explore what the DevEx Flywheel looks like, and provide actionable strategies for:
- Creating seamless onboarding experiences and amazing documentation
- Implementing tooling and automating workflows by reducing friction
- Fostering welcoming communication and effective feedback loops

Stop hoping for community growth; start engineering it through Developer Experience.

What a global pandemic can tell you about better DevOps practices

In early 2020 a global pandemic set in motion events which none of us could predict. With anonymous data collected from 900k+ devs, 50K orgs, and 60m+ builds/mo we found some interesting insights into better DevOps practices. Since then, we've seen even more interesting activities happen, which shed new light on high-performing engineering teams. In this session, we will seek to uncover what this unique dataset can tell us about high-performing engineering teams, and what trends stand out through the aggregated platform usage.

The Human Factor in DevOps: Because Even Robots Need Good Teammates (Almost)

Remember when "DevOps" meant throwing code (and maybe a few passive-aggressive emails, that thankfully weren’t meetings) over the wall? We’d like to think that the last decade and a half has dispelled us of that notion, but has it really? Often when organizations begin their “DevOps Transformation” they focus so much on automation, but the component that is more often than not overlooked is the human element. Human connection.

In this talk, Jeremy will dig into some strategies for building teams that actually work together, and might even come to like each other (though he can’t promise “meetings that are emails” will become a norm). He’ll talk about ways to encourage open communication, resolve conflicts, and create a team culture where everyone feels valued - because even the best automation tools can’t replace a team that actually works together.

Siloed teams are a major roadblock to successful DevOps adoption, and so in this talk Jeremy will dial into some strategies for building collaborative, high-performing teams - that might even end up liking each other. Attendees will walk away with some specific steps they can implement immediately to start improving their team dynamics.

Introduction to Modern Identity

In this introductory talk about modern identity we will discuss the role that identity management plays in modern software development. Modern identity is a lot more than just the login screen and in this talk you'll be able to learn about the different concepts that make up modern identity. You'll have lots of opportunities to ask questions both technical and non-technical.

Optimizing your development pipelines and workflows with CI/CD

Continuous integration automates the building and testing of your software, while Continuous deployment is an extension of this automation and allows for your software to be deployed after every code commit that passes your test suite. But what do those mean? How can my development pipelines and workflows actually be optimized?

Developer Experience is more than just Productivity metrics

With everything changing in tech at a frenetic pace, the emphasis on developer productivity has overshadowed the true essence of developer experience (DevEx). While frameworks like SPACE, getDX, and DORA metrics provide valuable insights, they often miss the mark on capturing developers' real, day-to-day experiences using tools and services, instead focusing strictly on the bottom line for the company. Meanwhile, developers and practitioners are job-hopping more than ever.
This talk will explore the origins and evolution of "developer experience," dissect popular frameworks, and advocate for a more balanced approach that values the practitioner's perspective. At the end we will set a path towards integrating top-down metrics with bottom-up feedback, ensuring an approach to developer experience that fosters innovation and satisfaction.

From DevEx Disaster to Delight: How to Champion a DevEx Revolution in Your Organization

Is your development team struggling with bugs, inefficient tools, and demoralizing processes? Do you often hear your developers expressing their frustration with the deployment process and the codebase? Don't worry, this talk is your ticket to transforming your organization's Developer Experience (DevEx) from a disaster zone to a developer utopia. Join us for a session filled with humor and insights that will equip you with the tools to improve your team's productivity and satisfaction.

We'll delve into the what, why, and how of DevEx, exploring practical strategies that will empower you to make your developers' lives easier and more productive. We'll cover everything from tooling and automation to fostering a culture of collaboration and feedback. By the end of this talk, you'll be equipped with the knowledge and practical tips to become a DevEx champion in your organization, all while avoiding the wrath of your CTO (hopefully).

So get ready for an engaging journey, hold onto your favorite stress ball (you might need it), and prepare to discover how to turn your developer frowns into smiles of satisfaction!

Demystifying "Developer Experience", and why it matters for developers

A key factor in shaping the productivity and innovation of software developers is what has come to be called “Developer Experience.” We'll begin with an introduction to DevEx, exploring its definition and significance in the tech world. We will review the history of software development, highlighting how DevEx has evolved with technology, ooking also at areas in which you might not think about DevEx, like Accessibility, community, and even docs. Then we will discuss successful and problematic DevEx scenarios, offering strategies for improvement, and practical tips for enhancing DevEx, discussing better practices and common pitfalls. This talk is an essential journey through the world of DevEx, ideal for developers, team leaders, and tech enthusiasts keen on optimizing their development environments for better outcomes.

PowerPoint Karaoke

Powerpoint Karaoke is an improv game where participants give a presentation from a slide deck you’ve never seen. The slide deck is a randomly generated grouping of images which the participant will need to present, while the 20 slides autorotate every 15secs.

I could run this as an "end of day" activity with certain hand-picked participants or speakers.

Confessions of an ADHD-fueled technologi…. SQUIRREL!

Come along on this ADHD-fueled journey as Jeremy tells _some_ of his journey in tech, all while trying to stay on topic. He’ll dive into some of his early days “hunting squirrels” while also keeping the local librarians employed. He’ll also touch on his experiences through the early days of the internet (not ARPANET, but the “world wide web”) and how he learned to “cope” with this thing called ADHD, without _really_ coping with it, until he had to. You’ll hopefully laugh, probably cry, and that will just be from having to listen to him try to stay on topic, while also hopefully gaining a better feeling of how it’s ok to ask for help, and to also occasionally experiment with new ideas and being open about your journey through life.

This session really is more about sharing my journey through tech and mental health, and hopefully it will resonate with some people and encourage others to do the same. It is not a traditional technical talk, and fits more in a keynote or life skills or community category.

High-performing engineering teams and the Holy Grail

"High-performing engineering teams" are the Holy Grail for every CTO. But what are they, are they attainable, and if so, how? In this talk we'll look at CI/CD data from over 15mil anonymous workflows, and compare against the last few years on the CircleCI platform, and explore this rare specimen in its native habitat - right there in your organization, and how to activate them using some better DevOps practices. We'll also explore some of the benchmarks for CI/CD success, including the role of a Platform Team for your business!

Demystifying DevOps and CI/CD

While it seems that every week new terms appear to describe DevOps tools, segments, ideas, practices, etc., are they really new? And what is DevOps, anyways? Isn't it dead, and Platform Engineering is the new hotness?
In this talk Jeremy will first break down DevOps, its history, and why it matters, and what Platform Engineering actuall is. Then he’ll dive deeper into Continuous Integration and Continuous Deployment (CI/CD) concepts, and why it can be the key to becoming a high performing team.

Deploy, Release, CI/CD, oh my! Slicing and dicing DevOps word salads

While it seems that every week new terms appear to describe DevOps tools, segments, ideas, practices, etc., are they really new? CI/CD, Progressive Delivery, AIOps, GitOps, TreeOps (not real, but who knows, maybe it will be next week?) - are they all the same, or are they just reimagining last week’s buzz words? In this talk we will break down a few of these terms, what they mean, how they’re used, and why they may matter for you and your teams.

DevOps before there was DevOps, 20yr old style

The year is 1996. A bright, resourceful 20 yr old Network Administrator at an ISP is tasked with a mundane, tedious project. Said 20 yr old feels he has a better way, and takes it upon himself to get creative. What follows is a quick journey down memory lane to a time before DevOps was DevOps, through the eyes of a 43yo looking back on his 20yo self.

Some of the takeaways here would be that:

1- DevOps principles should be used for good
2- Jeremy should not be asked to build a deck
3- We’ve learned a lot since 1996, and yet we’ve forgotten a lot. Let’s get nostalgic.

Demystifying CI/CD

Continuous Integration and Continuous Delivery/Deployment (CI/CD) concepts are increasingly adopted by many technology organizations and teams. CI\CD enables teams to establish processes that increase velocity, collaboration and quality of their codebase. CI/CD enables developer & operations teams to break down unnecessary silos and gain a deeper knowledge of their respective arenas.

In this session the participants will be introduced to the basic fundamentals of Continuous Integration and Continuous Delivery/Deployment. Participants will learn the core principles of CI/CD, leaving with what will be a good understanding of what it takes to CI/CD.

Mentorship, or How to rebuild civilisation from scratch

How really important are mentorship and documentation to the survival of civilization? What would happen if we lost everything and had to start over, say, due to a global pandemic? We talk a lot about mentorship in the tech industry, but what do we really mean? Are we setting people up for success? In this talk, we'll explore my fascination with dystopian TV shows, and seek to answer these questions, and come to some action steps to do our part through mentorship, documentation, and more.

Adventures in Community Building

Communities are unique and each have their own DNA. The challenge (aka adventure) for community managers is digging in and mapping out their community’s DNA. We’ll draw from almost 10 years of experience with one of the largest mobile communities, XDA-Developers, as well as work being done with Auth0, and learn new techniques.

Developer Experience is central to DevOps success

Developer Experience (DevEx) encompasses every aspect of the experience that your developers (both internal and external) have with your product, tooling, systems, etc. While platform engineering aims to reduce developer toil, DevEx goes beyond that. It covers deployment pipelines, Infrastructure as Code (IaC) practices, developer efficiencies, productivity, UI/UX, and APIs. In this presentation, we will focus on some of the principles of DevOps (collaboration, communication, shared responsibility), go into the history of DevEx and how it's changed over the years (remember Vim? CFEngine?), and how a strong DevEx mindset can bring together development and operations teams.

Streamlining Developer Experience: The Power of Standardizing Your Pipelines

In this talk, we delve into the core aspects of CI/CD which can significantly impact Developer Experience: Pipeline Standardization and Interoperability. We'll explore the pivotal role of standardized practices in CI/CD pipelines, fostering consistency and reducing friction in the development lifecycle. We will also look at how well-defined pipeline architecture and standardized configurations, can empower developers with a smoother and more efficient workflow.

We will also discuss the critical importance of interoperability in CI/CD systems. Enabling seamless collaboration across the diverse toolsets and environments that exist today is a core advantage of interoperability. This enhancing flexibility, and allows teams to leverage their preferred tools without compromising the overall development pipeline.

The attendees will walk away with a roadmap to creating a collaborative and efficient development culture which prioritizes Developer Experience through innovative CI/CD practices.

Beyond Tools: Because Even the Best Automation Needs Humans

Remember when "DevOps" meant throwing code (and maybe a few passive-aggressive emails, that thankfully weren’t meetings) over the wall? We’d like to think that the last decade and a half has dispelled us of that notion, but has it really? Often when organizations begin their “DevOps Transformation” they focus so much on automation, but the component that is more often than not overlooked is the human element. Human connection.

In this talk, Jeremy will dig into some strategies for building teams that actually work together, and might even come to like each other (though he can’t promise “meetings that are emails” will become a norm). He’ll talk about ways to encourage open communication, resolve conflicts, and create a team culture where everyone feels valued - because even the best automation tools can’t replace a team that actually works together.

Siloed teams are a major roadblock to successful DevOps adoption, and so in this talk I want to convey some strategies for building collaborative, high-performing teams - that might even end up liking each other.

From Bare Metal to Abstraction: A There and Back Again Tale to the Heart of Cloud-Native Computing

Over the past 30 years we've seen a quick evolution from bare metal servers and infrastructure to a reliance on Cloud Native practices, principles, and services. But have you ever stopped to think about what it was like before you could just type `aws ec2 run-instances --instance-type m2.xlarge` or `gcloud compute instances create` to spin up a new server or service? And how things actually got done when you had to wait 6 months for a server?

In this talk, Jeremy will walk through infrastructure's evolution from his time in the mid-90s as a SysAdmin at an Internet Provider and shadow IT in the 2000s, to the growth of ,today's cloud native world. He'll highlight the enduring importance of core operational principles and explore how lessons from the "dark ages" of IT, particularly regarding automation and standardization, remain vital in today's cloud-native world. You'll gain a crucial historical context of infrastructure evolution, transforming their understanding from "how" to use the cloud to "why" it works the way it does, hopefully making them better engineers, and also have a chuckle or two.

This talk seeks to bridge the gap between seasoned engineers and the cloud-native generation by revealing the "why" behind today's cloud technologies. Attendees will gain a crucial historical context of infrastructure evolution, transforming their understanding from "how" to use the cloud to "why" it works the way it does, hopefully making them better engineers.

OSS Contributor Guidelines... for Robots?

AI (i.e. ML with better compute) is here to stay - there’s no denying that. But AI's capacity to provide genuine contributions is debatable - especially for open source projects. Projects are seeing a flood of AI-generated issues and pull requests, yet they lack the crucial human elements of context, intent, and accountability that open source thrives on. This isn't just a minor annoyance; it poses a direct threat to the sustainability of beloved projects and the maintainers who tirelessly support them.

It's Not Rocket Science, It's a Flywheel: Engineering OS Communities with DevEx

It's no secret that building and sustaining thriving open source communities requires moving beyond sporadic contributions and fostering an ecosystem of engaged members. That process is not simple, and requires a lot of time and effort, which is not often something a maintainer has, which more often than not leads to maintainer burnout or project stagnation.

In this talk, Jeremy will connect the principal of a "flywheel" that we see in everyday life with the principles of Developer Experience, and discuss what a "DevEx Flywheel" should look like. He will explore how things like feedback loops, "time to joy", onboarding, and documentation all contribute to an experience that can enhance contributions, which in turn improves project health, value, and more.

Stop hoping for community growth; start engineering it through Developer Experience.