Devops Days Nashville 2023 Recap

Richard Lewis
Conference Speakers
2023 DevOps Conference Speakers

I recently attended the 2023 DevOps Days Nashville conference in Tennessee, and it was an incredible experience. As with all DevOps Days conferences, the themes and speakers were decided by the local organizers, which made for a unique and diverse range of sessions.

On the first day of the conference, I attended some fantastic sessions that provided some great ideas that I can use with my clients. I particularly enjoyed the sessions on “How to launch a lifesaving platform,” “Converting the Automation Resistant,” “Stop Committing Your Secrets - Git Hooks To The Rescue!” and “Volunteering Your Skills with GeekCause.”

The last session was conducted by a local non-profit skills matching program and was incredibly inspiring. It highlighted how developers, operations, and DevOps practitioners can use their skills to help organizations. The speaker shared an example of how volunteers created a cloud-based app that helps locate safe locations for victims of domestic violence. It was a great reminder that we can use our skills to make a positive impact on society.

The evening wrapped up with a speaker’s dinner and socializing, which was great. However, for me, the night continued until 3 AM due to fire alarms going off every 30 minutes starting at 12 AM. It was an interesting fact that Nashville is known as the bachelorette party capital of the world, and while I’m not saying the fire alarm in my hotel was going off because of some bachelorette party, it did make me go “hmmm.”

Richard Presenting
Richard diving into effective alert management

On day two of the conference, I noticed an interesting theme in the afternoon sessions. Four of the eight sessions were conducted by people from Chicago, but nobody mentioned Chicago Pizza or Hot Dogs! Nonetheless, the sessions were fantastic, and I particularly enjoyed “Enabling a Self-Service Public Cloud Culture,” “What to do in the event of credentials being leaked,” and “The DevOps Good Place” which was a session about DevOps war stories.

In terms of key takeaways from the conference, I noticed that most of the sessions were introductory. Usually, this would be a turn-off, but I talked with quite a few attendees, and I think the sessions hit the mark on the educational factor for them. During the breaks, I was asked a lot of “how do you” or “how did they” questions.

Another topic of discussion that I found interesting was the way of Docker and other open-source software. Some attendees were concerned that this could lead to vendor lock-in in the future for users.

Overall, the 2023 DevOps Days Nashville conference was a fantastic experience, and I look forward to attending more DevOps Days conferences in the future.