DevOps

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.”

Live Recording

See the following youtube video for a live demo recording of my talk.

Overview

Welcome to day one of Azure Spring Cleaning 2023!. Azure Static Web Apps have been generally available for about one and a half years now, and I’ve been excited about this service since day one. Professionally, I help customers reduce software delivery complexity, so for me, Static Web Apps are an amazing idea that reduces the time needed to get services up and running.

Earlier this year I joined the Azure Synapse Influencer Program. But I don’t receive payments as an influencer instead I get a wide range of benefits, such as early access to new features and capabilities, access to exclusive training and resources, and opportunities to engage with the Azure Synapse product team and also the occasional free swag like a coffee cup and sticker. I joined the program to build my knowledge around the platform and be able to show its value of it to my clients.

Richard Presenting LMAO Helps During Outages

In 2022, I had a fantastic year of reconnecting with my passions, meeting new individuals, delivering presentations, and gaining knowledge from experienced professionals. To conclude my travels and speaking engagements for the year, I had the privilege of journeying to Florida and delivering a talk at DevOps Days Tampa. Having attended DevOps conferences for many years, I was thrilled to create an engaging presentation that encouraged collaboration and prompted attendees to reflect on critical considerations when preparing for on-call duties.

A few days ago the opportunity to joined a Blacks United In Leading Tech speakers panel event to discuss “The truth about Black Consultants”. This was my first event with this group, it was a great conversation we talked about our personal journeys in the industry of consulting while sharing valuable insights and advice around some key areas of interest:

• Transferable skills for various positions in consulting.
• How to set the right expectations and key behaviors.
• How to find a job as a Black Consultant.
• Best advice on how to break into this industry.

Blacks united in leading tech international is a great orginzation.Through community-focused activities, events and programs, BUILT International is part of the united movement, bringing equality in tech. You can find out more about them on their website builtinternational.org.

I had the opportunity to attend another DevOps Days Chicago which is a regional conference focused on software development, IT infrastructure operations, and the intersection between them called DevOps. This was the fourth DevOps days I have attended, third in person, and first as a speaker. Speaking of which it’s good to be able to get back to a conference in person. I’m an extrovert so I love meeting new people and don’t get that really from virtual conferences. You’ll learn a lot, but I missed that one part when I was a Developer Advocate at Coyote are used to attend a lot of conferences and user group meetings, and 2020 kind of put a stop to that in many ways. It was great to see people in person. People I hadn’t seen in a long time like from a company I left 2 years ago or from local user groups and find out what they’re up to now and how their life has changed over the last few years. It was great meeting new and future business partners and hearing from the vendors about what makes their products different than others. Heck even one TACO product vendors gave away 100 bucks cash for looking at and testing their product in a demo environment.