If you read DevOps’ish, you already know I spoke at ChefConf 2018. I was able to meet 1,400 new friends while I was in Chicago (not really but kinda). I presented my talk, DevOps is Not War to a standing room only audience.
From a speaker’s perspective, I have never felt more prepared for a talk. There were speaker office hours every week for 10 weeks before the event to address any questions we may have had. On top of that, Anna Boynton, was available to all speakers to coach us through some of our not so great points. Anna looked at video from DevOpsDays Atlanta 2018 to help me hone the talk to a very tight time slot while hitting every main point needed.
The event morphed my bias of Chef from a niche tool to a formidable accompaniment of software to ease automation tasks. The messages from the keynotes were like those I’ve delivered to many audiences before, “You’re not an X company, you’re a technology company.” As I mentioned to a few folks there, I had no idea Chef embraced DevOps as tightly as it did. I highly recommend adding ChefConf 2019 to your schedule.