Jeff Gallimore

Pretty amazing start to the DevOps Enterprise Summit, don't you think?

All right. We're about to head to a break, but I want to share some things to know before you go. Like I just said, we're about to break now, and then the breakout talks will start at 11:20 AM Central Time.

Check out Vendor Dome at 12:20 PM Central Time. A couple of our sponsors are talking about software supply chain attacks and what you can do to prevent them. If that's something you'd like to know more about, head to Vendor Dome.

We have networking time and networking opportunities starting at 2:55 PM Central Time. That's Birds of a Feather and Lean Coffee.

Visit our sponsors in the virtual expo hall and check out the games for fun and prizes.

Be back here for more plenary talks starting at 4:15 PM Central Time.

At the start of the day, I promised to share more information about Gather, the virtual conference space we've created for the summit.

When you enter Gather, you'll have the opportunity to set your character. Please set your name in Gather to match your name in Slack. That'll make it easier for you and others to interact. And then do whatever makes you happy with your choice of character and clothing.

You can use the map to orient yourself to Gather and where you are in it.

There are also private spaces throughout Gather. When you're in a private space, no one outside that private space can see your video or hear you. You can tell where the private spaces are by the shading on the floor around it, and Gather will also tell you when you've entered one.

You can also interact with some of the objects in the space. They'll light up when you get near them, and Gather will tell you to press X to interact with them. These objects may or may not be associated with some of the games. That's for you to find out.

So I hope you're excited about using Gather. We've recreated the hallway track virtually in Gather, and I know that's something many of us appreciate as such a valuable part of the conference experience, especially at the summit.

At the start of the day, I also told you we would have a special Birds of a Feather session each day. To hear more about today's session, watch this from Levi and Elisabeth.

Levi Geinert and Elisabeth Hendrickson

Levi Geinert: Good morning, and welcome. My name is Levi Geinert. I'm with U.S. Bank, and I'm joined by Elisabeth Hendrickson.

And we're excited to share with you a recent publication from IT Revolution, which is the DevOps Enterprise Forum paper titled Winning Together: A Playbook for Aligning Technology and Business.

So we got together with a great team that included Dominica DeGrandis, Ana E. Torres, Jeffrey Fredrick, Elisabeth, and myself. And one of the things we wanted to talk about, and I'm sure you've all heard of it and read articles on the importance of aligning technology and business, but that doesn't mean it's solved, is it?

Elisabeth Hendrickson: Oh, it's so not solved. Even just in our conversation within the team, the same kinds of phrases kept coming up over and over again. They are in all companies across all industries. Things like technology complaining, "The business is full of demands, but they don't even consult with us on what's technically feasible." And the business also asks, "Why does it take so long for you to get things built?" Or, "You're not delivering the things we signed you up for." And the technologists are asking, "Can you just involve us earlier so we can be a part of the strategy?"

Levi Geinert: Right. So this is really the impetus behind the paper. Despite years and years of digital transformation, publications, conferences, workshops, it's still not a solved problem, and we believe that the solution involves learning how to partner effectively between technology and the business. So that's what the paper is about: approaches and techniques for partnering effectively.

And we'd love to chat with you a little bit more about it in this afternoon's Birds of a Feather. Come chat with us.

Jeff Gallimore

Levi and Elisabeth will be hosting this session themselves during the networking time in the Birds of a Feather room in Gather. It will be in the space in the top left corner of that room.

Join them and your fellow attendees to talk about how to align business and technology to win together.

And with that, just remember, be back here for more plenary talks starting at 4:15 PM Central Time.

Okay. That's it. Have fun. Learn lots.