Host Intro (Gene Kim and Topo Pal)

Now our first talk today is about one of the leanest companies that we've ever seen so far. So true, and you and I have seen the whole thing very closely, right? Yes.

Now, anything about that company?

Oh, yeah. You could fit the entire company in a family minivan. No joke.

Right, would fit the whole company in this one minivan. Yeah, so when they travel, they just fly eight people. Okay, only eight people, right? They pull off some of the biggest operations in the world, probably, I think.

How do they do that? Oh my gosh, how do you think they do that?

I mean, they have a small team. Oh, yeah, it is a small team, but it's amazing.

Topo, listen, if I were to tell you this person that is going to be speaking, right, is so famous that it would just blow your mind, you would say, "Oh, we know exactly who that is." This is somebody that is directly from this conference, the CEO of IT Revolution, Margueritte Kim. Please, please welcome Margueritte to the stage, first lightning talk.

Margueritte Kim

Hi everybody. To be clear, I would only do this for those two guys because they are princes. Not like Purple Rain princes, but just, you know, really good people.

But thank you for laughing. I wasn't sure that was going to land. Anyway, I'm Margueritte Kim, and I am here to talk to you about behind the scenes of DevOps Enterprise Summit: how the lanyards get made.

And what this ultimately translates to is leadership from an unusual point of view, and how I think about the attendee experience and team morale in the context of planning DevOps Enterprise Summits, or as I like to call it, how to not plan a sucky conference.

So the first thing we think about as a team is we curate an outstanding attendee experience. And there are a thousand different things we think about as we're starting to prep for DevOps Enterprise. And, you know, there are things that go into it, like location and the feel of the space and the food, and of course the programming, which I have to say, I'm not really sure about now considering that I'm on the stage. So Gene, you might want to think about your committee. I will look good doing it, though.

But today I am here to talk about the first thing we usually discuss as a team because you think it's easy, but it's not, which is the swag.

Who here likes free stuff? Raise your hands.

Okay, and anybody who didn't clap or raise your hand, you are liars because everybody likes free stuff. And if you don't like it, you have someone at home who does. If you're like me, you have about 18 billion conference bags, and none of them are clear.

And we know now that the world is a place that requires a clear bag when you go to a concert or a sporting event. And so as a team, we said, okay, let's order some samples of clear bags because we don't want any janky ones. So we ordered a sample. That's what we ordered. This is what arrived. Awesome.

That's my actual hand holding that, and, you know, we thought we wanted something you could put a blanket and some sunscreen in. We got something you could put last night's enchiladas in, so not as handy.

So, you know, this is just one of a thousand examples of things that we think about. And my team pulled together some stats for you.

So for this year's conference, we touched 1,000 boxes of COVID tests that were shipped, by the way, individually to me. That was a bit of a surprise. Thank you to Stephen, my accompanist and chief of staff, who dealt with all of those; 1,200 t-shirts in six different sizes; 6,000 individual items that we sorted, prepped, and inserted into your swag bags; and 5,219 Slack messages and DMs just since June just about swag.

And we do all of this in the humble hope that when you walk up to the registration desk, and you greet us, and you look up briefly from your phones and hand us your ID, and we print out your badge and we say, "Welcome to DevOps Enterprise Summit," we hand you this swag bag, you say, "Huh. It's okay, I guess," and you walk away.

And we feel like we have reached Champions League level. Gene says that's really good, or Ultimate Quest.

And, you know, we hope that you don't leave it behind somewhere. We know someone's coming back for those. For sure. I know. Don't you worry. Don't worry, no names. We won't ask for any names when you come to the registration desk for those.

The other thing I do to prepare for DevOps Enterprise Summit is try to sustain the morale of the team. It's been tough, and you would be shocked at how hard it is to try to anticipate the likes, dislikes, and temperature needs of the 1,000 people who come to this conference or more.

And how very disheartening it can be when we get our first true criticism. It feels like a dagger because we've spent so much time overthinking this process. Like today, Tim Limoncelli, "Where is the Harmon hallway?" was, like, what, for 10 minutes? He doesn't know we have failed him. Where's the look? Look where the Harmon hallway is. It's tiny. Who can see that? Stuart Little? We have failed. We were spinning out. That was us today when we saw that message. It was like, "Oh my." After all the hours we spent with that multi-tiered map. So anyway.

So every week my team gathers on Zoom, because we work everywhere, and we talk about what's on our plates, what we need from each other, what we can do for one another, and how we can support each other. And I see when these things start to come in, they start to wear on the team and everyone starts to kind of want to close the clamshell down, literally, figuratively.

I thought, what can I do to pep them up? I'm all the way here in Portland, Oregon. You know, I can't send Postmates to Buenos Aires, where Alex is. So I thought, I'm going to just, I'm going to import stuff, and I'm going to export a little bit of happiness.

And thus was born Cat Corner. Because according to Anne Perry, cats are trending. They have been trending now for some time.

So maybe you'll laugh. Maybe you won't. But I'm going to share with you one of my cat jokes from Cat Corner, and every time I tell them, I spend real time every week, you guys, looking up a smart cat joke. That is not an oxymoron. And I share that with the team. And after I tell the joke, everyone's a little sillier, a little lighter, and they feel better. So that's how I boost morale.

Who here would like to hear one of the Hall of Fame Cat Corner jokes? Who would like to hear a cat? Yes. Yes, okay. You ready?

Where did the cat go when he lost his tail?

A retail establishment.

Okay, thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. I think we might need a palate cleanser after that.

So I will leave you with this. I really want to thank you for indulging me, and so I'll leave you with... Alex, can we have that?

This is true. This is behind-the-scenes real time this morning. If you look at him, he looks like a little yolk inside an egg, right? Okay. Well, but don't crack up. You'll hurt his feelings.