Gene Kim

Welcome back to the DevOps Enterprise Summit. Believe it or not, this is our 19th event that we've held. We have put together an amazing three days. I think it's one of the most interesting programming we've ever put together.

So here's what I will do. Over the next 15 minutes, I'm going to talk about the history of the conference and some of our goals. I'll talk about the structural elements of the conference. I'll talk about the community norms and the concept of scenius, and specific programming choices that we've made for this week.

So why are we here? In 2014, we stated that we think it's because DevOps is important. We believe that DevOps creates genuine business value. We believe that DevOps makes our work humane. As John Smart said, the goal is to create better value sooner, safer, and happier. And we believe that DevOps helps liberate everyone's full creative and problem-solving potential.

And maybe just to put some context around that, organizations are put together to do extraordinary things, to do things that are larger than any single individual can do alone. And in the ideal, we want to fully enable people to bring their best work. And as leaders, we want to make their work able to be done easily and well. And this is as opposed to those organizations that we have maybe been exposed to in the past that somehow constrain or extinguish entirely people's creativity and problem-solving capabilities. And this is really the depiction of organizations that we put into The Phoenix Project 10 years ago.

So this is our 19th DevOps Enterprise Summit. We've had nearly 1,200 talks, almost 1,700 speakers, with nearly 600 enterprises represented. We started the DevOps Enterprise Summit in 2014 with the notion of it being a conference for horses, by horses, no unicorns allowed. Unicorns defined as the tech giants: the Facebooks, Amazon, Netflix, Googles, Microsoft, and so forth. Although that has changed, and over the years we've even invited more of those talks, because they are facing the same organizational problems that large, complex organizations do.

One of the things I'm so proud of is that over the years we've had organizations from almost every industry vertical present. In years past, I've shown this just pile of companies. But what I've wanted to do for over five years is actually to show specific industry verticals that these organizations belong to. So about five months ago, I tried using OpenAI's GPT API to see if it could help me with categorization. And it took a lot of time. It took scores of hours, a lot of manual effort. But it was amazing to get a glimpse into which organizations from which industry verticals have been presenting. And that is this.

And I'll tell you, there were actually a bunch of surprises for me. One that wasn't a surprise was how many organizations were from banking and insurance. That's probably not a big surprise. But I will tell you a surprise was how many organizations from manufacturing there were, so evidenced by these companies, some of the best-known brands across those sectors. That was super interesting and surprising to me.

But I'll tell you what the biggest surprise was. The second most represented industry vertical was public administration, from government agencies, from the military services. That was a big surprise, I think. So often when you hang out with government people, they say, "We're so far behind the commercial world." And yet, if you take a look at the organizations that have presented, it tells a very different story. So super, super interesting.

One of the things that I did two years ago is plot presenters by their seniority. And one thing that is evident is that as the years have gone by, the speakers are more senior. I think it's because the work that they're doing matters to people who matter. So we've had more senior speakers present, often not with just their business partners, but also security, compliance, even auditors. And so this is not about saying that we need leaders at all levels, but I think it's just one more indication that the work that's being done in this community, again, matters to people who matter.

For the last nine years, the top obstacle verbalized by this community has been, "How do I get my business leadership on board?" And so we've been very focused as a programming committee, really wanting to get presenters co-presenting with their business partner. And the reason for this is that we can then hear from business leaders what value looks like for them, what is it that this community is doing for them. And hopefully this is something that you can then use with your business partners and start a conversation of, "Hey, wouldn't it be great to replicate these amazing outcomes being shared by these presenters?" And they are being told by people they would listen to, not just technology leaders, but business leaders.

So that's some of the goals of the conference. Let's talk about the structure of the conference. So this is a conference that the talks are almost all dominated by experience reports. And so they typically follow this format: here is the organization that I represent, and here's the industry we compete in. Here is my role and where I fit in the organization. Here is a business problem that we set out to solve. Here's where we started and why. Here's what we did, including tools and techniques. Here's the outcome that resulted. And here are the challenges that still remain.

And I love this because this follows very much the scientific method, where we state a hypothesis of what we're trying to do, we perform an experiment, and then we have an opportunity to prove or disprove it, and then repeat. And I think for people listening to those presentations, we can make our own judgment about whether this is a path that we want to follow or not.

Another reason why I think this is important is that as adult learners, as leaders, we don't learn so much from hearing about experts teaching us, telling us what we should do or what they think we should do. Instead, we really want to see how other people have solved the problems and what resulted.

So this year, we have an amazing set of experience reports, again spanning so many interesting industry verticals. And you'll be seeing those over the next three days.

So the other type of talk that you'll hear at DevOps Enterprise is subject matter expert talks. So these are people who are the best in specific fields that are important for us to get from here to there. So they're here to teach us important things that we find useful.

And so over the years, we've had so many amazing people present to teach us about whether it's developer productivity, about workplace engagement, whether it's about safety culture, SRE, and so forth. One of the things that's a fond memory I have is a panel that I did in 2019 with the Big Four auditors, because one of the things that we heard most was that we'd love to do things in a more DevOps-y-like way, but our auditors won't let us. And it was such an amazing opportunity to get representatives from each one of the audit firms to describe how it's not just possible to do DevOps in a secure and compliant way, but it's something that they view as important because they want their clients to still be around in 10 years. And so, just to be clear, this is not people on the consulting side. This was on the audit and assurance side.

So we have a phenomenal group of expert talks over the next three days.

And we have one other track of talks that we started off in Amsterdam, which was so outrageously fun. So we have hours of programming dedicated to generative AI and LLMs. So I suspect you, like many of your peers, are trying to come to grips with what these technologies can do for us and what it can mean for our profession. And we have a bunch of talks and mini lectures about generative AI, LLMs, and a whole bunch of experience reports about people's early efforts to bring AI-type capabilities to market. So I'm super excited about that.

All right, so I'm going to just touch on the last thing, which is about the notion of scenius. So I mentioned that we held our first conference in 2014. This is one year after The Phoenix Project came out, and all the talks were experience reports. And I think the thing that I remember most is that there was a sense that something genuinely momentous was happening, that there was a universality felt around the problems that technology leaders are facing. And so there was a feeling that something exciting was happening, momentous.

But the other big surprise for me was that this is clearly a community that loves helping each other. So this reminded me of the work of Brian Eno and his concept of scenius. Brian Eno is a musician, a record producer, a visual artist. He helped define and reinvent the sounds of U2, Devo, Talking Heads, and so many more. And his concept of scenius is this. He said despite heroic mythology, lone geniuses do not drive most scientific, cultural, business, or policy advances. Instead, breakthroughs typically emerge from a scene. This is an exceptionally productive community of practice that develops novel epistemic norms. Epistemic meaning ways of thinking. Major innovation may indeed take a genius, but genius is created in part by a scenius.

Scenius stands for the intelligence and the intuition of a cultural scene. It is a communal form of the concept of genius, and individuals immersed in a scenius will blossom, produce their best work. When buoyed by scenius, you act like a genius. Your like-minded peers and the entire environment inspire you.

And so there are three features of really great sceniuses. One is mutual appreciation. Risky moves are applauded by the group, subtlety appreciated, and friendly competition goads the shy. Scenius can be thought of as the best of peer pressure. And there are so many examples of this: the spread of whether it's BMW, Adidas, Target, all goading each other to do better, to achieve more audacious goals.

The second scenius feature is rapid exchange of tools and techniques. As soon as something is invented, it is flaunted and then shared. Ideas flow quickly because they're flowing inside a common language and sensibility. And so when you think about concepts like the DevOps Dojo, the State of DevOps research and DORA metrics, it is amazing to see how quickly these types of tools and techniques spread within this community.

And then lastly, network effects of success. When a record is broken, a hit happens, or a breakthrough erupts, success is claimed by the entire scene. This empowers the scene to future success. And again, something that I feel is absolutely present as you look at the talks over the last 10 years.

So I think the common journey that we're on is that we believe that we're trying to solve this problem, that the technology function is so misunderstood by many business leaders, often over-delegated to the technology leaders. Instead, we know that amazing business outcomes are created when technology is fully integrated into all aspects of strategy and operations.

So my hope is over the next three days, you're going to hear amazing, inspiring stories that inspire you, that you're going to learn a ton, you're going to hang out with amazing people. And that's what we have designed for you over the next three days.

So with that, I'm going to turn it over to Jeff, who's going to give you the instruction manual for the conference. Jeff Gallimore.

Jeff Gallimore

It is so, so wonderful to be with you all here at the DevOps Enterprise Summit.

By show of applause, how many people are here at the summit for the first time?

Yeah, that is outstanding. Well, welcome. And if you didn't clap, I'm assuming that you're making a return visit to the summit, and that's also outstanding.

So whether this is your first time at the summit or your 15th time at the summit, we have an amazing three days in store for you. Gene already hit a lot of the highlights, and I'm excited to share even more about how to get the most out of your summit experience.

Now, something that is special and unique about the summit: other conferences have that velvet rope between the attendees and the speakers on stage. We're going to get rid of that, and we're going to create a lot of opportunities for you to interact with the summit speakers. And we're also going to create a lot of opportunities for you to have those serendipitous moments that we all know and love and are such an important part of the summit experience.

Now we're all back together in person, and we all can enjoy the things that being back in person affords. But we've also learned a lot from running virtual conferences over the last three years. And so we're taking a lot of those learnings, and we're integrating them into the in-person summit experiences to give us the best of both worlds, the best of being in person and the best of being virtual.

Now, one of the tools that we all use, especially these days even more so, is Slack. So we have Slack. You definitely want to get onboarded into Slack because there's going to be a lot of information that's going to be flowing through the channels in Slack to help you get all of the information that you need and the places that you need to go.

We also have a bunch of Slack channels. These are the ones that are most important to pay attention to. And if you take away nothing else from this slide, really pay attention to Summit Info. That is going to have all of the announcements and the information and the late-breaking news that we're going to have to share with you so that you can get to where you need to go and the time that you need to go.

We'd also appreciate if you update your Slack profile: your name, your organization, a picture, title, pronouns, whatever it is that you want to share with this community to help us get to know you just a little bit better. It's going to add to your summit experience, and it's also going to add to the experience of the other attendees.

Now, I talked about engaging with the speakers. We're going to have a lot of opportunities to do that. The first one is interacting in Slack. So we have discussion channels for each of the rooms, for all of the talks at the summit. There's five of them. So whatever room you are in, that's the channel that you should be using. Post a question to the summit speaker, tag them in Slack. And if you are in that room and you have some thoughts to share related to what somebody else has posted, please do that.

Now, give the speakers a little bit of grace. They'll probably not be responding to Slack while they're talking, but I'm sure they'll get back to you afterwards.

These are the Slack channels that I just mentioned. Again, we have five Slack channels named after each of the rooms where the talks will be happening.

Now, if you do choose to use Slack, we'd like you to mute your sounds. Now, the clickety-clickety and the Slack notifications might be good for you, probably not so great for the other attendees that are around you. So please mute your sounds. And then also, alert fatigue is a real thing. Don't use that here. Don't use that channel.

Now, I mentioned networking time as one of these opportunities that we have to have those serendipitous moments and interactions that we all know and love. We have some opportunities to do that.

The first of those is going to be learning sprints. These are opportunities to interact with many of the IT Revolution authors as they share a lot of the insights that they've included in their books. The TL;DR on this is you're going to learn a lot of new stuff fast. So don't miss your opportunity to learn from the IT Revolution authors. We have these today, and we have them tomorrow. There won't be any learning sprints on Thursday.

Now, something we all have all three days is Birds of a Feather. These will be happening in the Harmon hallway, which is on level four, just to the right of the Belmont Ballroom, which is the expo hall. So there's a hallway and a corridor just to the right of that. That's where the Birds of a Feather sessions will be happening.

We have three standing topics each of the three days: leadership culture; dynamic learning organizations; architecture, engineering, operations; and one of our favorite topics these days, AI and productivity. That's the ChatGPT session if you want to go to that. We're also going to have special Birds of a Feather sessions tomorrow and Thursday, and I'll announce what those are as we get closer to those.

Now, for those of you who have been to other events and participated in things like Open Spaces, you might already be familiar with the Law of Mobility. The Law of Mobility says this: if you find yourself in a place where you're neither learning nor contributing, it's your responsibility to leave and go somewhere you can. So the TL;DR on this one: it is okay to leave and go somewhere else.

Now, the conference schedule is going to be your friend. That is going to help you get all the places that you need to go and the times that you need to go there. We're all about sustainability here at the summit, so all of those conference schedules are online. This is the QR code that will take you directly to the schedule. So if everybody wants to take a picture of that, if you haven't already gotten there, that would be a good thing to do.

We also have a code of conduct. We are all part of the same community, the DevOps Enterprise Summit community, and we're all human beings, and so we should treat each other well. And our code of conduct reflects that. You can read the code of conduct here. It's also posted in Slack, so you can see that.

But let me give you the gist. Listen well when someone else is sharing. Share well when you have something to say. Respect everyone at all times. And speak up if you see something or hear something that is not consistent with the kind of environment we want here at the summit.

So if y'all are on board with that, can I get some sort of visual to say that? A clap, jazz hands, a thumbs-up. Something.

All right, fantastic. It looks like we are unanimous on that one, as always.

All right, some thank-yous that are in order here. We'd like to have a big thank-you to IT Revolution for giving us the opportunity to get back together again at the summit. IT Revolution is a company that is responsible for a lot of the favorite books that we have on our bookshelf: The Phoenix Project, The Unicorn Project, The DevOps Handbook, Accelerate, so many others. Thank you to IT Revolution for giving us the opportunity to get together as a community.

A thank-you to our other sponsors. They are going to be such a big part of our summit experience over the next three days. So a thank-you to them as well.

And a couple more sponsors that we'd like to give some shout-outs to: Tidelift, who will be sponsoring the lightning talks. Those will be happening tomorrow. And EVT, who is sponsoring the Wi-Fi to keep us connected to all the things.

All of our sponsors are going to be in the expo hall. The expo hall is on level four. Go in there. Have some conversations. Talk to them. Learn more about what they do. And while you're there, play this Passport game. Have the conversation, get your passport stamped, and then drop it off at the Sonatype booth by noon on Thursday.

Now, really, really important on this one: make sure you write your name on your completed sponsor passport. You don't want to be the person that wins and didn't write your name on the sponsor passport. It's happened before. Public service announcement.

Thank you again to all of our sponsors. We look forward to having conversations with you over the next three days.

Now, Wi-Fi information. I just mentioned that. Here it is. If you haven't already gotten that, it's also posted in Slack. I see people getting your phones out, which is great.

Take a picture of this. This is a link to a page that has a bunch of useful information about the summit. It's got the schedule. It's got the link to Slack. It's got the Wi-Fi information and any other useful information that we can get over the course of the next three days out to you. So take a picture of this. Keep this link handy.

Final thing. If you need any help or you have any questions, you can post in the Summit Help channel in Slack. That is the best way to get really quick help. You can also email help@itrevolution.com. You can find a member of the really, really super helpful IT Revolution staff. They will have badges with blue ribbons on the bottom of those badges that will say staff. And if all else fails, you can direct message me, Jeff Gallimore, in Slack, and I'll get you to the right spot.

All right, that's it. Have an amazing time. Gene, handing back off to you to announce today's first talk.

Gene Kim

Thank you, Jeff.