Reflections on the DevOps Enterprise Summit UK 2016

I just got back to the last rock on the planet, all the way from London and the DevOps Enterprise Summit UK. It was worth all the travel. IT Revolution run a great event.

That is of course Gene Kim's company and it is Gene's show. He creates a great conference product, with vendors' presentations kept on a tight rein, and a machine-gun schedule of half-hour presentations.

I summarised the first San Francisco DOES conference two years ago as "horses with one spangly leg": that is to say that many of the presenters were legacy organisations experimenting with a pocket of DevOps somewhere in their organisation.

The second San Francisco conference last year was quite different, even though it was only a year later. For me the common theme of that second comnference's presentations was that DevOps has "crossed the chasm"
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with many of the horses talking about how they were incubating and disseminating DevOps across the whole organisation.

If I was to sum up this third London conference, I would say that the British are less about PLDBR (peace, love, dope, and brown rice) and more about JFDI (just do it). They talk less about feelings and more about methods. But it is all Enterprise DevOps. Lots of it, from giant government bodies to tiny webpreneuers.

I had a few tense moments discussing certification (which I have blogged about separately) but in general I had a great time and I learnt an awful lot in two days. I got to meet old friends and new, and the special highlight for me was getting to meet Patrick Debois in person which was a real honour.

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(with Christian Tijsmans, taking the selfie)

The other high point was of course getting an advance copy of the DevOps Handbook, which looks excellent on first scan. I will review it as soon as I can, which going on past form could be anytime.

We also got a copy of "The Art of Business Value", by the irrepressible Mark Schwartz, which I am enjoying reading. No conclusions yet, but the first third of the book nails the problems of defining value, in a manner close to the Skeptic's heart.

Aaaaand an electronic copy of The Phoenix Project book! Three great books as giveaways. Top that.

If you missed this event you missed a good one. DOES and the Pink ITSM conference are my two international aspirational events I recommend to anyone who works in the area of IT management practices.

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