Great Content, Engagement and Ideation Is Within Reach – InApps 2022

CloudBees sponsored this post.

DevOps World by CloudBees is going virtual this year. As we get closer to the conference dates, September 22-24, we conducted this Q&A with CloudBees CEO and co-founder Sacha Labourey to get his thoughts about the conference and his company. Register for free today!

What can attendees expect from this year’s event?

While we can’t all be together under one roof, we’re still really excited about everything we have planned for DevOps World’s first-ever virtual event.

The program is jam-packed with all the great content people have come to expect from DevOps World, along with new additions for this year and interesting ways to engage virtually. We have a group of really interesting keynote speakers who will challenge the audience, and 125 DevOps-focused sessions — from high-level topics all the way across the spectrum to technical skill development. Plus, we’ll have virtual meet-ups where people can exchange ideas. Attendees can get all the benefits of DevOps World, but this year they don’t have to travel. They can access all the content and participate in the conference safely, from their own homes and workplaces, free of charge.

What advice do you have for first-time attendees?

Some of the most fun that people have at DevOps World is engaging with their peers and the experts who are gathered on site. During our in-person events, conversations were popping up everywhere. This year, we won’t be under the same roof, but we’ve come up with plenty of opportunities for interaction.

They can take advantage of chat features — not only for the Q&As with the speakers, but also for random meet-ups with other attendees. We have network lounges for specific groups, like mentors and mentees. We’ll have live video chat features at the expo booths. And if that’s not enough, we’re setting up a “speed dating”-type functionality, where attendees can turn on their cameras and be randomly paired with another attendee for a 30-second chat.

People love to exchange information and best practices around problems they’re trying to solve. It’s really a two-way street. If it’s your first time at DevOps World – or even your ninth or tenth — make sure to engage with others. Come on in, the water’s fine.

CloudBees has been talking lately about Software Delivery Management and Software Delivery Automation. At a high level, what’s this all about?

As organizations are deploying more Software Development Automation, they’re gathering more velocity and pushing more code into production. This is helping them get more done, but it’s also creating its fair share of chaos. Across different organizational functions, people often have no idea what’s happening in the other parts of the organization. Who’s doing what? When are features coming? What user stories are encouraging the development of this capability? What’s the market outlook for the software that’s being developed? There are no insights being generated. The organization doesn’t know what should be improved or whether the new features are safe.

Software Delivery Management — what we’re calling SDM — is key to making sense of all of this chaos. We’re going to be bringing the whole concept of SDM to life at DevOps World, covering important aspects during sessions and making some announcements that will drive home the value of employing a holistic approach to software delivery. If society is going to continue to invest billions in digital transformation, you want to generate ROI. SDM clears the path for true ROI.

How has work been for you during the pandemic? What kinds of best practices have you employed to maximize your own productivity?

To start with, there’s no getting around it: This pandemic has been devastating to society. It has impacted so many lives and caused so much pain. I feel for those around the world who have been affected in terrible ways.

The challenge for all of us is to carry on and make the best of our own personal situations. For me personally, like others in IT, this time has also contained some positives. I’ve been home more, have been traveling less, seeing more of my family. I have two cats. One of them, Tricotine, is our baby. She likes to play, and I’ve always had a great relationship with her. The other one, Nestor — we’ve had our ups and downs. But during the pandemic, he’s become more used to me being around and now he won’t leave me alone.

The theme of this year’s event is “Show Us Your World.” What does that mean to you?

It means we are increasingly mixing our private lives with our professional lives. This can be a negative if your professional work overwhelms your home life, but it also can create new worlds in good ways. What the pandemic has taught us is that you don’t have to close off your life to others. When you’re working from home, there’s going to be noise — kids coming and going, people living real lives around you. We’re communicating over video, and we’re becoming more comfortable allowing people to see what our worlds are really like. You need to act professional, but now there is a lot more flexibility in what people are willing to show. It makes people more relaxed, and more natural. It builds stronger bonds between people.

During the conference, we’re going to be making this a theme. We’ll show you our world. Show us yours. How do you work at home? How are you coping? How are you solving problems? What’s your world like? The focus is going to be less on what people have normally come to expect in conferences — how the host company or the industry freaking rocks — and more about interacting and adapting to the environment we are all dealing with this year! In these times, we thought a better approach would be to talk more about how our worlds are evolving, how we can all adapt to the situation, and to share tricks and be supportive.

To attend DevOps World 2020, register for free today!

Feature image via Pixabay.

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