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Didier Lalli

10th anniversary of DevOps Days celebrated in Ghent

November 14, 2019

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I recently enjoyed attending DevOps Days in Ghent, one of the prettiest cities in Europe. Ghent was especially beautiful during the two days I was at the event, given the gorgeous weather we experienced. Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) was a Gold Sponsor for this 10th year anniversary celebration of DevOps Days, and Stefan De Schuyter (Belgium presales), Simon Leech, Mario Devargas (PointNext), and I were excited to be able to present the HPE Dev Community to the 500+ attendees who came to Ghent.

To encourage conversations between attendees and the 25+ vendors at the event, the organizers offered a prize for those who went around to each booth to have a form stamped. Our local HPE host, Stefan, immediately hooked people and brought them into our booth by saying “What does HPE have for you? Stamps, stickers, and APIs.” It was a fun way to start the dialog as we gave each visitor a stamp. We also engaged in conversations about HPE Composable Infrastructure and our DevOps transformation services.

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The DevOps Days session format was somewhat unusual. There was a good balance of 15 minute breakout sessions, 5 minute "Ignite" sessions, and so-called OpenSpace sessions where attendees got to choose subjects for an open discussion in which they could both listen and contribute. The Ignite sessions were delivered through automatically advancing slides and most speakers were just incredible in their ability to convey their thoughts and still keep up with the timing. The event used very creative formats to communicate with the audience and it provided me with a lot of good ideas on how I could improve my own presentation skills.

During our time at the event, we were also very lucky to have "the godfather of DevOps", Patrick Debois, visit our booth and shake hands with the gremlin, our mascot. I would say that the show was very successful, given everyone’s smiling faces and the whole engaged atmosphere at the event.

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In the past decade, DevOps Days has grown from a single event to over 80 events that are now being hosted in different locations around the world. Each technical conference features session topics on software development, IT infrastructure operations, and the intersection between them. They are hosted by local volunteers and deliver a combination of curated talks combined with self-organized open space content focused on areas like automation, testing, security, and organizational culture. Make sure you check the DevOps Days website to find a DevOps Days event close to you…I highly recommend them.

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