Sir Hackington Appbuilder III Tells You What Happened at OSCON
August 10, 2018Sir Hackington Appbuilder III here. Yeah, take a look at the picture. I’m the dog with the lanyards. I’m pretty cute, huh? That’s what people tell me. Sure, they also call me a mascot, but I’d like to think I’m the most important member of the HPE Developer Community (HPE DEV).
HPE DEV recently attended the 20th annual Open Source Convention, or OSCON for short. The convention, put on by O’Reilly, was held from July 16-19 in Portland, Oregon. The HPE team enjoyed some cool weather in the Pacific Northwest and the opportunity to meet a bunch of cool developers spreading the word about HPE’s open source efforts and projects. And they got to show me off as well.
OSCON is geared exclusively toward developers. Everybody was in jeans and t-shirts. You know, the kinds of people that look like they’d be eager to take me on a walk. Sadly, that didn’t happen because these are also the kinds of people HPE DEV loves to talk to. Which they did. A lot. But, all in all I was pretty pleased with how many in the developer community were interested in talking with my team and wanted to sign up for the monthly newsletter to stay in touch.
At the event, HPE DEV members Alex Mejias and Jim “Schreck” Schreckengast delivered a presentation on open source for the enterprise, which was extremely well received. They stressed the importance of community development and engagement being critical for adoption, otherwise developers are dropping code over a wall and hoping for the best. And of course, having an open source strategy that harmonizes with the business is vital.
You can check out that presentation here.
Key takeaways
One of the things attendees learned at the event was that while many developers do not necessarily associate HPE with open source, they were eager to hear about HPE’s presence in the open source community. Grommet, an open source tool set developed by HPE, especially piqued people’s interest. Grommet allows enterprise companies to easily design essential and modern web experiences. Alex Mejias, one of Grommet’s core team members and the community’s leading Grommet evangelist, was a hit with his ability to speak to and demonstrate the ease of using the tools.
Another thing I learned--the Dev community loves stickers (about as much as I love bones!) All the presenters loaded up attendees with stickers. See that purple guy? That’s Stack, our other mascot (but he’s not real like me!) Stack was our most popular sticker by far, so expect to see more of him. Everybody loves a cute mascot, right? Especially when you feature him on another cute mascot. Ahem, I’m talking about me, Sir Hackington Appbuilder III.
HPE DEV is making inroads with the developer community, which they continued at OSCON. While many people think of HPE as just an infrastructure company, the presence of HPE DEV at conferences dedicated to the developer community is starting to change that perception. As the world moves from an IT Ops model to a DevOps model, HPE is dedicated to being a leader and innovator.
Missed HPE DEV at OSCON? No worries. They will be making appearances at dev-friendly conferences around the United States and Europe over the next few months. For more information about where you can find them, visit the Events page. And follow the Community page to see highlights of previous appearances and ways to get involved and contribute. And come check us next at VMworld to learn more! I’ll be there!