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October 31, 2018

DevOps Enterprise Summit Las Vegas 2018: Conference Review

DevOps Enterprise Summit Las Vegas 2018 took place in Las Vegas from October 22-24, and we had a great time bringing our largest number of consultants ever.

The badges for Liatrio's DOES 2018 attendees.

The week was super productive and fun, especially since we coupled the conference with a consulting team offsite meeting. The move of the conference to Las Vegas originally had us a bit skeptical. However, the strength of the community and the quality of the speakers quickly won us over, furthering our belief that DevOps practitioners and evangelists are cut from the same cloth and are passionate about doing DevOps right.

It’s only fair to give Gene Kim (@realgenekim) and the DevOps Enterprise Summit Las Vegas 2018 programming committee kudos for hosting such a wonderful conference and offering a means for the community to grow. The speakers and the material presented were top notch. And even though we may at times disagree on the “how” of delivering DevOps, the why is becoming more and more codified — which is only right for the enterprises that need our help.

Highlights from DOES 2018

As the Liatrio team takes a moment to look back at the week, we want to share some of our overall thoughts and a few fun pictures of our team at the conference:

  • We had the opportunity to meet new teams, organizations, and experts while catching up with some of our favorite specialists from all over the world. We heard it loud and clear that teams and organizations that have adopted DevOps believe they are doing good work and delivering better results!
  • The format of the conference is evolving. Each year, networking gets easier and easier, and attendee interaction with the speakers is valuable and fun! Some key messages we took from the talks —
  • ~~DevOps work and a DevOps way of working are two different things. Since it’s still early in their maturity, the scale and size of changes and impacts seen across the industry are very small.
  • ~~DevOps maturity models being used and propagated are not helping. Avoid them!
  • ~~Security-focused discussions are often labeled as DevSecOps. However, DevSecOps is really just security work that needs to get done!
  • ~~Talking about containers and doing containers right are two different things!
  • ~~A handful of companies have implemented Dojos as a practice for teaching and immersing teams in new ways of working and the use of tools to improve quality and speed to market. Dojos are the wave of the future, though many companies are just starting to use them. It might still be too early to gather emerging trends.  
  • ~~Gamification of metrics is the new thing! This is a good evolutionary development! Metrics talk is becoming stale, and gamification of metrics could make metrics more real and more fun!
  • ~~Two new themes at DOES 2018 included Servant Leadership and Burnout. These topics reveal the softer side of IT through vulnerability and openness to talk about tough subjects. Servant leadership allows leaders to take on a new role of empowering and enabling their teams.

DOES 2019 Recommendations

  • As attendees for the past 4+ years, we have seen the depth and breadth of topics and talks continue to evolve. That said, the dirty details and misalignment in the enterprises are still not discussed openly, and there still seems to be a selection bias toward “success” stories. How about a few more real-world, down-to-earth talks such as @damonedwards talk? In his profound talk, he reinforced the reality that DevOps transformations are hard.
  • DevOps is still fairly young in terms of practices, and this community can help foster what the future can become. We would like to see more talks on what DevOps practices and ways of working could look like in the future.
  • There are definite “no-no’s,” bad practices, imperfect tools, and incorrect philosophies that exist in our industry. Just as we saw more vulnerability in the 2018 talks, we’d like to see the conference push the envelope further and expose the falsities that exist in the industry today. (More on this in future posts.)

We Had an Amazing Time at DOES 2018!

Our entire team had a ton of fun at DevOps Enterprise Summit Las Vegas 2018!

On a final note, our proudest moment at the conference was when Alice Raia from Kaiser Permanente, one of our large client leaders, spoke about the company’s DevOps Transformation Journey over the last 3 years. Here’s Alice Raia from KP on KP.ORG’s DevOps Transformation.

DevOps Enterprise Summit Las Vegas 2018 Team Photos

Liatrio at DOES 2018
Liatrio at DOES 2018
Liatrio at DOES 2018
Liatrio at DOES 2018
Liatrio at DOES 2018
Liatrio at DOES 2018
Liatrio at DOES 2018
Liatrio at DOES 2018
Liatrio at DOES 2018
Liatrio at DOES 2018


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who is liatrio?

the Enterprise Modernization Consultancy

Enterprises need consulting that will actually challenge them, drive them to succeed, and own their own destiny.
Modern challenges require more than just tools and technology — It's about evolving how you operate, think, and deliver. Our unique combination of modern engineering talent combined with transformational practices enables enterprises to achieve long term success in their digital transformation journeys. That's why we're not just any DevOps Consultancy — it's why we're THE Enterprise DevOps Consultancy.
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