Continuous Discussions (#c9d9) Hosted by Electric Cloud
If you work in a profession such as IT where there is constant change it is probably no bad thing to understand the thoughts and feelings of fellow professionals working in your chosen area, as this can open up whole new areas of understanding to help you in your day-to-day work. Conferences are typically very good for this sort of thing -- both the sessions that are presented by conference speakers and the networking that goes on with fellow delegates.
Conferences usually make a big impact on the training budget though, and that can be the case even if the event is in your country. However if overseas travel is required then this can often completely rule out any chance of attending. So what about alternatives?
Most of us probably subscribe to a daily diet of blog posts, podcasts and email newsletters, but none of these approach the ‘dynamic' nature of attending a conference in person. But hey! In these modern times what about an online conference where there is a panel of guests discussing a particular topic?
I mention all this because a couple of weeks ago I was privileged to be a panellist on the Architecting for Continuous Delivery episode of Electric Cloud's Continuous Discussions series of online events about continuous delivery, DevOps and agile practices. If you are interesting in watching the episode I took part in you can check it out here:
The themes for this episode included pipeline orchestration, treating servers as cattle rather than pets, service orientation and decoupling, and messaging and data management. What I found really interesting was that each panellist often had a completely different take on the theme, typically an angle I hadn't really considered before.
At the time of writing there are 27 episodes in this series covering a broad range of topics and each episode features panellists who are able to offer from-the-trenches thinking and commentary about the topic in question. I urge you to check this resource out -- there is some fantastic content! And kudos to Electric Cloud for organising and hosting these community panels -- there's a big effort going on behind the scenes to bring everything together.
Keep learning!
Cheers -- Graham