2015 DevOpsDays NYC observations

I (@markcornick) admit to being something of a DevOpsDays groupie - I was at the NYC event last weekend, and am headed to Toronto later this week. A few observations from NY:

• It was hosted at Microsoft’s midtown offices on 8th Ave. - one of the most transit-connected places in the city, right on top of multiple subway stations and across the street from the Port Authority. If you’re headed into Manhattan, you want to be somewhere that’s easy to get to, and this fit the bill. I think we did well to get our event location and hotel within blocks of Metro.

• Speaking of Microsoft, their facilities were solid, with one large room for keynotes and several “breakout” rooms for the open spaces. There was a MSFT facilities rep on hand to deal with things like AV issues (apparently it was very important not to move the podium, as we found out when one speaker moved the podium and the entire projection system failed.) I know we’ll have several people from USPTO at the event, but do we have one who can specifically deal with facilities issues should the need arise?

• Attendees needed to clear security to enter the building (this is pretty much par for the course in Manhattan and for Microsoft) so the badge table was located outside the secured area, and badges had the barcode needed to open the turnstiles. (As I recall, the auditorium at USPTO is outside their secure area, so this shouldn’t be an issue for us.) The badges were standard MSFT visitor badges - DOD did not customize them. Austin’s badges do look great, but I didn’t feel insulted by NYC’s. I’m not there to add to my badge collection.

• The program was the standard DOD format (invited talks in the morning, ignites around lunchtime, open spaces in the afternoon) and went very smoothly. John alluded to a “clear path” for viewing the open space grid - on the first day, NYC put theirs near one of the doors into the “large” room, which did make it a bit hard to get in and out. In the spirit of iteration and failing fast, they moved the grid to the front of that large room for the second day, which helped foot traffic quite a bit.

• It did seem like attendance and participation dropped off on the second day (Friday), with open space proposals/participation especially diminished compared to day one. I’ve seen this happen more markedly at some past events than others, and it’s not something that’s unique to this event. We should be prepared for that to happen at our event as well, and perhaps have something to keep interest up on the second day.

• NYC organizers have historically tried to keep an economical and charitable focus when it comes to money. In past years, they forewent T-shirts in favor of donating to a charity that builds water wells in developing nations. At 2014’s event, they showed a few photos of the well that 2013’s donations built - it has the DevOpsDays gear-brain logo and everything. This year, they chose to split a donation between three charities; one was a benefit for Nepal earthquake relief that I can’t recall right now, one was Girl Develop It (I think), and one was the Boys & Girls Club of Baltimore for relief of children in the impoverished neighborhoods that came into focus during the recent riots. This last one touched me quite deeply as a Marylander, sometime Baltimorean and generally concerned person, and I made sure to thank the organizers for thinking of Charm City.

• Speaking of gratitude, during breaks in the morning, the organizers had attendees thank sponsors on Twitter - people on one side of the room would tweet thanking one sponsor, and the other side would thank another sponsor. This has been done at past events elsewhere as well. We should definitely do this.

That’s about it - let me know if I can expand on any of this or if you have other questions about the NYC experience. I’ll do a similar post when I get back from Toronto.