ChefConf 2019 kicks off in Chef’s (and my) hometown of Seattle in less than two weeks on May 20th. If you’re interested in going and haven’t already registered, check out more information here and use code Hugs4Chef19 for 10% off your registration.
Things I hope to hear at ChefConf
This year promises to be a pretty significant year at ChefConf. Since last year’s conference, the company has gone through some significant changes – new leadership, product updates, go-to-market approaches, etc. Here are some things I am eager to hear more about:
- Chef Habitat: Chef has had the “infrastructure as code” and “compliance as code” story lines solidified for some time, but only in the past year has the Habitat “managing applications as code” story really started to coalesce in a meaningful way. Chef Habitat is such a fundamental change and innovation to application development while also solving immediate needs like legacy app modernization that bringing that story together takes time. You can read more about Perficient’s thoughts on Habitat here and here. I am also eager to hear more about the “Habitat managed Chef” and “Habitat managed InSpec” and how to integrate these patterns in new and interesting ways.
- Chef as an Open Source Company & the Enterprise Automation Stack(s): ICYMI, Chef announced its move to a full open source model at the start of April as well as some significant updates to their product naming and bundling. Chef’s new Enterprise Automation Stack is a compelling way for customers to address automation in a fundamentally holistic sense – infrastructure, compliance, and applications – whether on-prem, in one or many clouds, etc. The move to full open source gives additional opportunities for innovation on the Chef platform. With just a bit over a month since this change, I’m eager to see how Chef will communicate the many implications of this change to clients and partners.
- Chef and the ecosystem: For partners like Perficient who deliver enterprise-grade DevSecOps transformations, Chef and all its wonderful parts are only part of the people, process, and tools story. Chef has always sought new ISV and major cloud integrations. I look forward to hearing more about how Chef has advanced these partnerships, specifically with the launch of Azure DevOps and the continued enterprise progress Google Cloud is making.
Key Sessions to Attend
Chef is one of the most fun, energetic and well-run conferences I’ve ever attended. This year, there are some amazing workshops and sessions available to attendees and as per usual, I won’t be able to attend all of them. Here are some I’m very interested in attending:
- Monday: I’ll be attending the Managing a DevOps Transformation workshop to get an update from Chef’s Professional Services team on their point of view of successful patterns driving DevOps transformation, and my colleague Sean Wilbur will be attending Modern Operations on Azure – Automate and monitor your infrastructure.
- Tuesday/Wednesday: I’m going to have a tough time both days as there are multiple competing session on both days all of which are interesting.
Tuesday Wednesday Schedule for ChefConf 2019
Ways to Connect
I’m looking forward to connecting with other ChefConf attendees during breaks, at the evening events and parties, and at Perficient’s booth in the Expo Hall (#100). I hope you’ll stop by, introduce yourself, grab some commemorative ChefConf 2019 and Seattle specific stickers (they are super cool!), and enter to win one of our prizes.
Before you go, be sure to download the ChefConf 2019 Official App, start building your schedule, and add me and your other Chef friends as connections! I look forward to seeing you there.
