We’ve said it before: At Perficient Latin America, we love technology, but our mission goes beyond it. As part of our greater objective of positively impacting the societies we operate in, we believe that the democratization of knowledge is integral to contributing to the development of our regions.
For this reason, our experts and employees will often participate in technology events and meetups. In 2019 so far, our employees have shared their expertise in several stages, including ScaleConf Colombia and DevOps Days Bogota.
Since 2017, the great minds of Colombia’s software development scene have been gathering to share their stories, improve their capabilities and make connections at ScaleConf Colombia. This 2-day tech conference tackles the latest developments surrounding scalability, distributed systems, security, machine learning, DevOps, and more, and brings speakers from all around the country and across multiple software engineering disciplines.
This year, Ruta N played host to ScaleConf Colombia 2019, receiving over 350 attendees and 19 speakers from Colombia and the world. The talks covered an array of topics from deep neural networks, performance analysis to Merkle trees and chaos engineering. The Perficient Latin America team, of course, was in attendance with a small group of representatives taking part in the event, and even sharing their expertise with the ScaleConf community.
Sharing Perficient Latin America Corp’s Software Outsourcing Experience with AutoScaling
Perficient Latin America own Alejandro Calderon took the stage on day 1, covering the topic of autoscaling. Drawing from real case scenarios, he demonstrated how autoscaling supports infrastructure failures and leads to cutting costs and increasing efficiency. The talk gave participants the opportunity to learn how to implement autoscaling for their projects and use machine learning to take it to the next level.
“Cloud cost optimization is becoming critical for companies to ensure their projects are profitable as far as cost-benefit goes, which is why autoscaling is a fascinating topic worth probing further,” comments Didier Tabares, Senior Software Engineer at Perficient Latin America.
In Alejandro’s talk, participants discovered the basics of autoscaling, which we’ve covered before on our blog, as well as its virtues when it comes to user experience and keeping up with system load. Taking Alejandro and his team’s vast experience on the topic as a primary reference, attendees were able to gain insight by analyzing actual situations in which it can be implemented successfully and identify best practices.
Overall Impressions from ScaleConf
The event covered a variety of topics from celebrated experts in the field from around the world. From Colombian-based projects in Chocó to lessons learned from tech giants like Netflix, ScaleConf presented a wide range of experiences in the field. The speakers included Sean T. Allen, VP of Engineering at Wallaroo, Yury Niño, Software Development Leader at Scotiabank and Chaos Engineering advocate, Heidi Howard, Research Fellow in Computer Science at the University of Cambridge, and Jose Nino and Lita Cho from Lyft.
“I thoroughly enjoyed the talks where they shared firsthand experiences about engineering problems; the challenges they faced and how they solved them through best practices or tools,” says Stefany Carrillo, software developer at Perficient Latin America. “Without a doubt, the conferences about Chaos Engineering and Autoscaling were among the most valuable ones.”
Another of ScaleConf’s attractive selling points is the opportunity for industry professionals to mingle and meet other skilled engineers in the tech space. This socialization helps nurture the overall tech community in Medellin and Colombia, through lively discussions and shared challenges, thus forging connections to last for years to come.
“Surely one of the things I most enjoyed was the opportunity to meet new people and acquire contacts during the talks,” says David Sanchez, a software developer at Perficient Latin America. “I’ve been able to remain in contact with some of the speakers to gain some insight and answers questions that have contributed to my own projects.”
Likewise, the team enjoyed some time to strengthen their own teamwork with the free flow of ideas, observations, and initiatives to take the lessons learned in the conference and apply them to internal developments.
Sharing DevOps Expertise with Colombia
Shortly after our team’s visit and contribution to ScaleConf Colombia, another of our team’s experts made his contribution to the Colombian DevOps scene during DevOpsDays Bogota. The event, an iteration of the globally celebrated DevOps Days series of conferences brought together the country’s foremost experts in DevOps to discuss experiences and challenges. Our Senior DevOps Engineer, Juan Ruiz, took the stage to share his experience in technology-enabled DevOps acceleration on May 25th. 
This first edition of included speakers from all around Colombia and the world, including Anthony W. Montgomery, Director at Agile Practices, Franklin Mosley, DevSecOps Leader and Speaker, and many others. It also provided a space for assistants to propose and explore topics of their choosing. This allowed for open conversations among attendees and further understanding of the talks presented during the day, as well as points that may have otherwise been glossed over.
Perficient Latin America presence in the first of the DevOpsDays conferences in Colombia, as well as the continuing ScaleConf Colombia events, reinforces the company’s commitment to the larger tech community. More than an offshore software development company, Perficient Latin America and its employees seek to contribute to the region’s development through technology. The Perficient Latin America team will continue to participate in these and many other events geared towards the diffusion of tech know-how and the exchange of ideas for the advancement of Colombia’s position in the tech and software outsourcing industry.
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