Sonatype is among the many supporters of All Day DevOps (ADDO), the world’s largest conference for DevOps practitioners. Close to 40,000 people attended this year’s 24-hour event — and 10% of them were from one company. We spoke with Kevin ODell of State Farm, the event’s largest underwriting sponsor, to understand how the conference brings value to the insurance giant’s 6,000 IT professionals.
‘DevOps’ Isn’t an In-House Term
Although ‘DevOps‘ as a term is about a decade old, its implementation across industries is still very new, and its cultural and tactical approaches to problem-solving are still emerging.
The ADDO conference itself is four years old. ODell discovered it last year, in its third year. He recognized some of the industry speakers. “We just decided, ‘let’s give it a shot’”. He and his team in Dallas decided to shut down for a day, order some food, and enroll everyone in the free event as a continuous learning opportunity.
An Unexpected Realization
The event was a hit and the team gave it high feedback later. But immediately after the event, someone said:
“Hey, I didn’t realize that DevOps is an industry thing. I thought this was something that State Farm made up.” More than one employee agreed. For a second ODell considered if he’d been “punked” and that the team was joking. They weren’t.
With reflection ODell realized this wasn’t exclusive to his organization. Every work culture has their unique approaches to leadership and implementation. So it wasn’t hard to understand why a few State Farm people thought “‘DevOps’ was a ‘State Farm’ thing”.
It was a lightbulb moment: “Hey, even our technical folks that think they’re doing a really good job, still have a whole bunch of learning [to do] out there.”
As ODell explains, sure, it (Read more...)
“This is the New Op Model” – Why State Farm Sponsored ADDO, and the Results
