If I say DevOps, what's the first thing that pops into your head? While I don't know what actually came to you, I'd be willing to bet it wasn't restaurants. Yet, that's what Chrystina Nguyen will be talking about at this year's All Day DevOps (ADDO). ADDO is the world's largest DevOps conference, which will be streaming live for 24 hours starting at 3 a.m. ET on October 28, 2021. The virtual event gathers more than 25,000 DevOps professionals for free, hands-on education from 180+ speakers, along with peer-to-peer insights and networking with professionals worldwide.
Chrystina is a business development lead at Rhythmic Technologies. She has been actively involved in her local community, leading and co-organizing many networking groups like DevOpsDc, Loudoun Information Technology Leadshare, and Rhythm of Technology. Chrystina is a master networker who is extremely good at rallying like-minded individuals to a cause. Before Rhythmic, she was the corporate bookkeeper for Clyde's Restaurant Group.
She knows a thing or two about restaurants and DevOps. Her time at Rhythmic has given her the support of great DevOps engineers, with whom she has had the opportunity to work with on a regular basis. This has helped her develop her unique perspective that harmonizes DevOps and our everyday experiences such as going out to eat. And she will eloquently show you how these two seemingly disparate topics are linked.
(Re)defining DevOps
For Chrystina, DevOps shouldn't be exclusively defined as a set of technical processes used for software development. While the above definition does apply to DevOps, there's more to it than just that. Case in point: restaurants do DevOps all the time. They do. Hence - and this is Chrystina's point - DevOps can also be understood as a set of non-technical processes that attain the same goals: better communication, faster turnaround, more efficient pipelines, etc.
Not only that, but it's pretty intuitive to draw analogies between the different players in software development and the restaurant industry: Chefs are project leads, cooks are developers, waiters are customer support, etc. And just like software development, where a DevOps framework will allow you to fix code quickly, the same framework will allow you to exchange a dish in just a few minutes - using the same high-level principles.
As Nguyen says, "DevOps doesn't need to be technical to be DevOps. In fact, DevOps is something that you do every day. Just talking to another person, whether it's a colleague, a friend, a spouse, a child, whatever, some DevOps is happening there because there's a process, and it's tailored to the interaction. If you go to a shop, there's a specific process. If you go to a restaurant, there's another specific process. DevOps is all around us; it's not just reserved for the tech industry. It's just good culture and communication; it's more about being able to work efficiently as a team than anything else."
Surprising insights
Chrystina tells us that the ideal attendee to her talk would be anyone who has ever been to a restaurant and has eaten there. And this is no joke. If you have ever eaten in a restaurant, you'll be able to draw upon that experience and understand just how much sense it makes to interpret that experience through a DevOps lens. And that drives Chrystina's point home. DevOps happens everywhere, every day.
She also expects that some attendees will believe they know the definition of DevOps and hopes to surprise them with her original, yet very intuitive, take on DevOps. As she says, "If you think you know what DevOps is, you're likely not wrong, per se, but here's a piece you may not have thought of."
One last thing…
Chrystina is an original character - as very smart people tend to be. And her presentation isn't limited to words. As she tells us:
"I'm going to be wearing some scary contact lenses that might freak people out. Don't be alarmed. I might be a bit weird but just relax, have a good time and enjoy the content. Oh, and if you're hesitating to be an ADDO speaker yourself, you should go for it!"
Register for All Day DevOps (ADDO)
All Day DevOps (ADDO), the world's largest DevOps conference, will be streaming live for 24 hours starting at 3 a.m. ET on October 28, 2021. Founded in 2016, the virtual event gathers more than 25,000 DevOps professionals for free, hands-on education. The All-Day DevOps is a global community of more than 75,000 DevOps practitioners and thought leaders offering free learning, peer-to-peer insights, and networking with professionals worldwide. Founded in 2016, the community hosts an annual conference, live forums, and ongoing educational experiences online. The 2021 event will feature a lineup of 180+ speakers in six separate tracks, including CI/CD Continuous Everything, Cultural Transformation, DevSecOps, Government, Modern Infrastructure, and Site Reliability Engineering.
Register online to participate in the 24-hour live, global event on October 28.