The Ship Show

What happens when you bring together practitioners from all corners of the software development arena, put them in a room, and discuss hardware and software scaling, what your ops teams should (and shouldn't) do, how not to fool yourself again, how to delight your customers, how to tune your feedback cycles, how to get the executive staff to buy into it, how to make the outcomes better by embracing diversity, and wrap it all up with how not to turn it into an pie-in-the-sky religion? Well, you'd have FlowCon! Join us as we review the conference held last week in San Francisco with two of the program committee members, a couple of gentlemen who’ve both written a couple of little books you might've heard of before. Listen in as we attempt: Getting into Flow[Con] with Gene Kim and Jez Humble!

It is fitting that our first episode to be split into a TV-esque cliffhanger is with our Netflix panel! In episode 28, we discussed Netflix's unique engineering culture; in part two, we discuss with the panel the dynamics of how Netflix develops its release engineering tools, Netflix’s cloud prize, configuration management vs. baked potatoes, what percentage of the Internet Netflix actually uses at peak, plus the panel's guilty (and possibly embarrassing) Netflix pleasures; find out what they are and more when we wrap up: To Be Continued: Release Engineering Tools at Netflix.

It's hard to have a conversation or hear a presentation these days about DevOps without hearing Netflix’s name being uttered: they're a poster-child not only for employing DevOps principles and techniques, but for successfully moving their entire application to Amazon's Web Services public cloud. But how did they achieve this? And what cultural and technological struggles did they have while reshaping themselves from a company that mails out DVDs to a company that slings bits and produces Emmy-award winning content. Join us for a chat with members of Netflix's Engineering Tools and Playback Reliability teams; we know it's a conversation you won't want to miss... after all: Because You Watched DevOps, You Might Enjoy Netflix

With the explosion in popularity and usage of Git and its distributed version control brethren, developers finally have cheap, easy, local branching. But branching is pointless without merging, and many organizations are finding that the free-for-all merge process that Git can leave your organization with (mostly by being totally silent on the subject) is error prone, doesn't scale, and may even destroy content! As you search for the perfect branching model, questions like "should we use fast-forward merges or merge commits," "When do we rebase (if ever)?" and "What repository structure should we use" are bound to crop up, along with "can't we just use git flow?" Join the panel as they grab a razor and a yak and talk: Branching, Merging, and Octopi (Oh My!)

All of Information Technology’s puppeteers recently came together in San Francisco to discuss their beloved automation/configuration management tool, Puppet! We attended the conference and have the lowdown on all the Puppet developments of the past year, plus what’s in store for Puppet and the community this next year! Join our eclectic panel of puppet experts as we recount the goings on this year at PuppetConf in our: PuppetConf 2013 Revue!

The initial premise for episode 25--has it really been that long?--was "should everyone have access to the production environment," which the panel was squarely divided on. But the discussion eventually turned to what skills your Ops (and, with DevOps, your developers!) should have so they don't "freak out" when dealing with production outages. But, it's not just engineers: organizations, with their management ethos and culture, play a big role as well. So find out who thinks who should have access to PROD, plus how you can: Keep Calm and PROD On.

Earlier this year at ChefConf, rabble-rouser Sascha Bates proclaimed "training is pointless! Why do training when you can just sequester yourself (and maybe your team) away and read a book!" But, within earshot were Julian Dunn and Nathen Harvey, who both lead training for a living. Hilarity ensued, and we decided to mediate the "dispute" for episode 24! We tackle the issue of training, learning styles, and industry technical certifications, as we try to figure out: Training: Vapid or Valuable?

For episode 23, we sit down with programming veteran and Ruby expert Sandi Metz to discuss her new book: Practical Object-Oriented Design in Ruby! But we don't just talk about design patterns; we tackle everything from what Sandi means by "object-oriented design", to how design patterns permeate both software engineering and operations. We also philosophize on the art of the programming craft and what changes Sandi has seen over thirty years. Sit down with us for a conversation on: Practical Object OO (and Cat!) Design with Sandi Metz!

Episode 22 sports a special treat: in case you weren't able to attend DevOpsDays Silicon Valley 2013, we join forces with the Food Fight Show (again!) and the DevOps Cafe for the first ever "Food Ship Cafe!" We convene a group of DevOps household names (including the "fairy godmother" of DevOps himself!) for the: DevOpsDays Silicon Valley 2013 Super Panel!

In episode 21, the panel discusses the delicate topic of when "enough is enough": whether it's organizational dysfunction, discovering that the role isn't right for you and your skills or passions, abusive management, or unethical requests, we look at the nagging yellow flags that pile up and can ignite into red flags that seriously starts your mind down the road of: Going, Going... Gone.