2017-11-02 10.34 CCC - DoD CubaPage 1 of 9
Jayne Groll, Alan Shimel, Manny Varela, Mike Rosado, Taylor
Alan Shimel:Hi, everyone. This is Alan Shimel.
Jayne Groll:And Jayne Groll.
Alan Shimel:And we're here for another episode of Continuous ChitChat. Jayne, how are you?
Jayne Groll:I'm good, Alan. How are you? You've been on the road.
Alan Shimel:Yes, I have been globetrotting again and I'm home for just another week or two before I head out to DevOps Enterprise Summit and then CA World. But I'm not the only one who's been globetrotting. Jayne, I know you were at a few DevOpsDays in Nashville and – remind me of the other city?
Jayne Groll:Well actually, I ended up unfortunately not being able to go to Philly, but I was in Nashville, and Taylor, our community manager at DevOps Institute, was at both Nashville and Philly. So the tour of DevOpsDays has certainly become a global event, and you know Alan, that's a great segue to our guest today.
Alan Shimel:Absolutely. That brings us to – globetrotting in DevOpsDays. That was my theme, Jayne.
[Laughter]
So another member of our DevOps Institute team, Manny Varela, as well as sort of a brother from another mother of our DevOps Institute team, friend of the Institute, not only a certified graduate of many classes but also a teacher, Mike Rosado, joins us. So Mike and Manny, welcome to Continuous ChitChat.
Manny Varela:Thank you, Alan. Thank you, Jayne. Great to be here.
Alan Shimel:That's Manny. And Mike? You there?
Mike Rosado:Hey, how is everyone? How is everyone? I'm doing great as well. Thanks for inviting me.
Alan Shimel:Great. Thank you for all you do, Mike, actually. Just as a side note, I know Mike Rosado now probably about four years. When I first launched I met Mike at a DevOps event. We were doing – I don't know if it was in Dallas or Austin, Mike, but –
Mike Rosado:It was at InnoTech.
Alan Shimel:It was the InnoTech event. I just don't remember if it was Dallas InnoTech or Austin, but you were there. And you know what, you've been involved ever since, getting more and more involved. And of course, now you are heavily involved in the DevOpsDays movement, DevOps Meetup groups and everything else. So congratulations and kudos to you for being a leader in the community.
Mike Rosado:Thank you very much.
Alan Shimel:Yep.
Jayne Groll:What most people don't know, Alan, is that Mike was actually one of the first accredited DevOps Foundation trainers. So, really an early adopter and a really strong contributor to the space, and frankly, was one of the prime reasons we ended up at DevOpsDays Cuba, right? It was really through Mike's efforts to bring in education and bring in different organizations to DevOpsDays Cuba. So that's great.
So speaking of which, part of today, what we really want to do is really talk and ask Mike and Manny to share their experiences at DevOpsDays Cuba. I think many of us naively think that Cuba's a very backwards country and that there's nothing going on there in technology, they're back in the '50s, and all of that is a really terrible, terrible misconception. And so talking after the event and the spirit and the passion from the DevOps community there really kind of shaped a lot of my thinking, and we're hoping to shape their.
I think that's a great segue to ask the first question. So just to get started, what was it – what was the – what were the people like? What were the companies that were represented at the event? And then of course, we can go on and talk more about their inputs and what they're actually doing. So Mike, let's start with you. So this is your second year at DevOpsDays Cuba. What have you seen, year over year, in terms of interest growth? What kind of people attended? Tell us a little bit about the event.
Mike Rosado:Yeah, so last year, there were five universities including three universities from Ecuador and some other countries, and it was mainly, I want to say, public sector audience. This year, they invited back not only some of the university – or several of the universities, but they also invited back five different private sector companies that are in the IT field. So it was a very mixed crowd, a lotta well-educated people in the IT industry.
Manny Varela:Yeah. I found they know what to expect. Of course, going back to the land where my family originated before coming to United States, wasn't sure of what to expect, but I was pleasantly surprised at the level of knowledge in IT, and specifically, the software space. Very eager people to learn more about DevOps and how it works and how it can better their software development teams and operations as well.
Jayne Groll:And Manny, you mentioned one of the attendees was even a Docker captain, right?
Manny Varela:Yes. So out of 60 in the world, there is a Docker captain there, well-spoken, very astute, and extremely knowledgeable in Docker and tools in general. He actually was with the university, he explained, originally, but has broken off into his own little consulting business, if you will, and doing a lotta speaking and a lotta teaching, and he is an actual – one of the 60 Docker captains in the world.
Jayne Groll:Awesome. That's awesome.
Alan Shimel:So guys, I feel like we dove right in here and I don't know if we really made our audience aware of, first of all, DevOpsDays Cuba was also last month and it was the second annual DevOpsDays Cuba, as Mike mentioned. And Jayne, you kinda referenced – well, for those of us in the US, we may have a certain outlook on the tech scene and life in general in Cuba, but I think people around the world may have a different view, maybe a more grounded view in life in Cuba. But Manny, I know it was your first trip, but Mike, you've been in contact with the community there. What would you say their current rate of maturity is compared not to the US, per se, but maybe to Europe or other Latin American countries or the Asia Pacific region?
Mike Rosado:Well, if I was to gauge it on a scale from one to ten, and ten being very mature, I would put 'em right up there somewhere like a eight. I mean, they are – it's surprisingly how much they have done with the amount of limited resources they have, like hardware-wise and software-wise, and how they've been able to take things and kinda piece 'em together and actually make them work and make them automatically deployable. So I would say creativity and the enthusiasm they have to embrace DevOps is very high.
Manny Varela:Well, I would also say that that's the epitome of open source, right? Because of the block and they're not able to purchase directly software from American forms, they are very relied upon open-source software and they know that software very, very well.
Alan Shimel:That, they do. That, they do. Guys, let's focus it a little bit on the event itself though. Mike, you're on the Board for DevOpsDays. Is that – the exact name escapes me. But you're involved, and Manny, DevOpsDays planning and execution, correct?
Mike Rosado:Yes. I'm one of the, I want to say, maybe 10 or 12 global core organizers. So I help onboard other countries and cities around the world on how to get the event started, how do they go about – all the small, fine details of setting up a conference, and then once we provide 'em an onboarding conference call, then we provide 'em some tools about how to go about publishing it on the website and then setting them free.
Alan Shimel:Got it. And Manny, of course, you've been to many DevOpsDays as part of your DOI responsibilities. So I guess what I want to ask you both, and whoever wants to go first can, is just purely as a DevOpsDays – forget the culture, forget the current state of maturity – what was going on there? Our audience has probably been to several DevOpsDays in their area. How did this DevOpsDays stack up?
Mike Rosado:Well, let me start off by saying it was a week-long DevOpsDays. Normally, most DevOpsDays is either a day or two long. This one is a week long. It started off with a cultural – like, the first day was more of a cultural thing of seeing – getting to know Cuba a little bit, and then the second day, it happened to coincide with all-day DevOps. So we had a all-day DevOps viewing party, but that day, we started off with a career panel of all the speakers and then we proceeded to the all-day DevOps viewing party and then continued with the open spaces, and then the next two days we actually had the conference. So we were pretty – we were going at it pretty strong.
Alan Shimel:Excellent. And –
Manny Varela:Yeah, yeah. I would agree. I think it was the eagerness to learn and to understand everything that was going on was what impressed me the most. I'd obviously been to other DevOpsDays, and not that they're not eager to learn and there for a purpose, but these people were definitely, I felt, very eager and very on top of wanting to learn this and like sponges, trying to grab as much information as they possibly could.
Alan Shimel:Got it.
Jayne Groll:And Mike, you taught the Essential DevOps Workshop there, and I understand – thank you – that you delivered it in Spanish and translated the slides for them. What was their response to that? Were there a good – what kinda discussions occurred not only during Essential DevOps, but also during the open spaces? What were the areas of curiosity?
Mike Rosado:Well, a lot of it had to do with the culture itself, how to get started. There was a company there that brought in, like, 35 different managers from around Cuba from all the different providence, and they were just eager to, like Manny says, to absorb in as much as they could. Translating it into Spanish kinda – it was more for – I want to say for my benefit because I could relate more to them and explain it better in the language, so – but – you know, because they – how can I say? They were able to absorb everything the other speakers were saying in English, so have – being able to present this in Spanish, I wanted to do it at the beginning of the conference but it went very well at the end because it kinda summed up the whole conference at the end and saying, "This is what DevOps is all about. This is what we're here for." So it acted as a summary and they're – they took it in very well.
Manny Varela:Mike did a great job. He was the quasi-interpreter, pretty much, the entire show, so –
Mike Rosado:Hey, thanks man.
Manny Varela:– he did a great job in translating back and forth between the speakers that – they were saying in English and into Spanish, so thank –
Mike Rosado:And actually, we had – yeah, we actually had a few of the speakers that spoke Spanish, some of them probably pretty well, and it kinda amazed me.
Alan Shimel:That's great.
Jayne Groll:And both of you are fluent, Manny and Mike, both are fluent in Spanish, and I'm sure that made the experience not only better for the attendees, but also, I would think, for you as well.
Mike Rosado:Right, exactly.
Manny Varela:Absolutely. It was very interesting listening to the conversation in my own language.
[Laughter]
Alan Shimel:And so guys, we're talking about Spanish, the Spanish language, and Cuba has traditionally been – historically been almost sort of a gateway for North America to the Latin American, South American market, though maybe not in the last – since regimes have changed. But what kind of Latin American or South American, Caribbean participation was there beyond just people from Cuba, Mike or Manny?
Mike Rosado:Mostly, the people that I saw there this year were mainly from Cuba. Like I said, last year, we had some people invited from – I think it was Ecuador and some other countries. So – but I didn't see that this year. I guess it may be from the timing, so – but –
Manny Varela:Yeah, I agree. Aside from the panel, I think that the majority were Cuban pop – Cuban audience.
Jayne Groll:Well, and to be fair – and maybe our audience doesn't know this – almost a month before this scheduled event, Hurricane Irma really negatively impacted, right? They got a direct hit from Hurricane Irma, and what were the recovery efforts like?
Mike Rosado:Yeah, they actually – the venue that it was originally supposed to be at got damaged really bad by Hurricane Irma, so they had to move the venue not only from a different hotel, but actually a different city altogether. So it – but they were very resilient and flexible in changing it and working with the venues. So it came all together pretty well in a very quick manner of time.
Jayne Groll:So, what are the plans for next year for DevOpsDays Cuba? What do you think – what are your predictions, or what do you think the topics of interest next year will be like?
Mike Rosado:That's a very good and tough question. It's hard to say. The first year, we started off with education. This year, we've kinda elaborated a little bit more on that. I think they might be looking for more – I want to say – maybe more technical even though there'll still be some space for cultural, but I think they're really starving to get on the ball – to stay on top and compete with the rest of the world as far as technical-wise and continue that route.
Manny Varela:I would agree. In my conversations with many of them, more tools and more techy stuff is what they're looking for. I think they're most certainly understanding the culture part, but they're certainly wanting to see and understand more of the tooling and some of the softwares that are available globally.
Mike Rosado:Yeah. The culture part is always gonna be of interest because they're always gonna have new people come into the conference.
Manny Varela:Absolutely.
Mike Rosado:Yeah, but the technical piece is actually… And last year, I was able to introduce the concept of Meetups and talk about that, and that's where the first Docker Meetup became – the first Meetup became available last year when Enrique and Manuel started it in Cuba, so that – and now this year, they want to set up more Meetups on different topics.
Jayne Groll:Well, and it sounds like, interestingly enough, I mean, some of the knowledge quests, some of the interest areas are the same around the world, whether it's Cuba or if it's in the US or it's in Asia or Europe, that more interest in tooling, absolute interest in open source, more and more Meetups just starting to happen. So if anything, I – my hope would be that whether it's Cuba or somewhere else, the themes for DevOps are very, very similar regardless of where you are.
Mike Rosado:Yeah, I agree.
Manny Varela:Absolutely.
Jayne Groll:So Alan, any last questions for Mike and Manny?
Alan Shimel:No. I mean, guys, look, DevOpsDays is – it's really kinda grown out of the original Jayne, your experience, I think at the first Silicon Valley's DevOpsDays, right? It's become a much more – I hate to use the word "polished," but a much more polished, more mature effort, though there's still great diversity when you go from city to city. And of course, Jayne and all of us at DevOps Institute and we see this as we sponsor and appear at many different DevOpsDays around the world. So it sounds like, though, Cuba is both unique, but also, not too different than many of the other DevOpsDays around the world. Mike, again, thanks for all your effort and time that you're giving to the DevOpsDays community in general and Cuba in particular. Keep up the great work.
Mike Rosado:Thank you, thank you.
Alan Shimel:Yeah, thank you. And Manny, you know, we couldn't have a better ambassador to take continuous learning around the world. So thanks for your time there as well.
Manny Varela:Thank you. It was a pleasure.
Alan Shimel:Well, hey –
Jayne Groll:Well, Alan, I think that wraps up this episode of Continuous ChitChat. We've had some really interesting topics, and this, particularly having guests who were really seeing DevOpsDays – particularly in Cuba, but you're right, all around the world – firsthand and being able to share that experience is really invaluable. So for this Continuous ChitChat, I'm Jayne Groll.
Alan Shimel:And I'm Alan Shimel.
Jayne Groll:And Manny and Mike, thank you so much for your time. Take care, everyone.
Mike Rosado:Pleasure. Take care.
Manny Varela:Thank you for having us. Thank you.
Alan Shimel:All right, bye bye.
Mike Rosado:Bye.
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