2019 Year-End Wrap-Up

Joe: [00:00:00] I don’t want to get off on a rant on Dennis Miller, but that dude used to be funny, and then he got all conservative and right-wingy, and he’s not funny anymore. That’s right, I said it, Dennis. You’re not funny anymore. It’s time for Arrested DevOps, the podcast where we help you achieve understanding, develop good practices, and operate your team and organization for maximum DevOps awesomeness.

Matty: I’m Joe LeHaye, and co-hosting with me today is Matt Stratton, Trevor Hess, Bridget Kromhout, Jessica Kerr.

Joe: Yes, we are a full house today to celebrate the end of 2019. It’s our traditional year-end wrap-up show, but first, a word from our sponsors. The worst thing about the Arrested DevOps podcast is when it ends, you’re left wondering what to do next. What are you going to listen to on your commute home? How do you occupy your time when walking the dog? What are you going to listen to during the quarterly all-hands meeting? But fear not, dear listener, there is a solution. You need to subscribe to Software Defined Talk right now. It’s a weekly podcast that recaps all the news in cloud computing, DevOps, and enterprise software. The hosts, Cote, Matt Ray, and Brandon Wichard, will keep you up to date on all things cloud while offering tips on how to optimize your Costco haul, and how to PowerPoint. It’s a fun, free-flowing conversation that will keep you entertained and informed. What are you waiting for? Subscribe to the podcast today by visiting softwaredefinedtalk.com or by searching for Software Defined Talk in your favorite podcast app. So it’s the end of the year and we all get together and talk about stuff and junk, which is what it says in the script. Um, we’re talking about all the stuff that happened in 2019. Matt, take it away.

Matty: [00:01:55] Yeah, so before we get caught up on cookies and stuff, so this is how— this is the teaser, Bridget, because if we started talking about cookie recipes right now, people would not listen to the whole show. So you’re gonna have to listen.

Bridget: Or they’d listen to more.

Matty: Well, no, they’re waiting to hear about the cookie recipes.

Jessica: The cookie recipes.

Matty: You have to listen to all this other bullshit to get to the cookie recipes. It’s like a lockbox.

Bridget: Computers, DevOps computers.

Matty: Right, source control, you know, podcast recording.

Jessica: Trevor was describing these cookies and they were like, 4 feet tall, so they must be insane.

Bridget: The US cookie improvement.

Trevor: Continuous delivery.

Matty: Right, so we’re going to talk about our favorite episodes of the podcast for a few minutes, and then when we’re done with that, Trevor is going to tell us some things about cookies. So hold tight. So I thought it would be fun to kind of start by talking about when we look back at the year of 2019, the year that was, the year that is almost over. What some of our favorite episodes were. And it’s interesting because, like Joe said, we’ve got an all-skate, and this is probably the first episode of 2019 and potentially the first episode of ever when all 5 of us are on a show together.

Jessica: [00:03:10] Not totally ever.

Matty: I don’t think that’s ever happened before. So most of us are gonna have different favorite episodes because we kind of— none of us did episodes together this whole year. But my 2 favorite episodes for 2019 was one was our State of DevOps of 2019 with Dr. Nicole Forsgren and Jez Humble. Pretty much anytime we have Nicole on the show, I learn a whole bunch of stuff, so I really love doing that episode. It was really fun to be the audience proxy and ask a lot of questions and pretend I was asking questions as the audience proxy, but in reality, I just wanted to ask the questions, so it was super fun. I also did an episode with Jay Gordon about certifications, and the reason it’s one of my favorites is not necessarily necessarily because of the whole episode, although it’s a pretty good episode. But Jay and I were just sort of texting one morning, and he’s like, you want to do a podcast today? And I was like, I don’t know, I’m not doing anything. I was like, why don’t we record an episode of Rest of DevOps? And kind of threw it together, and then you got— I was like, what are you gonna talk about? Let’s talk about certification. So yes, we’re very organized podcasters. People love to hear about that. Um, Bridget, what were some of your favorites this year?

Bridget: [00:04:20] I actually, I feel like I didn’t do as many episodes as I always do, or I have done in the past, but I like pretty much every episode. I would say there’s too many to name, but I should probably point to Kubernetes because it’s, of course, eating the world. The last few episodes that I’ve done have been Kubernetes-related. One with Ian Coldwater, recorded before their KubeCon keynote, all about their KubeCon keynote, which was kind of a fun, like, let’s pretend it’s a month from now. And one with the authors of the recent Kubernetes Best Practices book. And I recorded one today with Kelsey Hightower because he tweeted saying he wanted to podcast about Kubernetes. And that’s the sort of thing that brings all the nerds to the yard. So that’s, that’s what’s on my mind. How about you, Trevor?

Trevor: Uh, my favorite episode had to do with the cookies. No, um, sorry, uh, now this is going to be a running joke because Matt doesn’t want it to be. Um, so Bridget, you said you were not in a lot of episodes this year. I was even, even less episodes this year. Uh, so my favorite episodes are the 2, 3 episodes I was in. So that was the Build, of which I think there are still a couple that haven’t been released because I’m terrible, and the DevOps Days Chicago podcast, which is a lot of fun to do.

Matty: [00:05:54] Jessica?

Jessica: My favorite episode— well, okay, the one that I remember at the moment that I’m excited about was the Meltwater episode, where we interviewed people who have just not just succeeded in the DevOps transformation, because there is no succeeded, right? There is only succeeding. There is only continuing to transform. But it was lovely to get to interact with a company that has really done this, has really moved from a lot of slow pain to, well, more interesting new pain every day. Kind of continual progress. That was really fun.

Bridget: I like that. New pain every day.

Jessica: Nice, nice.

Matty: So I did a little quick count because Bridget said how much. So Bridget, I think you did 1, 2, 3, 4— I think you did 6 episodes this year. Jessica, I think, did 7, 7 or 8. I did 9. Trevor did 2. So you did more than you thought, Bridget, I think. Like I guess we kind of were pretty evenly distributed.

Joe: [00:07:07] You’re forgetting all those live DevOps Days episodes that we did.

Bridget: Oh yeah, I mean that—

Joe: Philly and Minneapolis and Cape Town.

Bridget: Ooh, Cape Town, that was fun.

Jessica: Yeah.

Matty: Actually, I wonder how many episodes Joe has done. Joe has done 3 episodes.

Joe: I have just done the year-end episodes.

Matty: I know, I mean ever, like not this year, but ever. Well, you did DevOps Days Cuba 2016.

Joe: Oh, that’s right.

Matty: You’re considered a host of that episode, apparently.

Jessica: Okay.

Matty: I don’t know why.

Joe: Well, probably only because I read the translation of the— that Mike Rosato produced.

Trevor: Okay.

Joe: I read the— I forget exactly who it was that was speaking, but I read all the male translations and Bridget read all the female translations. So that’s probably why—

Matty: Why you were the hosts. Okay, got it. You’re not even in the picture.

Bridget: So he’s a voiceover actor.

Joe: Okay. Or maybe, or did we do a, I think we may have recorded like a little intro between the two of us ’cause we were the ones hosting.

Jessica: And yet behind the scenes, Joe controls the content of all the episodes.

Joe: [00:08:10] That’s right. That’s right. And my favorite episode since no one asked.

Matty: Well, you’re the host of this episode, Joe.

Jessica: Ask yourself.

Joe: Ask yourself.

Matty: Really, this is really on you.

Joe: Mine from an editing standpoint continue to be the live episodes because they are the easiest to turn around. So Minneapolis and Cape Town and all the ones that you do, like people do face-to-face, there’s a lot less work in getting those turned around.

Matty: One of these days when you really wanna torture yourself, I’m gonna give you the all podcast, Tech Podcasters All Skate episode we did that’s like 2 hours long with 20 guests.

Joe: You mean the podcast about podcasting?

Matty: Yes.

Joe: Which is every podcast?

Matty: No, it’s just our year-end wrap-up episode is the only podcast about podcasting. It’s the only time that Bridget has to listen to this.

Joe: No, I will say the Cape Town one was fun for me just because we got to go to Cape Town, and Cape Town is a lot of fun. But anyway, um, so Stratton was going to tell us some stats or something.

Matty: [00:09:13] Yeah, sure. So because again, this is the self-indulgent show when we get to talk about podcasting a little bit and Bridget goes blah blah blah blah blah. But in the past we’ve talked about like traffic to the website and blah blah blah, and I’ve decided nobody cares. But what is maybe be interesting is what episodes you, the listeners, listen to the most. So the most listened to episode in 2019, at least as of, I don’t know, a week ago when I pulled the stats, was The Database Calls Are Coming from Inside the DevOps. And the interesting thing about that is, yes, it was Baron Schwartz, and it was Jessica’s first episode as an official host of Arrested DevOps.

Joe: So clearly we made a good choice on Was that the infamous banana pants episode?

Jessica: Oh, no, no. That was the one where I was a guest.

Matty: That was where she was a guest. That was— yeah. That was the one where afterwards, and then Jessica was like, do you need more people as hosts? And I’m like, are you kidding? Of course, we would love to have you.

Trevor: [00:10:14] And then—

Matty: and she’s regretted it ever since.

Trevor: So, Matt, I don’t know if you realize what this— this is the— which year-end wrap-up this is.

Matty: It’s the fifth one.

Trevor: Yeah, this is the end of five years of Arrested DevOps.

Matty: That’s true because Arrested DevOps started at the next one. Yes, because Arrested DevOps started in December of 2013 with just me and Trevor. So for those who don’t know, the show started does not work. But that was five years ago, 2013. Okay, but there were five. But it was a whole year of 20— this is the whole year of 2014, whole year of 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018. Yeah, it’s 6 years, Trevor. What’s wrong?

Trevor: I was just waiting to see if you were going to pick up on that or not.

Matty: Well, I always mess it up.

Trevor: Or if you were just going to take me at face value.

Matty: It always messes me up when I’m counting how many DevOps Days we’ve had in a city, and I do the math, because it’s always one more than the number of years or something.

Joe: You know, I’m the liberalizing angel on the panel, but I can subtract 9 from 6.

Matty: [00:11:17] Yeah.

Joe: Or 6 from 9.

Bridget: Straight math.

Joe: 3, 9 from 3.

Trevor: So it’s the end of 6 and the dawn of 7.

Joe: Moving along.

Matty: So 6 years, 6 years ago, almost to the date, was the first Arrested DevOps. And I will find the exact date of that recording later and we can come back to that. So later on, you’ll hear—

Jessica: How many years of Arrested Development are there?

Matty: Less than that.

Jessica: 4?

Joe: Including the— Including the Netflix episode?

Matty: They did 2 seasons on Netflix.

Joe: They did 2 seasons on Netflix.

Matty: So there’s 5 seasons.

Joe: I’ve never seen an episode, so I couldn’t tell you.

Bridget: All right, moving along.

Matty: Okay, the 2nd most listened to episode in 2019 was Pushing Left with Tanya Janke, and it was 100 listens fewer than number 1, so it was very close, very close. Might have taken over by now because maybe, maybe Tanya had some people coming in in the back end, I don’t know. That was super cool. And the third but honorable mention, because normally we wouldn’t go to the bronze medal, but was Shiny Objects with Jesse Frisella and Andrew Clay Shafer. That was less than 100 downloads less than number 2, so it was very close, but that’s where the Weird Trick Mafia podcast was launched. So lots of podcasts get launched on our show, and by lots I mean 2.

Jessica: [00:12:37] That’s more than this podcast.

Joe: And does Doocy still do that?

Matty: No, no, no. The goat farm or whatever he was doing with Ross lasted like a year. So that’s the other thing, we have staying power. 6 years. Like, there have been DevOps cafes technically—

Jessica: our children.

Bridget: Yeah, I do have to tell you though, sometimes I’m at conferences and people say Oh, I used to listen to you on Arrested DevOps. And I’m like, I’m still on the show, sort of.

Matty: I guess it depends on when they listen. Yeah, I know. So let’s take a quick break from the recaps and—

Bridget: Matt, you’re not the host.

Matty: Joe’s the host.

Joe: Hey, whatever. I’m perfectly, perfectly happy to get run over here.

Matty: He’s noggin’ it up.

Joe: I’m nogging it up. This episode brought to you by eggnog. So according to the doc, now we talk about what happened in 2019, and we’re gonna start with the person to my right.

Bridget: [00:13:50] Uh, okay, that seems like a very oddly scoped question that is super hard to answer, so I will go with I switched from being in a DevRel job to a product job. I helped with the Helm 3 launch, which was really exciting. I traveled less and I started dragging Joe with me to a personal trainer because like if he’s going then maybe I will show up. So that’s my life hack to make myself work out is at least if I can hang out with this fine individual then maybe I’ll actually show up and do it. So far that just makes me smile.

Matty: I was gonna say, how’s that working out?

Bridget: Oh, we went on Tuesday.

Joe: Yeah, I’m hurt.

Bridget: I heard it’s terrible.

Trevor: Yep.

Matty: So you’ve gone once?

Bridget: Why didn’t anyone—

Joe: why didn’t— oh no, no, no, we started—

Bridget: yeah, 3 months.

Joe: We started after we got back from Amsterdam, and I had a long break for, for Europe and Thanksgiving and stuff, and now we’re back again.

Bridget: So it’s terrible. You should— my, my life advice to people is they should try to not go to the gym. Just stay on the couch lifting heavy things and setting them back down and then lifting them up again and rinsing and repeating.

Jessica: [00:15:01] It’s like going out in the cold in order to do this.

Bridget: I know, it’s terrible. It’s terrible.

Matty: So that’s— I’ll put it this way. My apartment complex has a gym and it’s literally 50 feet from my front door to like go to, and I have not been to it since I moved into it. Well, okay, the cold, but I mean, it’s like 40 degrees.

Bridget: Do you have to go through the cold to get to it?

Matty: Well, yeah, it’s outside. I mean, the gym isn’t outside.

Joe: That’s the problem. You have to actually pay somebody to be there for you. That’s the secret.

Matty: Right.

Bridget: Yeah, so if we don’t show up, you’re not gonna show up. If we don’t show up, he still makes money. So we feel like we should show up so we don’t waste the money. Anyway, that’s what happened with us in 2019, or with me anyway. Maddie.

Matty: So I did a lot of talking at people and to people, not just at people, but sometimes at them and sometimes to them and sometimes with them and sometimes listening. I spoke at, by the time the year’s over, it’ll be 24 conferences this year. More than 24 talks, but that many conferences I spoke at. I moved back to Chicago, so my experiment of living in the Bay came to an end because of short people that are related to me, that it’s nice to be around them. So that happened. I went to a lot of DevOps Days this year, and I also got a lot more interested, even more interested in the field around resilience engineering, and really came to realize that I don’t know shit. Like, that’s sort of the thing that I find as I get more into RE. It’s like every day I realized even that there’s even less that I know than I thought I knew. And that’s so— I think if you’re interested in that industry and that scope, understand that, like, first of all, it’s relatively new to— it’s been— it’s a field that’s been around for a long time. Software has just discovered it. And of course, like everything else that software discovers, we think we invented it and we perfected it. And what we know is about— there’s no video. But it’s like a tiny little dot.

Jessica: [00:17:01] But resilience engineering is recent anyway.

Matty: Well, it’s recent, but that’s—

Jessica: We’re not that far out of date.

Matty: It’s all relative, I guess, right?

Jessica: Like, yeah, what do you count? Do you count human factors? Because in some ways resilience engineering is a repudiation of human factors engineering. So it’s all an evolution.

Bridget: Safety science.

Matty: I guess if you look at when resilience engineering was created as a field and people started talking about it. I mean, it’s all relative. I’m not saying it’s been around for 100 years.

Jessica: No, more like 20.

Matty: Right, exactly.

Joe: Did Google write a book about it? That’s where you clearly know.

Jessica: No, they didn’t.

Joe: Where something gets invented.

Jessica: They didn’t, but they didn’t.

Joe: Well, then it hasn’t been invented yet.

Bridget: Speaking of writing a book about, I should tell you that I actually got the paper book of Kubernetes Best Practices. Nice.

Matty: It came in the mail.

Bridget: I’m very excited. Also, Lockie told me yesterday that I didn’t need to order it because since I was a reviewer for it— see, I have a pull quote on the back. He was like, oh, we have one for you. I’m like, okay, well, I guess I’m giving this one away at my meetup.

Matty: [00:18:12] On that topic of showing off Kubernetes stuff, as you may know, I used to have the Illinois license plate DevOps, and I can’t get it anymore because I think ’Cause I think they put a hold on it. ’Cause when I moved to California, I got rid of it. And when I tried to get another one when I moved back here, it says it’s not available. And I think it’s because my version expired recently. So rather than wait it out, I decided I need a new one. So in the next couple of weeks, my car will be sporting Cube Cuddle.

Trevor: Wow.

Jessica: Cube Cuddle. Love it.

Matty: Oh my God. So Trevor, what’s up with you this year?

Trevor: I’ve been doing a lot of travel as usual, a lot of customer interaction work, kind of figuring out where, where things need to head and focusing on delivering new solutions. As of this month, I’m now officially also in product.

Bridget: Team product, right?

Jessica: Yeah.

Trevor: I also got super into shuffleboard this year. I actually went and played in the international shuffleboard tournament in Vienna. Uh, like the tournament. I am the, I am the 46th, uh, best male player in the world.

Jessica: [00:19:25] What?

Bridget: That’s amazing.

Jessica: Congratulations.

Trevor: Um, thank you. Uh, I also got super into D&D and I’ve been running my own campaign and it’s been a blast.

Bridget: Okay, so it said in the document D and then the letter N and then D, and I always think of it, you know, D&D, AD&D, as having the ampersand. And so I was thinking, I wonder why Trevor isn’t to do not disturb so much? Is this something that he like has made a life choice of?

Matty: That seems like something that you would be more fascinated with if you worked at pager duty or something.

Trevor: Potentially, yeah. Jess?

Jessica: Um, yes, that’s interesting about D&D, Trevor, because we have started doing that this year too. In fact, we have a family D&D campaign.

Trevor: Oh, that’s awesome.

Jessica: Yeah, yeah, we started it like last December or so?

Matty: My boys want to learn to play, and so we bought the set again, but the problem is it’s like a little bit too much for them. And I like talked to Adam Jacob and he’s like, oh, this is what I do, because his daughter’s the same age as my boys. But like, he’s a really good DM, so he can like do this. I’m like, I don’t remember. So I’m trying to puzzle that out. So we may—

Joe: [00:20:38] How young is too young for Satanism?

Matty: That I’m not worried about. You know, I mean, they’ve had First Communion, they’re covered, right? You know, they can—

Bridget: Yeah, wait, so Stratton, can you— I feel like there’s a solution exists, right? Have Adam just give you some of the campaign materials that he’s generated.

Jessica: Well, the campaign materials is not DMing.

Bridget: I know, but it would at least help. It would get you started.

Matty: The trick of it is that you, when you’re teaching it, that from what Adam told me, and I’m, and I’m gonna number one pretend that Adam’s listening to this so he can correct me by quoting him incorrectly, was that a lot of it is abstracting the mechanics away from them so they aren’t so worried about all the mechanics. So you need— but to do that, you have to have a really good understanding of what the rules are so that you can just sort of let— so it becomes much more about the storytelling and less about all of the mechanics, because that’s a lot of rules.

Trevor: Yes, Trevor, you might want to look at— there’s a, there’s a different system called Fate, okay, which actually focuses on that. And basically you just get— you have the mechanics as the DM to determine what happens without having to make everybody really roll stuff. Um, so it’s much more built around storytelling.

Bridget: [00:21:49] Just like Dark Souls.

Joe: So what, what version is— what version is D&D on these days?

Trevor: Because I played—

Joe: I played 2nd edition. Yeah, I, I still remember, I still remember rolling THAC0 and, and all that stuff, which I’m assuming is not a thing anymore.

Matty: No, I don’t, I don’t think it is. You have heard of THAC0 or you haven’t?

Trevor: I haven’t.

Matty: It means to hit armor class 0.

Bridget: Yeah.

Joe: That’s, that’s, that’s your, that’s your, that’s your roll. That’s your roll for attack is you roll THAC0.

Matty: Yeah, I remember THAC0 is not there. I was looking at the rules when we bought them and I was like, I specifically was looking for THAC0 and it was not there. That’s Advanced Dungeons Dragons Edition 2, by the way.

Trevor: It’s still there, you just don’t call it THAC0 anymore. There you go.

Matty: Well, because it’s not d20. It’s not d20.

Bridget: hashtag abstraction. Jessica is telling us stuff.

Joe: Yes.

Jessica: Right. This is my d20 that lives in my pocket at the moment because I’ve enjoyed the ability to roll to make decisions sufficiently that I’m like, well, now when I don’t know when to order at a restaurant, I can just get out my d20.

Joe: [00:22:54] I figured it was for saving throws.

Trevor: That too.

Jessica: That too. So D&D has been popular at home. Maddie, you made an interesting point about how when you really understand the rules, then you can transcend them and you can get at their spirit without stepping through the letter. That’s a lot of what we do.

Joe: Yeah, I have no idea where my dice are now. We have a large collection of World of Darkness and, and 2nd edition D&D.

Matty: We still were hearing about Jessica’s career.

Bridget: She has in her, uh, thoughts, right?

Jessica: Right. So 2019 was fun, uh, since Natty spoke at at least 24 conferences. I went and counted, and I spoke at at least 6 Most of those were keynotes, which was exciting. So a lot of people got to hear about collective problem solving in music, art, science, and software, which is fabulous. I’m really excited how that one resonates with people, and people want to be part of a learning team. In other news, as of yesterday, I don’t have a full-time job anymore. I’m moving into an advisory role at Atomist again. And so I’m available for consulting and stuff, which I’m very excited about. Yeah, so I get to end the year in a place of possibility.

Bridget: [00:24:20] All right, so that brings us, I guess, to Joe.

Joe: Oh geez, what did I do this year? I followed you around the world. On a few trips. We went to, you know, a few really long airplane rides. Watched a lot of movies on planes, which is apparently where I catch up on movies these days is on planes. Tried to do my actual real job from time to time when I’m not flitting around the globe. And I know she mentioned it on a previous episode, but a big shout out to VanMoof e-bikes, as we got a couple of those and got to enjoy those a bunch right before, right before the snow hit. So, so those are super cool. I was, I was super, super skeptical about e-assist bikes, being, you know, being the bike snob that I am, but they are super fun.

Jessica: Hey, Joe, could you use words? I am using an e-bike and an e-assist bike.

Joe: [00:25:22] The e-assist bike, it’s basically, it’s an electric assist bike. It’s a, it’s a regular, it’s a regular plain old pedal bike with an electric motor on it to help you go faster, or not necessarily go faster, but be able to maintain a decent speed without working so hard.

Jessica: So you can like, um, well, okay, I want, I want one because I want to be able to keep up with the person I’m riding with who is in way better shape than me. That would work.

Joe: That would, that would work. Um, these are the, the ones, the, the ones that we got, um, made by a Dutch cycling company called VanMoof, um, which you plugged on a, on a recent episode.

Bridget: I think so. Yes, you didn’t thump the table that the mic is on.

Joe: I’m, I’m thumping tables.

Jessica: Um, that’s the eggnog thump.

Joe: It is, it is the eggnog. It is the eggnog thumping. Um, yeah, the VanMoof, the VanMoof bikes are, are pedal assist. You have to pedal for the electric motor to engage and have to keep pedaling in order to have the electric motor run. And they’re capped in the US at 20 miles an hour. So you can maintain a pretty decent clip, like 16, 17 miles an hour without really working all that hard. You can pedal, pedal at an easy pace and maintain that, maintain that nice high speed so you can get where you’re going. And, you know, you can bike to work and not end up a giant sweaty mess when you get there. Which is, which is, which is a benefit to the, to the whole e-bike thing. They also have a little turbo boost button. So if you need to pass somebody or need to make a, or need to get up a hill or make a light, you can, you can hit the turbo boost and that will boost you up to the max speed.

Bridget: [00:27:06] Nice.

Joe: Which is a lot of fun.

Bridget: Okay, so I think we can segue from things Joe enjoyed about 2019 pretty easily to he’s going to wait for the snow to be gone. So that he can ride his e-bike in 2020.

Joe: I don’t have to— well, I don’t have to wait.

Trevor: There’s an important detail in Minnesota between then and then. How is the ice doing?

Bridget: Um, there’s some pretty nice snow. Well, so he has a snow—

Joe: yeah, I mean, I don’t need to— I don’t need to wait for the snow to melt to ride a bike. I mean, I have—

Bridget: you just aren’t going to ride your e-bike.

Joe: Yeah, I just won’t— I won’t get the e-bike out because as hard as road salt and ice and water are on normal bike components, they would be really bad on e-bike components. So I will just be on the fat bike for the next 6 months.

Bridget: Okay. And is that the main thing you’re looking forward to in 2020, is the bike race that you’re gonna do in March?

Joe: Well, well, that’s like the first thing. Well, that and the preparation for that. Um, the rest of the things I’m looking forward to in 2020— traveling less. I think I’m stealing your I think I’m stealing your thunder by— but traveling less would be a thing. If I’m sitting here, you know, in December of 2020 and I have no status on Delta, that would be a very, a very nice thing.

Bridget: [00:28:23] Yep, that’s my plan. My plan is no airline status and spending more time with the cats. Because like, I can talk to him on FaceTime when I go for a trip without him, but the cats are not interested at all in talking with me on FaceTime. It’s really upsetting. So, that’s my plan. How about you, Matty?

Matty: So, yeah, just being more settled back here in Chicago is something I’m definitely looking forward to. I’m also looking forward to trying some different kinds of events. I went to a lot of DevOps Days this year. I love DevOps Days. I would like to do something different. So, if you have events you think that I would be a good fit for, please let me know. I’m pretty easy to find on the internet. And, um, yeah, uh, Trevor, what’s, what’s, what’s your highlights of 2020? I feel like there’s, um, there’s a bunch of Marvel stuff happening this year too that I’m excited about. There’s all the new shows, but I don’t think any of the new Disney+ shows are in 2020 though.

Joe: No, I mean, aside from— I guess The Mandalorian is going to wrap up before, right?

Matty: [00:29:25] But none of the new Marvel shows I think are like— I think they’re all in ’21.

Joe: Oh, that Black Widow trailer just, just dropped. That looks, that looks pretty decent.

Matty: I’m looking forward to that movie. Yeah, for sure. Because that’s, that’s like, that’s like real movie, not Disney+ movie.

Joe: Anyway, Trevor, you were saying?

Trevor: Um, well, along the lines of TV series, uh, Captain Picard makes his glorious return at the end of January, um, which, you know, I’m a little skeptical because, you know, what’s that, what’s that gonna be on? Uh, CBS.

Matty: Oh, like real TV?

Joe: No, CBS All Access.

Matty: Oh, so if you don’t have like cable, you can’t watch it?

Trevor: No, you can go on their streaming service.

Bridget: You could subscribe to that thing that CBS is trying to have.

Joe: Or hey, are you traveling to Europe at any time? Because it’s on Netflix. All those shows are on Netflix. That’s how I watched— that’s how I watched both seasons of Star Trek Discovery.

Matty: Got it.

Bridget: [00:30:25] Also You— it’s possible that you can set your VPN, uh, to have opinions about where you are that— yes, you know, anyway, well, we don’t know anything about that.

Matty: No, no, no, nope.

Trevor: I got a nice lovely, uh, 2386 bottle of Château Picard waiting, uh, waiting to be opened for the, uh, the premiere.

Matty: I, I really love how every year When we do the year-end wrap-up, we take the self-indulgence to a new level. So now we’ve got thousands of people listening to a podcast where Trevor is talking about his Star Trek wine. Aren’t you all glad you subscribed?

Bridget: Hey, they are not required to listen to anything.

Joe: Is this gonna be the thing that will finally get people to subscribe to CBS All Access? ’Cause, you know, ’cause 2 seasons of Star Trek: Discovery could not do it.

Jessica: The question is, yeah, you’re not gonna subscribe for the one show. They have cookie recipes.

Joe: I subscribed to Disney Plus just for The Mandalorian, but I did. But that’s me and I’m nuts.

Matty: [00:31:29] Jessica brings up a good point. Um, before we finish up with what Jessica’s looking forward to in 2020, because I think she’s looking forward to right now to Trevor telling us about these freaking cookies finally. We’ve been waiting for like 40 minutes.

Bridget: Can we let Jessica say her bit first? Because I know she has like an airplane or something.

Matty: Okay, well, we have to finish before she gets on the airplane because she has to say that.

Bridget: I know, but I want to make sure she gets a chance to talk.

Jessica: Okay. I have absolutely no idea what I’m looking forward to in 2020. I’m looking forward to finding out what I learned in 2020 because it would be boring to already know what it is.

Bridget: I love your attitude.

Matty: So I was right, cookie recipes.

Bridget: Yeah. Tell us about these cookies.

Jessica: Apparently I’m gonna learn about cookie recipes.

Trevor: Well, so for context, we were talking about different things that we’ve made before the show started, and Joe was showcasing his lovely homemade eggnog, which none of you can see, but I can. And so I mentioned last week I made some cookies. So I made— they were my grandmother’s recipe. When we were— when I was growing up, my grandmother used to make cookies for Everybody, your thing that you got for Christmas was a basket of cookies. She would make like 24 different cookies. And then my mom started doing that when we moved to New Hampshire. And then we had a cookie exchange at the shuffleboard club last week. So I decided to make 3 of the cookies, not 24 different cookies. So I made gingerbread cookies, Norwegian sugar cookies, and a cookie called an Ishael tart. To which Bridget asked, what’s initial tart? And I started describing it, and it made Matt very upset because Matt really wanted you all to hear the podcast and not the cookie recipes.

Matty: [00:33:16] No, I wanted this to be in the podcast was my point. I was like, don’t, don’t use it all up. So as an experiment, because I’m really curious about how many people have gotten this far in the show. Um, if you are listening and you’ve gotten to this part, tweet at us and just tweet @ArrestedDevOps and just say Trevor’s cookies and hashtag Trevor’s cookies. Hashtag Trevor’s cookies.

Jessica: That’s easier to spell than— what did you call them, Trevor?

Matty: Ishall tart.

Trevor: Ishall tarts.

Bridget: All right, so tell us what is in this cookie, Trevor.

Trevor: Okay, so an ishall tart, it’s, it’s a sandwich cookie, uh, and the dough has almond in it. Uh, it’s got a little bit of, uh, Vanilla, but what makes them special is in the sandwich it’s a raspberry preserve, and then you dust them with powdered sugar.

Matty: I want one.

Joe: Yeah, I was gonna say we need this recipe.

Trevor: [00:34:19] Or you could just ship us the recipe. I have to make a new batch. Do you have the—

Matty: is the recipe online? Can you put a link to it in the show notes? Or are you going to write it in the show notes?

Trevor: I have to decide if I want to give out my grandma’s cookie recipe.

Matty: Oh snap, is your grandmother Nestlé Toulouse?

Bridget: You do not have to give us the recipe, but I love the inspiration, which is this is the season for making those delicious family recipes.

Jessica: Make the recipe show up wrong unless your location shows you’re in Europe.

Trevor: So yes, the cookies came out really well and they were a hit, and it was a lot of fun to make them, and it was special because of the family connection.

Jessica: Yay!

Joe: So that’s our look back and our look forward. Um, y’all do a fair amount of speaking at events. What are events that people who are listening to this should consider coming to? Not necessarily to see your Smiling faces. But what would be interesting events for people to consider going to if they have the money and the free time to go to in 2020?

Bridget: [00:35:30] I’ll answer that. You’re thinking I’m going to say DevOps Days, and I will, but the CNCF is going to put on some events that are sort of DevOps Days-sized and locally scoped called Kubernetes Community Days. Jennifer Davis, one of my colleagues at Microsoft, is helping consult with them to make those really, truly community-driven events that are going to be significantly smaller than a KubeCon, more locally focused, and draw some inspiration from DevOps Days in terms of the kind of event they’re going to be. That’s one. Then, I have another one that I will say if no one else says it, but I bet someone else will.

Matty: So it might be a little late because it’s coming up very soon, but there’s a very, very cool conference happening in Seattle in January called Delivery Conf.

Bridget: That’s what I was gonna say, and then I’m like, I know Matty’s gonna say that.

Matty: So it does feature— I was gonna say it features one of our speaking faces, one of our smiling faces, which is Jessica. I am really bummed that I am not gonna be able to go to it because I am going to speak at CAST42 in London that week. Um, and, but this is— so for, as the way that I put it, and I don’t put it the way that I would paraphrase what I’ve been told, is for all of y’all who’ve been complaining that there’s not enough technical content about continuous delivery and it’s all this stuff, this is like the hardcore— this is the conference you want to go to. This is the how you do the stuff. So y’all should go to it, um, for sure.

Trevor: [00:37:11] There’s—

Matty: they’ve been announcing all the speakers. It looks super exciting. And it’s fairly affordable. And, you know, I mean, I don’t know how much it costs you to get to Seattle. That’s on you.

Joe: But, you know, and they sounded like they had a very interesting format. I remember listening to that episode, the episode that you recorded with, with, uh, with the Delivery Comp folks, and thinking that’s a really unusual format. They— I hope— I wish them good luck because that could either succeed great or it could be a horrible tire fire. Depending.

Bridget: Oh, this is the Q&A thing?

Joe: Yes, this is the Q&A.

Bridget: Oh, are they gonna catch bottles?

Matty: Well, it’s not so much Q&A, I think, as it’s like an immediate kind of— it’s almost like a fishbowl, I think, right away. Like after. So it’s a moderated open space right after.

Joe: It would need to be heavily moderated considering what I’ve seen of Q&A sessions for—

Bridget: It’s more of a comment than a question.

Joe: Yes, exactly. This is a question in 5 parts. It would have to be— I have 6 questions.

Bridget: [00:38:16] My first question—

Matty: Well, and I think that’s why it’s going to kind of work too, because it’s not Q&A. So actually, that is the place for sharing stories. And that’s been my understanding from talking to them and also knowing the folks who are organizing it. They’ve had a lot of experience with open spaces and things. And if anybody can pull it off, I think they can. But I think that’s the thing. If it was just Q&A, that’s rough. But all the things that we hate in Q&A could actually be okay in that format, which is— because normally during Q&A, nobody cares what you have to say, random person in the audience. But if it’s sharing your experience, that’s actually the right time for it in that particular thing. We’ll see what happens. You know, Jessica, you’ll have to let us know how it goes. What are some other conferences maybe that people might want to check out, or I might want to check out selfishly?

Trevor: Well, I don’t— I haven’t really made a ton of tech conferences this year, so I’m going to suggest a non-tech conference for folks to check out to unwind. I went to Gen Con for the first time this year. Gen Con is a board game convention in Indianapolis.

Bridget: [00:39:21] I’ve heard good things.

Trevor: And it basically takes over all of Indianapolis, and I got to see all kinds of new games and like models and figures and all kinds of things. And on top of that, I met a bunch of people who are also in tech and kind of also got to have a little bit of hallway track at Gen Con while playing board games. So it was kind of a win-win, and it was a lot of fun, and I would, I would recommend it to anybody who finds games amusing.

Joe: We have a friend of ours that, that went yearly when it was in Milwaukee and has gone, has also gone when it was in, uh, when it was in Indianapolis. Uh, fun fact, I was reading an io9 article about Gary Gygax earlier this year, and the Gen in Gen Con was originally Lake Geneva, Wisconsin.

Bridget: What?

Joe: Yeah.

Matty: Oh, that makes sense, because isn’t that where— was it on the coast?

Joe: Yep, that’s where he was living. That’s where he was living when he, when he pseudo-created Dungeons& Dragons.

Jessica: [00:40:26] Nice.

Joe: That’s a, that’s a, a perfect example of, of parallel developments. It was being— that sort of thing was being worked on from multiple angles and, and by multiple people.

Bridget: Yeah.

Joe: And that was the whole thrust of the, of the io9 article I was reading, was the, was the, the very convoluted, uh, development of Dungeons& Dragons.

Matty: Parallel evolution.

Joe: Kind of thing. Yeah, the one, the one thing I’m surprised no one has brought up is the, is the, the new not velocity, is, uh, is, uh, uh, whatchamacallit, infrastructure and operations. There you go.

Trevor: That’s it.

Bridget: I am excited for Sam Newman and crew, and I think they have already got some, uh, good people on the program committee, and I think that they’re going to put together a good event. Like, I feel like I’m in the my watch has ended category.

Joe: Yeah, like, oh, my watch has ended.

Bridget: I don’t have more energy to put into third-party events right now. Especially because I’m not in DevRel anymore, but I am very happy that they are doing a more focused event that is going to hopefully serve people pretty well.

Matty: [00:41:30] I think it’s exciting to make the pivot and adapt and evolve and try something a little different and a little more focused in that particular way. We’ll see what happens.

Joe: It was fun to be in Berlin for the last one. Moving along. We’re a DevOps podcast. We cannot let the year-end wrap-up go by without mentioning that the 10th anniversary of DevOps Days happened this year in Ghent. Stratton, Bridget, and myself were in attendance. Thoughts about the event and 10 years of DevOpsDays?

Bridget: Well, in the document, you have 10 years of DevOps, and I feel like those are 2 very different questions.

Joe: I didn’t write the doc. Don’t try and throw that at my feet.

Bridget: I know, but I’m like, 10 years of DevOpsDays, I wasn’t at all of them, but I wasn’t at all of 10 years of DevOps either. But I will say that I think it’s really, really nice that throughout the world, people are putting together events that work for them locally.

Matty: I think one thing that really resonated with me— so, for folks who didn’t know, one of the things that we did— and I say we like I’d been to any other DevOpsDays Ghent. I had not, although Patrick did try to— we almost had an Arrested DevOps recording at the 5-year anniversary. Patrick was really excited. In fact, no, we did. But I don’t think— Doocy represented the show somehow in some kind of thing that happened there. It was very strange. I don’t know. It was not official. But anyway, there was an organizer summit that took place the day before the actual event, so people who organize DevOps Days all over the world came in a day early to kind of learn from each other. One of the things I thought was really remarkable is there were more people at that organizer summit, and that doesn’t represent all the organizers. That’s just the ones who were able to come to Ghent. There were more people that organized their summit than were at the very first DevOps Days 10 years ago, which is not a reflection on how few people were at the first DevOps Days, but how many people all around the world are really bringing this event into, like Bridget said, into their own country, into their own community, into their own way of getting. We learned so much interesting things about all these folks from all over the world about how they’re doing the events differently, but there’s still the same spirit. And community. It was really, really powerful, and I’m really glad to have been able to be part of it, of that particular thing. I was a part of— glad to be part of the whole thing, but specifically that organizer summit was a really special day.

Bridget: [00:44:01] I think there is not necessarily a right way to do your local community, but it’s really nice to get a chance to bounce ideas off other people and figure out what stuff has been working for them so that you can try it. I think that’s one of the sharing across different geos and over time is really powerful there.

Matty: I think the other thing, just by being part of that celebration, because that’s really what it felt like. It was an interesting DevOps Days. There were some really great talks, but really what it felt like was a celebration of how the community has come together over that decade, really, right? Over the 10 years, how the industry has come together, how the things that have happened because of of this movement and just seeing the folks who were impacted and thinking about how things have changed, and mostly for the better. I think DevOps has definitely done more good than harm. That’s, as Schaefer would say, solving more problems than it causes, right? That’s the idea there.

Bridget: [00:45:10] What do you think, Trevor, DevOps Jesus? Are you, these days, solving more problems than you cause?

Trevor: I try to be. I definitely, I definitely solve problems. I don’t know that there’s not more problems that come out of it when you’re— when you, when you expose the first problem and fix it, and then suddenly there’s the 40 other spider problems that pop out from the one that you fixed.

Bridget: Yeah, but you didn’t cause them.

Matty: That’s true.

Trevor: I just assumed so.

Bridget: You made it possible to see them.

Joe: Moving on. Anything else that we want to talk about before we wrap this thing up?

Matty: Watch this space. We may be making— there may be some news coming to this show that you’re listening to, Arrested DevOps in 2020. We’re not telling, but we continue to evolve. Mostly, what I’m trying to get at is we are probably going to switch to a hologram format.

Joe: [00:46:13] Oh, okay. Holograms. Yeah, as long as—

Matty: and you’re gonna get your podcast on the blockchain.

Joe: Blockchain podcast at long last. VC funding, please. Okay, cool. As long as, as long as we have— as long as Adobe has some sort of application that allows me to edit hologram podcasts, I’m perfectly cool.

Matty: It just doesn’t work.

Joe: It just doesn’t work on a Mac.

Matty: Capistrano or whatever the new one is called. Cupertino. No, what, what the hell is the new Catalina?

Joe: Uh, Catalina.

Matty: Yeah, I love that it’s now gotten to the fact that now it’s nagging, right? Now it’s like, now I have to put the little badge.

Joe: Yeah, I’m, I’m really annoyed that they have to put a badge on the, on the, the system profile settings.

Matty: Yeah.

Bridget: No, wait, what are we talking about?

Trevor: The new—

Matty: you’re, you, you’re like 3 versions.

Joe: macOS now.

Bridget: I just— so what I do with macOS, which is a completely reasonable approach, is I wait until the week before WWDC when they’re going to announce all the new brokenness, and I upgrade to the old brokenness that they have fixed all the brokenness in.

Matty: [00:47:19] But, but the problem is that we’re getting to that— we’re getting to the point of I’m still on the old brokenness, but now the new brokenness has been out long enough that they have to put a notification on the System Preferences icon And it’s a badge, and I am really, really, really, really irritated.

Jessica: Oh, I’m so that.

Bridget: Yeah.

Matty: Yeah, so I used to be crazy because I want badges to go away.

Joe: Yeah, I’m one of those people that has to— whatever badge, I gotta get rid of it.

Matty: I gotta— I will break my computer to make that badge go away is basically what’s gonna happen.

Joe: You guys do not want to upgrade just yet.

Matty: No, no, I can’t. Apparently some software we use at work is like—

Joe: see, it’s right there.

Bridget: Yeah, yeah, we’re talking about that. Okay, yeah, I just ignore that. I think—

Matty: no, I cannot do that.

Bridget: I think of the little wheel as always having a red one.

Matty: Well, I guess for you, Bridget, it always does, so it doesn’t even look like a badge to you. Yeah, it looks like a badge the entire time.

Joe: I guess we can count on that. We can count on an Apple sponsorship to come through any day.

Matty: I’m just hoping we stay in the iTunes Store, in the iTunes directory after that.

Joe: [00:48:20] Community and events stuff. There are lots of DevOps Days that have OpenCFPs, including— is Minneapolis? Is our CFP open?

Jessica: Yes, absolutely.

Joe: CFP and sponsorships and registration open for DevOps Days Minneapolis 2020, August 4th.

Matty: And by the time you are listening to this, we will have posted the dates for DevOps Days Chicago, which are September 1st and 2nd, and sponsorship will be available. So check that out too. Our CFP is now open. And by the way, Joe, I’d like to point out for your little— I’m going to read your notes word for word— you’re the one that’s like, speaker notes are not as script. It’s not a teleprompter.

Joe: That’s right, that’s right. That’s my, that’s my thing for, for 2019, my, my work. Okay, I’m gonna rant a little bit here.

Matty: So you gotta say it like Dennis Miller. You gotta be like, I don’t wanna go off on a rant here.

Joe: No, he does.

Bridget: He wants to go off on a rant.

Joe: And I don’t want to go out and get off on a rant on Dennis Miller, but that dude used to be funny, and then he got, and then he got all conservative and right-wingy, and he’s not funny anymore. That’s right, I said it, Dennis. You’re not funny anymore. So where was I? Oh yeah, I was ranting about speaker notes. So here’s the thing. Here’s my, here’s my, my work pet peeve of the year.

Matty: [00:49:31] Nobody’s listening to the show anymore.

Joe: People that treat speaker notes as a teleprompter. It’s not a teleprompter. Learn your talk. There, end of rant. All right, so community and event stuff. Lots of DevOps Days, lots of OpenCFPs, devopsdays.org/speaking. You can find out where a DevOps Days near you or far away from you, if you want to travel, has an open CFP. Go submit something because you definitely have a story to tell, and they’re anxious to have you come tell it at their faces. Matt, wrap this up.

Matty: All right. Head on over to arresteddevops.com/2019inreview for this episode’s show notes. Which may or may not include a recipe for Insta-Tarts or whatever the hell cookies Trevor was talking about. What it’s called?

Trevor: Issual Tarts.

Matty: Issual Tarts.

Bridget: That sounds amazing, Trevor.

Matty: Insta-Tarts. They’re like, you know, they’re social media cookies.

Joe: They’re tarts, but you only get pictures of them.

Matty: You only get pictures of tarts. If you go to restdevops.com/itunes, you can leave us a review in the iTunes Store. We might read it on the air. We might not, especially because this isn’t radio.

Joe: [00:50:42] Have we ever actually read a review on air? Yes, we have.

Jessica: We have.

Joe: I don’t know how to look up the review. I’ve been editing this show for like 3 years now, and I don’t think I’ve ever edited— I’ve ever listened to a—

Matty: It predated— it’s called— the episode is called Two Chimps and a Mic. Or no, I’m sorry, the review was titled Two Chimps and a Mic, and it actually was left by Michael Ducey. We did, under an anonymous pseudonym, and we found out about later. But also, speaking of radio, if you use iHeartRadio, our podcast is on it. We’re also on Spotify and all those places, so check us out over there and heart us or thumb us or whatever things you do.

Joe: Thank you for bearing with us this year in this episode in specific. We will see you all in 2020. So signing off, I’m Joe @JoeLehey.

Bridget: I’m Bridget @BridgetCromhout.

Trevor: I’m Trevor, @TrevorGHess.

Jessica: I’m Jessica Kerr, @Jessitron on Twitter.

Matty: And I’m Matt, @MattStratton. We’re Arrested DevOps, and remember, there’s always DevOps and banana pants in the banana stand.