diff --git a/blog/2024-06-19-devconf-2024.md b/blog/2024-06-19-devconf-2024.md new file mode 100644 index 0000000..3625c3e --- /dev/null +++ b/blog/2024-06-19-devconf-2024.md @@ -0,0 +1,164 @@ +--- +title: DevConf.cz 2024 +description: | + Sharing my experience on DevConf.cz 2024. +date: 2024-06-19 +authors: + - key: mf + title: a.k.a. exhausted DevConf attendee +tags: + - 🏭 + - red-hat + - fedora + - devconf + - conferences +--- + +I'd like to share my experience and views on some of the talks that I've +attended on the DevConf.cz 2024. + + + +## Day 1 + +Let's start with the first day which was Thursday this year as opposed to the +previous years when the conference started on Friday and finished on Sunday. + +Let's start with the _[keynote]_. The keynote wasn't very intersting, at some of +the slides actually felt like advertisement for other talks on the topic of the +AI… + +Next talk about _[event-driven Ansible]_ was way more interesting. It allows you +to run Ansible playbooks after provisioning hosts, or on certain events, such as +discovered vulnerabilities. On one hand it feels like a very nice thing, but on +the other one I can't help but to think how you need to write the playbooks, so +that they are generic enough. One more example that's been given comes from the +possibility to react to tickets, e.g., outages and this feels like something +that could be abused to cause DoS. + +Afterwards we've seen two lightning talks, one about +_[choosing the right OpenShift size]_ which was a pretty quick, but detailly +listed all of the possible ways you can deploy OpenShift. This lightning talk +was followed by the first AI (lightning) talk I've attended about +_[rapid prototyping]_ of the open-source AI models. + +As someone who's involved in the automation of the RPM packaging and testing, of +course, we had to attend _[Learning from Nix]_. Nix has a very intriguing +concept which is pretty powerful, but painful at the same time. This can be +summed up pretty nicely by [Tsoding] who got asked about some tips & tricks for +someone who wants to try out NixOS: + +> Just don't. + +And now we're moving into a section where everything revolves about the Packit +Team :) + +First talk about _[changelogs]_ was an interactive session that was (probably) +meant to share different approaches we take to handle this rather convoluted +topic that involves changelogs on both upstream and also on downstream with no +rules[^1]. + +![changelogs](https://i.imgur.com/YHstMAt.jpg) + +Next one was about _[static analysis]_ done by [OpenScanHub]. I like the idea of +running the static analysis that can uncover nasty bugs (as it has been even +showed in the talk) at the same time as they are introduced. I gotta admit that +after seeing the UI of the [deployed OpenScanHub] on the Fedora Infra, I couldn't +help but to think about the [United States Graphics Company] :smile: The UI is +to the point, no fancy annoying shit, you get what you need, it's hard to get +lost. **Just simplicity.** Best kind of UI/UX in my opinion. + +After the OpenScanHub talk we're getting to talks that were taken in a totally +different direction from the usual talks you're used to :wink: First one was +given title of _[“Indiana Jones and obsoleted projects”]_ by [Mirek]. He talked +about projects that got obsoleted, but started with projects that had no +relation to IT field at all. I'd mark this talk as a _stand up_ without any +hesitation. + +And finally we will wrap up the first day with the talk where speakers spoke the +least… _[“Let the users speak!”]_ that involved users of both Packit and +Testing Farm who spoke about their use case and benefits they gained from using +both services in a symbiosis. + +## Day 2 + +On the second day I've attended less talks to not burn myself out :) I've +started with an AI-related talk with title _[“AI: Open source will save us!”]_, +even though this talk has been improvised, as the speakers from the schedule +couldn't have attended, it provided a nice overview what [InstructLab] can do +and how can you “feed” the relevant info into the language models by yourself. + +After that I attended a _“coffee enthusiasts Meetup”_ which was very nice and, +of course, an organized chaos :wink: + +Before attending the social event I wrapped up the second day with a lightning +talk about _[recent updates in Toolbx]_. I've used both [toolbx] and +[distrobox], so it's nice to see the improvements in progress and also that both +projects are well and lively. + +## Day 3 + +On the third day I've attended only in the afternoon. “Started” my day with +a discussion _[“Leadership: Where people skills meet programmers”]_ which was +very nice for gaining an insight into how developer, manager and QE lead roles +overlap. + +That talk has been followed up by a talk about [role rotation] in our Packit +Team. I would say it is a nice “upgrade” to the agile process which allows you +to not create a single point of failure in the mundane and repetitive processes +within your team. + +And this day has been finished off with a talk about [shifting left] in Podman. +It's nice to see how other teams utilize our Packit Service and also the +services we rely on, such as [Copr] or [Testing Farm]. With the help of Cockpit +tests they can catch breaking changes early on, or even bugs that have been +introduced and break usage of the dependent projects. + +![shifting left](https://i.imgur.com/bp6FxT9.jpg) + +## Picks from the Packit Team + +On the Tuesday, during our Packit stand up, I have managed to abuse my +Kanban Lead role to collect some of the talks that each of us would recommend: + +- [Rapid Prototyping] with Open Source AI Models +- Do you like your [changelogs]? +- OpenScanHub - [Static Analysis] of a Linux Distribution +- Creating a [Language Server] for RPM Spec Files +- Containers and Kubernetes Made Easy: A 15-minute dive into [Podman Desktop] +- [“Leadership: Where people skills meet programmers”] + +## Wrap up + +I have to admit that these 3 days have been pretty exhaustive, including +information overload :smile: but at the same time it was really nice to meet +with the colleagues and at least some of our users who are not based in Brno. + +[^1]: except for the Fedora's downstream ;) + +[keynote]: https://pretalx.com/devconf-cz-2024/talk/AD3HWR/ +[event-driven ansible]: https://pretalx.com/devconf-cz-2024/talk/3UKGLB/ +[choosing the right openshift size]: https://pretalx.com/devconf-cz-2024/talk/KSDRWL/ +[rapid prototyping]: https://pretalx.com/devconf-cz-2024/talk/H9QFLM/ +[learning from nix]: https://pretalx.com/devconf-cz-2024/talk/NNKT3F/ +[tsoding]: https://twitch.tv/tsoding +[changelogs]: https://pretalx.com/devconf-cz-2024/talk/ECU7QS/ +[static analysis]: https://pretalx.com/devconf-cz-2024/talk/7C38GJ/ +[openscanhub]: https://openscanhub.dev/ +[deployed openscanhub]: https://openscanhub.fedoraproject.org/ +[united states graphics company]: https://x.com/usgraphics +[“indiana jones and obsoleted projects”]: https://pretalx.com/devconf-cz-2024/talk/X8SYDG/ +[mirek]: https://rodina-sucha.cz/@mirek +[“let the users speak!”]: https://pretalx.com/devconf-cz-2024/talk/BDMWF3/ +[“ai: open source will save us!”]: https://pretalx.com/devconf-cz-2024/talk/QSF9QQ/ +[instructlab]: https://github.com/instructlab/instructlab +[recent updates in toolbx]: https://pretalx.com/devconf-cz-2024/talk/SXWE7K/ +[toolbx]: https://containertoolbx.org/ +[distrobox]: https://distrobox.it/ +[“leadership: where people skills meet programmers”]: https://pretalx.com/devconf-cz-2024/talk/8PARM8/ +[role rotation]: https://pretalx.com/devconf-cz-2024/talk/8T88MT/ +[shifting left]: https://pretalx.com/devconf-cz-2024/talk/WVNJZS/ +[copr]: https://copr.fedorainfracloud.org/ +[testing farm]: https://docs.testing-farm.io/Testing%20Farm/0.1/index.html +[language server]: https://pretalx.com/devconf-cz-2024/talk/RXKMKA/ +[podman desktop]: https://pretalx.com/devconf-cz-2024/talk/HKWP7V/