On December 31, 1999, I was on call for production at U S WEST (Solaris and FreeBSD servers running email, USENET, authentication, and the like). We worked hard to ensure that the worst thing that happened was my pager broke the strap on my party dress. When the Y2K truthers start up with their nonsense these days, I’m the grizzled old-timer muttering, “Hush, kid. You weren’t there. You didn’t carry a pager.

Chickadees alight on the bird feeder for a few seconds, secure a seed, and flit away. Blue jays glide to the ground under the feeder, where scattered seeds are plentiful (and where the snow offers more stability than the swinging feeder provides). Woodpeckers ignore the feeder altogether, seeking insects in the nearby birch trees. And I watch all this bird activity from the warmth of our northern Minnesota winter cabin, relaxing inside after a couple days of snowshoeing.

Last night, Joe got home from playing guitar and said, “Well, I can see you haven’t moved since I left, which means you probably haven’t eaten anything either.” And indeed, both assertions were true, but I had a good reason! As I explained, “I realized I had a blog post to write, because I’ve been at Microsoft for a year!” Adventure, excitement: a Jedi craves not these things, but I do!

Cutting right to the chase: those selecting talks for a conference want to know, what’s in it for their attendees? If your talk proposal lays that out clearly, it increases your chances of being selected to speak. So for every talk proposal, make sure you can articulate what your actionable takeaways are. But! Lots of other stuff goes into getting on that stage; let’s talk about it. #include <std_disclaimer.h> I’ve spoken at a bunch of conferences, been on the program committee for several, and helped revise the talk proposals of other speakers a number of times, often resulting in talk acceptance.

I’ll bend the world to our will And we’ll make time stand still That’s the plan Rule the world Let’s be honest: if I were a supervillain armed with a freeze ray, I’d use it to keep the world around me in perpetual winter. (In this fantasy world, we’re not fighting climate change while worrying about global thermonuclear war. Sigh.) Here in the imperfect real world, I’m appreciating my favorite season by visiting the frozen north woods of Minnesota.

“Submissions will be initially blind reviewed by a panel of CompanyName employees from a range of departments and backgrounds. Speaker information will be used in any final reviews necessary to break ties and bring a balance to the speaking line-up.” We’re familiar with this language showing up in calls for conference participation. It’s commonplace – unremarkable, really – these days. But would you be surprised to know that, somehow, that specific call for participation recently produced an all-male conference speaker lineup?

Minnesota’s north woods in winter, though a study in snow, aren’t exactly monochromatic. Peeling birch bark, glistening icicles, fir boughs burdened with a textured dusting, flat matte of a frozen lake, idle flakes blowing upwards, ever-so-slightly periwinkle-tinged sky: a boreal forest in winter is replete with variations on white. I’m ending this year as I usually do, in a cabin beyond the reach of cell service (but with internet!), enjoying friends, food, snowshoeing, and pesky squirrels balanced on the bird feeder outside our window when enormous blue jays don’t chase them away.

I go to tech conferences like it’s my job. (Since I do tech advocacy for Cloud Foundry at Pivotal, technically it is part of my job these days.) (2018 update: These days, I’m on the Cloud Developer Advocates team for Microsoft Azure; still lots of livetweeting.) At these events I tweet a lot, to the point where people notice and ask me about it. Sometimes I tell the curious a little about my process; their reactions range from “lolwat” to “you should write that down”.

“stretching out and touching the unknown, the real unknown, the unknown unknown.“ – D.H. Lawrence Much like knowing the right keywords to google when troubleshooting, it takes experience to know the right questions to ask when speaking at a conference. We encourage new speakers at devopsdays Minneapolis, which means I attempt to present all speakers with answers to questions they haven’t asked. This year, I started writing the email for our speakers, and it got long.

Snow, sky, and frozen lake are painted the same color, pine boughs laden with white, icicles hanging from the eaves reaching towards the busy bird feeder outside the cabin window. The larger pine grosbeaks are moving in on the black-capped chickadees, a silent drama playing out in ruffled feathers and dropped seeds. Aggrieved, the chickadees perch sideways on the icicles. At this point, you’re wondering when I started paying attention to birds.

Late-night after Velocity Santa Clara, the crowds filling the hotel lobby bar earlier in the day have scattered. A few conference-goers with morning flights remain, ranging from speakers to conference committee members to attendees taking it all in. We decompress, talk tech, play games, drink, and eat ridiculously rich Nutella chocolate cake. We enjoy these last few hours with new friends and old. After midnight, the discussion takes a serious turn.

In A Woman’s Place Is at the Command Prompt at Velocity NY 2014, our panel facilitator Lara Hogan asked me, “So, how did you get tricked into operations?” Yes, it’s funny, but there’s also a fair amount of truth there. Most people I know who work in any kind of technical operations didn’t start out intending to do that; it just happened. In my case, I got a campus job with the computer science department, and apparently giving root to undergrad student workers was a reasonable solution to being understaffed.

Heard last week at devopsdays in Ghent, Belgium: “I’m just in marketing, so I don’t count.” “I’m just a student, so I don’t have anything to add.” “I’m just a developer, so I don’t really devops.” “I’m not really in the devops tribe; I’m just on the outskirts, but I’m trying.” Whenever I thought to, I tried to assert both in word and deed that the speaker is in the club.

I go to a lot of tech events, which means I meet a lot of people in tech. Most of you won’t be surprised to find out that many of them are dudes, and awesome dudes at that. And way more frequently than I’d like, I also find myself in the most tedious conversations. If you’re wondering why women don’t attend the conferences, unconferences, meetups, or hackathons you enjoy, or why you don’t seem to make meaningful professional connections with the ones who are there, maybe they’ve been having these conversations often enough that they’re tired of it, and would rather spend their time doing anything else at all.

On February 20th I emailed Michael Ducy, one of our local devops meetup organizers, and agreed to be the head organizer for devopsdays Minneapolis. The conference occurred July 17-18. Protip: 147 days isn’t as long as you’d think listening to Spike’s monologue in early BtVS S6. (We’re all nerds here, right?)