Mandi Walls on Developer Community and Conference Conversations | UGtastic Archive
Mandy Walls, a technical evangelist with Opscode, discusses the role of a technical evangelist, the work done at Opscode, and the importance of diversity in the technical community. She explains that technical evangelists help customers understand Chef, an open-source platform for managing servers, and that Opscode runs a user conference, ChefConf, where anyone using Chef can submit talks. Mandy also touches on the challenges of organizing and reviewing proposals for the conference and her interest in increasing diversity in the technical community.
The Interviewer
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
The Guest
Mandi Walls
developer community and conference conversations
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
▶ Speaking
Hi, it's Mike again with UGtastic. I'm sitting down today with Mandy Walls, who's a technical evangelist with Opscode. The Chef people, if you've ever done any kind of building servers or managing using the Chef utility, well, it's Opscode. Hi Mandy, thanks for taking the time to sit down with me today. I kind of just want to ask you straight off, what exactly is a technical evangelist and how do you work with the technical community? Do you run conferences or do you work with people at conferences? Do you speak or how does that work? What is that?
Mandi Walls
developer community and conference conversations
▶ Speaking
So originally our technical evangelist positions were folks who basically help our customers and our would-be customers like understand what Chef does, what it is, how it can help you manage all of your systems. Over time and as Opscode has grown, we're actually now the Opscode's professional services team. So technically I'm really a consultant and I get to travel to our customers as they need help. We do training. I go to conferences representing Opscode. So sometimes like in a booth or at a table, passing out literature, sometimes giving talks about our product. We run our own conference. So that was the other part of your question. We are, Opscode does run a user conference in college, ChefConf. And that's actually this year taking place in April. And so we put that together as a forum for our bigger customers who, well, for anybody really, but as a place for our folks to share things they've learned about Chef and how they're running their infrastructures and things like that. It's been pretty interesting.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
▶ Speaking
Yeah. Chef is open source, correct?
Mandi Walls
developer community and conference conversations
▶ Speaking
Absolutely.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
▶ Speaking
Yeah.
Mandi Walls
developer community and conference conversations
▶ Speaking
So, so it's, it's, it's an open source platform for managing servers and people and people who are managing, well, it's, it's Linux. It's all Linux if I, or. Actually, uh, we, we support Windows now.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
▶ Speaking
Oh, really?
Mandi Walls
developer community and conference conversations
▶ Speaking
So yeah, you can have Windows clients, uh, for different, uh, versions of Windows 2000 server 2003 and eight and Windows seven. And, uh, we also have support for, like commercial Unix's as well.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
▶ Speaking
Okay.
Mandi Walls
developer community and conference conversations
▶ Speaking
So you, the, the, uh, uh, I, I just blanked out on the name of the conference that you mentioned. The, uh, ChefConf. ChefConf. Um, yep. So it's ChefConf.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
▶ Speaking
Uh, is it all Opscode speakers or do you bring in other? Okay.
Mandi Walls
developer community and conference conversations
▶ Speaking
Uh, no, it's all, it's, we have, uh, an open call for papers actually. So anyone who, uh, uses Chef for, uh, whatever they do, uh, they can send us, uh, submit to our CFP and, uh, come and talk about what they're, what they're doing. Maybe tools they've developed around Chef. Um, some folks at, uh, Etsy in particular write a lot of tools, uh, to do what they do. So they had a talk last year about some of their tools. Um, some of our, uh, other larger customers that are doing sort of interesting things in spaces where open source software is not generally found. So like in financial services and things like that, um, those folks talk last year, we had a talk from Fidelity. Um, we had, uh, cycle computing. They do, um, like bioinformatics, science-y sort of things. Um, so yeah, anybody who does anything with Chef.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
▶ Speaking
Okay. So do you, are you involved in, in organizing or doing the reviews for proposals or?
Mandi Walls
developer community and conference conversations
▶ Speaking
Yeah, absolutely. Um, there's, uh, a number of folks, uh, at Opscode involved. Um, a lot of us do the reviews and then there's a group of us that, um, work on, you know, planning the, uh, deciding what kind of other activities to have, you know, uh, are there things we want to focus on, uh, as far as, you know, topics that the community is interested in that maybe we don't have nobody put in the CFP for. Um, so yeah, we have a small committee of, of folks that, that I'm on that are, that do the planning. And then there's a, everybody who is interested really can read this, the, the, the papers and review them as they get submitted. So we get an idea of what everybody thinks is interesting as we all talk to different customers. So, um, knowing what the entire community is interested in learning about is hard for one person to keep track of.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
▶ Speaking
Yeah. Yeah.
Mandi Walls
developer community and conference conversations
▶ Speaking
It's, it's hard for one person to be the gatekeeper on that. Absolutely. A couple of weeks ago, we had a, uh, kind of an interesting conversation. Ash Dryden, um, has been trying to gather people together who are interested in increasing, uh, diversity in, in the technical community through conferences and user groups and, and places like that. And you were one of the people that I met on that call.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
▶ Speaking
Um, what, what, what made you interested in, in participating in that conversation? And, uh, how does that relate to what, your, the work you're doing with, with, uh, ChefConf?
Mandi Walls
developer community and conference conversations
▶ Speaking
Um, so my interest in that goes back a number of years. Um, for one thing, I've always worked in operations. And when, when we think about diversity in the technical community at large, um, some areas, some niches have better diversity than others. So a couple of times I've been to, to conferences related to maybe database, um, technologies or, uh, programming languages. And the diversity is a lot more broad there than it is when coming from operations. So, um, it was, when I started my career, it was years before I actually met another woman systems administrator. So, um, I kind of got interested in that, um, from that perspective, like it, there, there really isn't that much diversity in operations. It's, it's still very male dominated, which is fine. You know, it's just how things happen, but, um, there are women out there doing it. And, um, so. Well, yeah, operations is, is a, is a unique place in that it, it, it, it has, it may be male dominated, but it's not necessarily even perceived as being a, um, a positive. It, it, it's always got that, uh, awful stereotype of the neck beard hacker. Uh, you know, the Unix, you know, the neck, you know, the bearded Unix old dude who just has been doing this stuff for a million years. Absolutely. Um, but even then it's, it's, it's, it's more diverse. I, I look at our ops team here at Groupon and there's males, females, young, old, but it's, it, it, it is tends to be, to be female. I mean, excuse me, to be male. Um, yes. So, yeah. Sorry. I just drew a blank here on what my point was, but you were, you were saying about the, the, that it tends to not be a very diverse group and you're looking at ways that it has been anything you've done that, uh, like trying to hire in more women or reaching out to, uh, like women's groups, you know, there's some of these, uh, uh, uh, women who code, uh, black girls code, things like that.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
▶ Speaking
But is there anything like that for ops operations?
Mandi Walls
developer community and conference conversations
▶ Speaking
Not really. I mean, years ago, um, when I was first getting started, so the Linux chicks were around and I actually picked my, my moniker before I even knew they existed. Um, so I go by, by Linux chick, but, um, they were an organization that was sort of formed to, to help, uh, women learn Linux in particular. Um, sisters is another group, um, that is sort of, uh, technology agnostic and that there's, uh, women from all different, um, portions of the technology spectrum there, including academics, which is a little interesting.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
▶ Speaking
Um, is that sisters as in like S Y S? Yeah. Okay.
Mandi Walls
developer community and conference conversations
▶ Speaking
So like system sisters.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
▶ Speaking
Okay. Yeah. Yeah.
Mandi Walls
developer community and conference conversations
▶ Speaking
And, uh, that's, uh, supported by the Anita Borg Institute and that's been a really good group as well. But as far as I know, I don't, I, I haven't come across any, like, um, sort of the, there's the groups like that are coming up now, like the women who code and girl development and things like that, that are focused on operations. And, and part of that maybe is that it's, it's hard to teach operations. And, and we, as a, as a portion of the, the industry are struggling with that right now. Like how do we distill the things we know in a productive way to help the next generation of operations people? Um, and, and maybe when we get some of that figured out, like it's, it's one thing, you know, you've got like 35, 40 years of pedagogy for, you know, teaching software development and, and even though the methods have slightly changed and the languages are a little bit different, you're still building, you have notable building blocks and how you teach software engineering.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
▶ Speaking
Um, on the operation side, like what do you start with?
Mandi Walls
developer community and conference conversations
▶ Speaking
Like, okay, here's how you log into a system, but then you can go an infinite number of directions and we haven't really put that together yet. So there's some cool stuff like op school and some other things coming up that, um, I'm really watching to see if there's going to be something there that we could use, uh, in a similar vein as outreach, as, you know, education for the next generation, um, putting something together that's, uh, a, in a comfortable environment for, for girls and women who are maybe intimidated by technology, um, or don't really know enough about it to even make a decision. Um, so yeah, I'm very interested in following a lot of that stuff. Um, the girls who code stuff and, and all those, uh, RailsBridge, pi ladies, um, all those groups are, are really doing some really great things.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
▶ Speaking
Yeah.
Mandi Walls
developer community and conference conversations
▶ Speaking
So you, you, so to wrap up, you mentioned that there was two groups that aren't directly related to ops, but there's the Linux chicks that people can check out and the sisters as in system, uh, S Y S stirs. Um, and you said those are focused on learning Linux and, and, and the fundamentals of, of getting involved and starting there.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
▶ Speaking
Yeah.
Mandi Walls
developer community and conference conversations
▶ Speaking
The Linux chicks, uh, uh, definitely are, are Linux specific sisters is just basically for as long as you stay on technology topic in some way. Um, we, there's good threads about, you know, interviewing and work-life balance and all kinds of stuff for technologists. It's really good. Oh, cool.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
▶ Speaking
Well, thank you for taking the time to sit down with me today. Absolutely. Thanks for inviting me. Thank you.
Critical Insights
durable
"Technical evangelists help customers understand and utilize open-source platforms like Chef."
durable
"Opscode runs an annual user conference, ChefConf, where anyone using Chef can submit talks."
durable
"Increasing diversity in the technical community is important and challenging, with operations being a male-dominated field."
durable
"Chef is an open-source platform for managing servers and supports multiple operating systems including Windows and commercial Unixes."
durable
"The technical community is interested in learning about new tools and applications developed around Chef."