CITCON conference 2013

I (Michael) recently attended the CITCON conference (Au/NZ).

CITCON (pronounced Kit-con) - is a (usually) free conference for continuous integration and testing run in various places around the world - this one - for a "weekend" type of thing - was quite well attended.

A large contingent of attendees were from the local testing community (ie professional testers of all kinds) as well as many from New Zealand.

CD (Continuous Deployment/Delivery) appeared to be the "new hotness" from the even from CEOs and CIOs point of view, who are aware of it and want it, often with not a clear idea what it means (some people sounded like they were panicking about it - especially people from the testing community). Someone brought up the point that the biggest downside of this hype is that if it is done poorly, it will be forever tainted and never tried again (lets hope not).

A suggestion was proffered that Continuous Deployment is a technical challenge alone (ie get enough tools in place), but Continuous Delivery involved human elements (not sure if that is accepted yet, or not).

There were many tales of the IT department preventing almost all forward progress, regardless of organisation size. I also detected a surprising willingness by traditionally conservative organisations to look towards modern web companies as having tools and techniques they could take on (vs being arrogant and assuming that they know best - being big old companies).

People, generally, for CI purposes, seem to be accepting that using the cloud is inevitable - even if they aren't doing it right now.

This was an open space conference (ie the sessions are organised and conducted by those who turn up !) - at the Sydney Atlassian offices (which were very comfortable - a grand old heritage listed building which used to be a bank)

If there is one held in your area, I recommend checking it out - the open space format really makes it worthwhile (less chance of dud sessions).