
DevOps is, at its core, a
meeting of the minds. A shared understanding, and a shared culture - a
Geist - that empowers all of us to do great things!
When we first set out to plan this year's
DevOps Enterprise Summit (DOES15) - we wanted to bring together some of the best minds in the industry for 3 packed days of all-things-DevOps -- so that we can all share, learn, and get better - together. DOES15, happening next month, now boasts an impressive lineup of
over 70 speakers from all around the DevOps community. These are software experts, practitioners and thought leaders from Fortune 1,000 brands who will share practical approaches on how DevOps and Continuous Delivery drive value to customers and enterprise IT users alike.
As we were developing the content for the conference, we asked our esteemed speakers some tough questions: We asked them to share with us their particular challenges implementing DevOps in some of the most complex enterprises in the world; sharing their failures; their triumphs; their lessons learned and patterns for success; and where they, too, need help.
We - also - asked them to weigh in on other important stuff, for example which
other great minds they wish they could hang with:
Dead or alive, who would you like to eat dinner / drink / code / compare war stories with?
Below is a sample of the answers from some of our speakers (if you run into them at the conference- here's a great conversation starter for you!). We invite you to weigh in too, on Twitter (using #DOES15) or in the comments below.
Carmen DeArdo
DevOps Technology Leader, Nationwide Insurance
"From an IT perspective, it has to be Deming ."
Charles Nelles
Director, IT Operational Support, Western Union
"Douglas Adams , only book I ever read to make me laugh out loud, almost hysterically in a public place. I would love to spend an evening at a pub with him."
Chivas Nambiar
Director – Systems Engineering, Verizon

"Michael Lopp (@rands) and Joel Spolsky "
Dominic Faraone
Software Engineer, CenturyLink

"
Benjamin Franklin "
Dominica DeGrandis
Director of Learning & Development, LeanKit
"Eleanor Roosevelt "
Eric Passmore
Head of Software Engineering, MSN
"Ulysses S. Grant - I think he could relate to me, we both like to get the job done"
Erica Morrison
Senior Manager Software Development, CSG International
"Peyton Manning "
Evelijn Van Leeuwen
Manager Management & Support Service, ING

"Edward Deming , specially about the red bead experiment, and poor management practices. Together with Frederick Taylor ."
Jan-Joost Bouwman
Enterprise Process Owner Change Management, ING
"Ricardo Semler - his ideas about empowering employees are really inspiring. I would like to talk to him how we can use those ideas to make DevOps even more awesome."
Jim Stoneham
Former VP, Yahoo! Communities
"Dave Goldberg (CEO, SurveyMonkey), who recently prematurely left us. I'd met him a few times, and he is one of the most thoughtful leaders I know of. "
Joshua Corman
CTO, Sonatype

"Authors Kurt Vonnegut and Neil Gaiman "
Kevina Finn-Braun
Director of Site Reliability Services, Salesforce
"Marc Benioff -he just seems like a very interesting person."
Kris Buytaert
CTO, Inuits.eu
"George Orwell "
Lucas Gravley
Build Architect, HP
"Jam session with Alkaline trio. Great musicians and would love to play music and relax with them"
Manish Aggarwal
Software Engineer, Intel

"
Barack Obama. "
Manuel Edwards
Systems Engineering Manager, E*TRADE

"Dinner: Carl Sagan ; Drink: Ernest Hemingway ; Code: Alan Turing ; War stories: Tim O'Brien (author of The Things They Carried)"
Mike Bland
Practice Director, 18F (General Services Administration)

"Jimi Hendrix and John Lennon ."
Mirco Hering
Agile & DevOps Lead, Accenture
"Douglas Adams - intelligent and funny, after a few scotch it must be a blast talking to him. Shame i never got to meet him."
Neil Manvar
Solutions Architect, Sauce Labs, Inc
"Jason Huggins - inventor of Selenium"
Olivier Jacques
CI, CD, DevOps Practitioner, HP Enterprise Group

"
Sheldon from the Big Bang Theory. Bazinga!"
Paul Schmid
IT Manager – Solution Delivery, Sherwin-Williams
"Steve Jobs , mostly cause we share the same personality type (ENTJ), and I would love to talk to him about our shared passion of innovation and driving change."
Paula Thrasher
Application Delivery Lead, CSC

"Author/Computer Scientist Jaron Lanier . He is writing some of the most thought provoking commentary on the IT revolution these days. Also Tim Schafer of DoubleFine, I was a backer of DoubleFine Adventure (aka Broken Age) and the documentary was worth the backer price alone. Its like a peek into the secret career of a video game developer, which turns out to be just as tricky as regular old software development."
Ramona Jackson
Director IT, Cisco



"
Steve Jobs, Mark Cuban, Tiger Woods "
Scott Prugh
Chief Architect, CSG International
"I have always loved Guy Fieri . He knows a ton about delicious food but more importantly, he always makes people feel special."
Tom Limoncelli
SRE, StackOverFlow.com
"Alan Turing "
Anders Wallgren
CTO, CloudBees



"Eat dinner with Tina Fey , drink with Richard Feynman , Code with Nikola Tesla and war stories with the Wright Brothers "