I didn’t quite know what I was signing up for when I registered early in the year for PowerShell Summit. I’ve been to conferences before, and while I appreciated the expo floor at VMware Explore, or the events at Gartner I&O, I never found them very directly applicable to my daily work. Sure, there were a ton of talks at Gartner I&O that spoke directly to me as an SRE, but they usually just legitimized something I was already doing instead of adding anything. All I could take back to my fellow SREs was that Gartner says we are doing the right things…
I registered for PowerShell Summit after doing minimal research on the event. I confirmed that it would likely be worth my time, and my friend and coworker Kenny Neal jumped on board as well. I can honestly say that I was not prepared for the wealth of, well, everything! This past week has been overwhelming in all the right ways. I have met some of the heaviest hitters in the space, shared stories, had drinks, played games… It is like drinking from a firehose! Nearly everyone is an expert, and they all wanted to discuss PowerShell, problems, and tell and hear stories. This community is stellar!
Personally, I was more involved with this conference than any before. I met Mick Pletcher and was invited to be on an episode of The PowerShell News Podcast (episode here). I participated in a lighting demo and showed off a small personal project I was working on. People liked it and wanted to check out the code, so I finally made a public GitHub and posted it (dev branch)! Daily I was reminded that my dad-jokes are nothing compared to those of Steven Judd. I spoke with a few of the organizers and described another personal project I was working on and they suggested that I consider registering to give a talk next year. I was so inspired at the prospect that I went back to the hotel room during a break and started the foundation work for a talk I hope to give. I got to speak with Steven Bucher about his journey from SRE to where he is now. I finally got to meet and speak with some of the team from PDQ, and hosts of The PowerShell Podcast! I have shared experiences and war stories with so many people, I am sure I am leaving someone out, please don’t take it personally!
- James Petty
- Mike Robbins
- Demetrius Nelon
- Michael Bender
- Dave Carrol
- Thomas Nieto
- Jaap Brasser
- Thomas Rayner
- Jason Helmick
- Sydney Smith
- Kevin Cefalu
- Andrew Pla
- Matthew Dowst
- Anthony Nocentino
- Mike Nelson
- Phil Bossman
- Kevin Marquette
- Joe Houghes
- Harjit Dhaliwal
- Jordan Hammond
- Drew Mcclellan
- Clayton Tyger
- Garrett Nelson
- Mike Campbell
This has been an amazing conference. I have been solving problems with PowerShell for over a decade and I am inspired to dive in even more! I cannot wait until Summit 2024! Until then SQL Saturday and PowerShell On the River are coming up! I hope to see you there!