On Friday 2 December 2022, LSD returned to community-focused events by hosting Tech This Out: Ansible at The Tryst in Woodlands, Johannesburg. Here is a wrap-up of what the presentation was about and what attendees got up to at the event.
LSD brought some friends, pizza and beers together to learn about cool technology and had a lot of fun. The Summer weather played along and it was a beautiful day to learn more about automation. The turnout was excellent, with new and familiar faces showing up. Before we dig into the event itself, let’s first take a look at what Tech This Out is and how it came to be.
What is Tech This Out?
LSD wanted to create a community-focused event series that worked similarly to Meetups in concept. Before and during the COVID-19 pandemic, we had the Tech and Tie-dye Community Meetups, which were primarily delivered in an online meeting/webinar-like setting, but they didn’t really capture the spirit of togetherness. We then decided to think of something else, a fresh start with regard to events now that the pandemic is over and we can all see each other in person again. This is where Tech This Out comes in.
The idea is to have a speaker (or two, depending on how the events grow) showing off interesting technology. Usually, our focus is on cloud native technologies like Kubernetes, Elastic, etc but we wanted to broaden the spectrum a little to include other cool technologies like home automation or robotics eventually. The event also needed to feel casual, so that the attendees can take their minds off of work pressures for a while to take in new technology and meet other people that share the same interests.
Another key aspect of keeping to a community focus was to completely remove the possibility of sales pitches from these events so that attendees could have a better overall experience. We get pitched to every waking second of every day, nobody needs more of that. Yes, the events do sometimes have enterprise technology sponsors, but much like us at LSD, they also just want people to see how cool the technology is, and many of the technologies presented have community or free editions that attendees can use.
The plan is to eventually scale these events out to include Cape Town with either independent events running in parallel, or using a hybrid model to bring the events together. There will be more information on this soon.
The presentation
Nuno Martins, an Ansible Tech Priest (expert) at Red Hat, presented feedback from AnsibleFest 2022, going over some of the highlights from the event in detail. Apart from all the flashy new features in Ansible, there was a big focus on how Ansible enables event-driven automation with popular technologies like Apache Kafka, with more OEM plugins in development.
He also shared some information on Project Wisdom, which Nuno played a part in creating. It is jointly run by Red Hat and IBM, where an AI model is being trained to infuse Ansible with new capabilities so that it’s easier for anyone to write Ansible Playbooks with AI-generated recommendations. You can learn more about project wisdom in the video below.
Afterwards, there was a great networking session with an open bar and pizzas where attendees got to know each other better. It’s clear that there is a thriving community of technology fans that want to learn together and relax, without being pitched to. Because of that, more Tech This Out events are on the cards for 2023, starting in late January or early February. The first event was very much a learning experience on how to run in-person community events in a post-Covid world. Who knows? Maybe Tech This Out shows up in Cape Town at some point next year. Keep your eyes peeled!
LSD would like to thank Red Hat for sponsoring the first Tech This Out, Nuno Martins for presenting and sharing insight, the team from The Tryst for making sure the venue was ready and everyone that attended the event.
If you would like to be kept in the loop about future Tech This Out events, please fill in the form and you will get added to the community email notifications.
Event Gallery:
