[Dan] (0:03 - 0:11)
They stole a joke about LLMs by using an LLM to put the joke into their presentation. I'm like, I'm not even mad. It was fair play.
[Darren] (0:14 - 0:22)
Welcome to the DevOps Sauna, the podcast where we deep dive into the world of DevOps, platform engineering, security, and more as we explore the future of development.
[Pinja] (0:22 - 0:32)
Join us as we dive into the heart of DevOps, one story at a time. Whether you're a seasoned practitioner or only starting your DevOps journey, we're happy to welcome you into the DevOps Sauna.
[Darren] (0:39 - 0:51)
Welcome back to the DevOps Sauna. We finished up our event in London, The Future of Software, last week. And now I'm here with Dan Khurram, one of the hosts.
[Dan] (0:51 - 0:53)
Hello, thanks for having me.
[Darren] (0:53 - 0:58)
And of course, we have the other host of both The Future of Software and this podcast with us, Pinja.
[Pinja] (0:58 - 1:00)
Hey, and good to have you here, Dan.
[Darren] (1:00 - 1:02)
So, how are you two feeling after the event?
[Pinja] (1:02 - 1:10)
It's been almost a week now, and it was a great day, I think. Or how do you feel, Dan, now?
[Dan] (1:10 - 1:56)
Yeah, I think I've recovered from the... I get crazy jet lag from the shorter the trip, the more the jet lag, I guess. So the two-hour time difference flying from Helsinki to London hits me every time.
And they were, oh, it can't be that bad. And I'm like, well, before the day of the event, I woke up so early that at six in the morning, I was doing souvenir shopping in a Sainsbury's Local near Liverpool Street station because I was so wide awake before the event. I'd gone over the prep.
And yeah, so basically, my family got a lot of chocolate. So they were happy about that, but my sleep struggled. But I've recovered.
I've recovered from the excitement, the travel, the fun airline strike that we had to navigate as well. So it was a lot of adventure packed into it, like a couple of days. So it took me a good weekend and a few days to recover.
[Darren] (1:56 - 2:08)
Yeah. It's always kind of weird when the time shift is so short, and you're there for such a short time that you don't actually bother to reorient. So you just start waking up at four in the morning because why not?
[Pinja] (2:08 - 2:39)
Why not keep the same routines? And we talked about this before, like how much goes into organizing these events, but then everything here around the event itself, for example, like flying to the venue, flying back from the event. And, of course, we do not do this as our main job.
So of course, we need to catch up. But as both Dan and I, we talked about this before, as we were doing a recap, the two of us, it's worth it to be and it's a privilege to get to do this thing and host the events.
[Dan] (2:40 - 3:21)
Yeah, it's totally worth it, even though you kind of have to do it on top of your usual work, and you have to mix in the travel, and the family at home has to do a bit of work without you. But for me, it's definitely worth it. I'd do it again.
I'd encourage anybody who has the opportunity to take part in any events or social gatherings and networks, you just never know who you're going to end up talking to and you never know how great a conversation you have. Or you get an opportunity to host a panel like I did with people who are 10-100 times smarter than me, and I'm just the one sat there trying to prompt them with questions. And it's something that I wouldn't usually get the opportunity to do in my day-to-day work.
No offense to my regular colleagues; you're great. You're great and smart as well.
[Darren] (3:23 - 3:45)
So on the day the venue was quite packed, I think we had a full house. I'm not sure exactly the numbers we were aiming for, but I remember there being a lot of people and the interaction from the people who we were talking with in the hallway. I think that's one of the things that we're always really excited about is the, as you two call it, the hallway track.
[Pinja] (3:45 - 4:21)
That's one of the key things for me, what I see is the people coming together. And even though as a host, you don't get to see and watch the talks as somebody who would as an attendee, because you're always on. And you don't get to use the hallway track or the breaks between the talks.
But it's always good to see people are always smiling in the hallway. We do see the conversations going on. We do see people that walk past us, and they say hi and they want to thank them for the day so far.
So that's actually really, it's really gratifying to see and hear this.
[Dan] (4:21 - 5:16)
Yeah. And like you said, as a host, you're switched on, you're pretty wired, the adrenaline's going because you want to make it a really nice event for everyone. So that's what you're mainly focused on.
And I'll be honest, when I'm in between my part of getting up on stage, getting off stage, moving things along, and I'm trying to watch the talks, let's say, on my stage, so I can make some comments about them and see what I like. But really, I'm thinking about how am I going to exit this person off the stage and get the next person on. But I guess you lose something as a host, but what you gain is maybe a little bit more access to the speakers because, I know it sounds a bit showbiz, we had a green room where we got to sit there and talk to them about what they're going to discuss.
And during lunch, we have the opportunity to go a bit deeper into the discussion. So there's definitely pros and cons to it. But like you said, on my way from the stage to the green room, a lot of people were enjoying the tracks and I caught snippets of great conversations, which I wish I could be part of.
[Darren] (5:16 - 5:32)
Yeah, it's kind of an interesting idea that maybe the best goal for a speaker is to be so entertaining that you, as the hosts, forget you're the hosts. And then by the end of their speech, you're just sitting there thinking, “Wow, that was amazing. Wait, what was I doing?”
I definitely had that.
[Pinja] (5:32 - 6:07)
“What was my job? Oh, I had to go back on stage, and I had to say something very smart.” That's exactly what happens.
And yeah, so basically trying to be on, but also at the same time trying to remember that this was actually my thing to do here. But we have amazing people here and amazing speakers. And this was the second time we've done this, this event in London.
We had it last year, and it was really nice to see the people coming back. There were multiple familiar faces from last year and, of course, a lot of new faces. And as you said, Darian, the house was packed, and that was actually a really gratifying feeling.
[Dan] (6:07 - 6:53)
Yeah, we might even need a bigger venue next time. I hope we can get bigger. I mean, there was a financial fraud conference on the floor beneath us.
That doesn't seem that important. Maybe we can take their space next time. But yeah, it's so nice to see people come out, make the effort.
It's the middle of London. It's actually, for people who live in London, listening to this, getting into Liverpool Street and Bank, even if you live in Zone 2, it's not always the easiest. And people living even further out of London, it's a lot of people.
It's great. And then the people that flew in to the event, both the speakers and guests, fair play to them, what energy they brought to the show. I felt a bit some of the speakers who flew in just for like a day or two from America or even further away, just total champions there, professionals.
[Darren] (6:54 - 7:08)
Yeah. I actually, when the lifts opened on the third floor and I saw that fraud conference, the security professional in me thought, what are my chances of being able to walk into that? And I was so tempted to just get on the lift and see if I could fake my way through it.
[Dan] (7:08 - 7:08)
Yeah.
[Darren] (7:08 - 7:09)
I was, I was tempted.
[Dan] (7:09 - 7:17)
I was very tempted just to, just to walk around and see how far I can get. But, uh, yeah, I restrained myself. I had a job to do, but yeah.
[Darren] (7:18 - 7:44)
And just the idea that we're, we're seeing people coming back though. That's the best thing that people saw the first time I wanted more of this and came for the second year in a row. So hopefully we'll see some more familiar faces when we run it in March in 2026.
Now we can't talk about the event without talking about the speakers. Now we opened up the event. I think we opened and closed the event quite strongly.
So, we started with Kelsey Hightower.
[Pinja] (7:45 - 8:21)
We did. And when we think of Kelsey, he's a big name. He doesn't need that much introduction.
Although Dan and I did it basically twice for this person. And he's, he's a legend. He's a big name in cloud and, and in open stories.
And that's basically what he was talking about. Like, look, I've seen this before. So, new trends are always coming up, and new things are always happening.
But I think he liked one of the quotes that he said as well. I don't actually care what the new thing is, but what I think his main message was, as long as you keep on doing, you will get very far.
[Darren] (8:22 - 8:54)
Yeah. I think it's something that's been kind of a theme throughout the whole event where we had this kind of grounded message around AI and a lot of cases that we'll, we'll talk more about later, but the fact that we started with something that was, you know, so down to earth was to me, kind of a really good start to the event. So, and just a reminder for our listeners, these videos are either up on our website right now or we'll be coming up in the next week or so.
So feel free to dive in and watch any of these. What I really loved actually about Kelsey's talk.
[Dan] (8:54 - 10:17)
I mean, such a pro. I'm sure anyone could listen to him talk about anything, but it's great to talk about the things that he's maybe, let's say, famous for. We'll get back to the fame in a bit.
Cause I think this is a fantastic thing that we now have famous software developers who have fans, and I'm no software developer. I'm not a coder. I don't have access to everyone's GitHub repos, and I can, I can see the projects they're working on, but just to see the people around him, asking him questions and looking up to someone who's an inspiration who's been there and is giving such a grounded, practical message to people.
I think that was fantastic. And yes, he said, okay, he's not so worried about the future. It's about, okay, what are you making today?
That's one thing I took that maybe a different way, maybe ignoring software altogether. But if you think about right now in our world, there's so much noise and news about AI taking people's jobs. And what really related to me or resonated there was almost, he was saying, don't worry about it.
If you're really good and passionate about whatever you do, whether you're someone who's making software, if you're a librarian, you're a salesperson, you're a biologist, like you will be fine. If you focus on what you really care about and make a difference and do your best at it, and be passionate about it. And just like whatever happens to the technology happens, you might end up using it proactively.
So that's the kind of higher message I took from his stuff. But yeah, what a great speaker. So, so funny, so direct.
It was great.
[Pinja] (10:18 - 10:59)
Yeah, I fully agree with that. And if we think of that, like the book and Darren, you mentioned that we also had a big name at the very end of the conference. And if we think about DevOps, and we also have this term called the Father of DevOps, and we have a person called Patrick Debois, who's been coined as the “Father of DevOps,” and he was the other bookend of the conference.
And he was not so much talking honestly about what DevOps is and not so much about this anymore, but rather, so what's next? Like, how do we do this in practice? And again, basically giving some reassurance, like, just as you keep on doing things, and just keep yourself grounded and think about the opportunities that you have at the moment.
[Darren] (10:59 - 11:37)
Yep, it all seems to come back down to that grounding, that idea that we basically need to keep our feet on the ground despite the shift that's happening around us. And this messaging that, as Dan said, we're seeing on all sides, which is software, AI is changing everything about everything, and nothing is the same as it was five minutes ago, and how quickly people can get lost in that. So having the bookends, these big names in software development, basically coming in and saying, actually, it's okay.
Don't get caught up in the hype. Don't get lost in all the hyperbole. Here's the reality of things.
[Pinja] (11:37 - 12:18)
Yeah, I think that gave a lot of grounding, and I think the messages that they gave really sank in with people. And if we think of the other speakers, I think we had thought provokers in a good way. We had messages coming from the thought leaders in this industry saying, like, hey, look, do something.
You can do better. Don't focus on the nitty-gritty details so much. They were telling us how to do things in practice, how they actually do things in practice.
So that was about sharing the message in the community to everybody. And based on the feedback we've gotten, and based on the conversations I saw and heard, I think the message was well-received as well.
[Dan] (12:18 - 13:06)
Message was well-received. And my measure for something is, do people leave the conference excited or worried? Or do they leave the conference excited or tired?
In any kind of public gathering, if I go as a guest or an attendee, and at the end of the day, if I'm like, well, that was exhausting. I can't remember a single thing anyone said. I just want to go home and not speak to anyone.
To me, then, as a host, that's a bit more of a failure or someone who organizes it. But if everyone, even though you've been through such a journey for eight hours together in a conference venue, and you're still leaving excited, and you don't want to go home because you're having such good conversations with people, I think that was great. And Kelsey and Patrick being these voices of reason to allow you to still be excited and not worry so much, that was great.
[Darren] (13:06 - 13:11)
Okay, so we've talked about the starting and opening, but any favourites from you two, of the speakers?
[Pinja] (13:12 - 13:24)
Should we talk about the AI panel, Dan? We had the first time ever in the conference series that Eficode has powered. We brought in a panel discussion, and this was about the sustainable way of doing AI.
[Dan] (13:25 - 16:49)
Yeah, the topic was loose, but it was sustainability, responsibility, a little, again, voices of reason, but some thought provocation. But on the panel itself, this was the first time I think we've done it in any of these conferences. It was definitely a first for me as someone helping organize or host one of these discussions, and I guess the perk of it was that I got to sit up on the panel and seem smart as well, or at least I hope I seemed smart at the end of it.
And it was a bit different, just for everyone, the context behind it, rather than having one person talking at you for 30, 40 minutes and just giving their opinion. We wanted room for a discussion. We wanted the room to almost display in practice a community example that you can actually build in your own company or in your own network.
You can gather people with different experiences and expertise, and opinions, and they can challenge each other and come to some really good key takeaways and points and balance each other out. And how we decided to do that was to bring a panel together—I'll exclude myself now – of experts, of someone who's an expert in AI regulation but also has been part of a start-up in AI that's been acquired, so that was Lofred. We had Anne Currie, who, apart from being just such an experienced and respected voice in software development, had really pioneered the sustainable side of software development and written books with that.
She's also, on the other side, written creatively about sci-fi novels. I think she's written many books, a whole series about it, and can bring that angle of, well, why don't we look at the fiction world for inspiration, as often reality will follow fiction in a lot of our technologies. And then rounding off the panel, there was Peter from Moonpig, who's Head of AI, so someone really living, breathing, working in this stuff.
I felt a bit sorry for Peter, I kept positioning him as this capitalist-seeking, only-profit, super-nice guy. Not that you can't be nice and be profit-seeking, but just someone who could say, in reality, this is what it's like to work on something, and it changes something for your customer who buys something from you. So the balance was great, and massive kudos to the team putting this panel together.
The conversations we could have ranged from, what is responsibility, shouldn't you use this responsibly, what is sustainable about it, and how can you make it more sustainable. The conversation did take a nosedive towards nuclear war, so if you watch the recording, you can watch that and have a bit of fun, and we had to lift it back up a little bit to what's good about this thing and how can you use this positively. It really reflected any conversation that was going to happen in that community or in that audience, and it just elevated it to a level where these people know so much about the topic, but still, they could talk to each other and learn.
And in the end of it, it came out with some really practical tips that I'll take away. So I'll give my favourite one that they came out with. You cannot control something in the future, or advise on it, or have a voice on it if you're not a master of it.
And you see so much stuff on the news, in a lot of stuff, where people don't know what the technology is. They've never really used it, or they've used it to the extent where they've asked ChatGPT to make a script for them for that speech. But once you know it really well, you can have these opinions and give balanced views on how to take things forward, even if the future is unclear.
So yeah, I loved it. I don't know, how about you guys? Did you get a chance to see it and listen in?
[Darren] (16:50 - 18:02)
I'm still waiting for the video on that one, but I'm looking forward to watching it, especially now that I know there's a nuclear war. But as you said, having this kind of understanding is one of my favourites. It's probably a bit self-serving, but we had Henri Terho from Eficode talking about AI.
And when we had him on the podcast to do his episode on DeepSeek, he had the similar vibe where he was just breaking down large language models in a way that so many people aren't, in a way that like so many people are just getting caught up in the hype. And to have someone stand on the stage saying, okay, this is the reality of things. And this is from Henri Terho, who's been working with machine learning for a decade and a half at this point.
So to have that like really centered view, explaining everything about LLMs, as well as you can in a 40-minute slot, just, I think those are the things people need to hear, not about AI putting like teams out of work or accelerating people so quickly that they create systems they can't support. And then that system explodes and this kind of thing. So I'd say my favourite would go to Henri's talk.
[Pinja] (18:02 - 18:19)
If we think of the themes of this conference here, and we, many of our speakers mentioned that there's an elephant in the room. Dan, you very kindly brought in the elephant to the room with the wordplay. And I think somebody else stole it during the day, which was nice.
So, they coined the phrase.
[Dan] (18:19 - 18:35)
Yeah. And it's, you know, it was such a meta example of, not meta the company, meta in the language, you know, they stole a joke about LLMs by using an LLM to put the joke into their presentation. I'm like, I'm not even mad.
Like it's, it was a fair play.
[Pinja] (18:36 - 19:37)
And talking about fair play and analogies that were stolen during the day. Kelsey mentioned football. I hope he was talking about the European version, the soccer and not like the hand egg American version of this, but just like keeping the eye on the ball and how, like, for example, when you look at little kids and they're running towards the ball and not thinking about, do I need to score?
For example, how do we score as a team? And this analogy was also carried on by, was it Johan Abildskov in his, his talk a little bit later in the day. And I guess the point here is that the whole theme of that is, like, we were all coming together because we talked a lot about AI.
And if we think of this, this has been a huge disruption in our industry. And we're now all in the same boat basically here. And it was nice to bring the community back together.
And this is the key for me in these events, basically like just regrouping and talking together because now we were face to face, which was a big thing for me.
[Dan] (19:38 - 21:12)
Yeah. I'm going to jump on that because you mentioned what's, what's your favorite. I'm biased.
I have to say the panel was my favorite because I was taking part in it. But, otherwise the two things became my favorite. Like one thing wasn't a talk at all.
It was this community coming together to have these discussions. And it was so nice to do things face to face rather than a comment section of a sub stack article. Right.
And then the other thing that was my favorite, which was very, it didn't mention AI because, because a lot of our speakers said, I don't want to talk about AI, but they couldn't resist Francesca Salvati from Just Eat. Now, I'm going to shoot myself in the foot. I'm pretty sure she didn't say anything about AI until I watched the recording, but her talk was about scaling delivery management.
And I didn't imagine at all going into it that my own, one of my favorite talks is going to be about Scaled Agile, like shock, shock horror. And you know the way that she spoke about what her team does to enable other teams at Just Eat, you know, you know, the team, and I hope I got this right. The delivery management team being a mix between Scrum masters and release train engineers from safe going in and supporting other teams to deliver software better in person, you know, like, you know, seeing people building relationships, building relationships, having a delivery management team together who help each other get even better in how they support and multiply the effect that they give to the wider organization. I just thought that it totally blew my mind because I wasn't expecting it. And it was, it was a great talk.
So, I'm definitely going to be watching that recording again.
[Pinja] (21:12 - 21:54)
Yeah. And just scaling from that topic up, it is what we need to do as a community as well. So like from what they've done at Just Eat and taking that into how we operate as an industry, because yeah, we cannot avoid a conference like this without talking about AI, right?
But the change is not nothing new here. Like it is a constant. Yeah, the pace of change is faster than ever.
That's for sure. But we've been going through a change ever since the beginning of time, basically. So this is just getting us together to talk about this is amazing.
And seeing what happens in the hallway track, for example, is yeah, just getting people together and starting to talk about it.
[Dan] (21:55 - 22:53)
Now that we're on this topic about the community coming back together, and this is definitely for us as hosts and us as organizers and a call to arms for more speakers about like, we covered things like AI for sure. There was a lot of software stuff. There were a lot of DevOps.
There was Agile and delivery management. There were thought provokers around all these topics. But I keep thinking, you know what, I would love to hear, this relates so well to X.
And I wish there was a speaker here talking about this. So like design and customer journeys and how those are managed. A lot of, again, unbiased like product strategy and product management.
Like what is the AI being used to build? What are the delivery managers delivering? And how does that impact the trends of the customers who are using the software?
And even further, how does the service being managed to make sure these products and softwares and apps are up and running and doing well and delivering what they should be doing for the audience? So I think that is what will be my next favorites. If we can get those, get those talks.
[Darren] (22:53 - 24:18)
I think we were a bit AI-focused this year, and having something that's a bit more wide-reaching would be good. But the other thing that I think was like a really high point, we've talked about the hallway track a bit, but there's this thing that occasionally happens in conferences that I really like. And that's why sometimes you get presenters who only come to present.
They come to do what they are doing and then they leave. And we don't tend to see that. So for example, I saw Patrick Debois there from, I'm pretty sure he was there for Kelsey Hightower's talk and throughout the day, just hanging out, chatting with people right before his final keynote.
And we had as Dan, I think you noticed, we had Kelsey Hightower basically being swamped by people; wherever he went, he ended up with these groups of, I don't know if we can call it a fan club, but I do think Kelsey should consider selling merch. I feel like he could make some money off that, but just this interaction we have, not only from the community, but from our speakers as well. Because our speakers were obviously there, they were in the day, they were having fun.
It's also kind of unfortunate that the green room is separate in a way, because there were some interesting discussions in there from the speakers. So it's like, it's kind of good that everyone's engaging and that's something I hope we maintain in the future too.
[Dan] (24:18 - 24:26)
Yeah. I'm imagining Kelsey flogging, “Make Kubernetes great again.” Signed hats or something.
[Pinja] (24:26 - 25:02)
Anytime I saw Kelsey, he was, he had this group of five to eight to 10 people with him. And so he was not basically, he was not hiding in the green room or anything. And he stayed the whole day.
And even when I was leaving, he was still having this conversation in the lobby of this building that we were in and in Bishopsgate. So those are the kind of, we have so many like voices of reason. Like if we think of the, like how we bookend at the conference, like Kelsey and Patrick and everybody else in between, and just having that opportunity to talk to people, people came to learn really.
And I hope that's what people got out of that event as well.
[Darren] (25:03 - 25:17)
They did. So we're going to be hosting these events again in Scandinavia. And I think we're coming to Germany in the Autumn.
And then again in London, March next year. But for now, we're going to stop here. Thank you for joining us, Dan.
[Dan] (25:17 - 25:17)
Yeah.
[Darren] (25:17 - 25:22)
Thank you so much for having me. Looking forward to coming back after the next events. And thank you as always.
Yeah.
[Pinja] (25:22 - 25:24)
Thank you. Thanks for having us here.
[Darren] (25:25 - 25:35)
And we hope you join us next time. We'll now give our guest a chance to introduce himself and tell you a little bit about who we are.
[Dan] (25:35 - 25:47)
Hey guys, I'm Dan Khurram. I was one of the hosts at this year's feature conference. My day job is as a consultant, helping people with their product strategies and product management organizations.
[Pinja] (25:48 - 25:53)
I'm Pinja Kujala. I specialize in Agile and portfolio management topics at Eficode.
[Darren] (25:53 - 25:56)
I'm Darren Richardson, Security Consultant at Eficode.
[Pinja] (25:56 - 25:58)
Thanks for tuning in. We'll catch you next time.
[Darren] (25:58 - 26:04)
And remember, if you like what you hear, please like, rate, and subscribe on your podcast platform. It means the world to us.