Here’s what’s happening in the thriving tech scene in Tampa Bay and surrounding areas for the week of Tuesday, October 21through Sunday, October 27, 2024! This list includes both in-person and online events.
Note that each item in the list includes:
✅ When the event will take place
✅ What the event is
✅ Where the event will take place
✅ Who is holding the event
Please note: Before you attend events for the next couple of weeks, check with the organizers to make sure that they haven’t been cancelled or postponed due to Hurricane Milton and the damage it left in its wake.
This week’s events
- Monday, October 21
- Tuesday, October 22
- Wednesday, October 23
- Thursday, October 24
- Friday, October 25
- Saturday, October 26
- Sunday, October 27
Monday, October 21
Tuesday, October 22
Wednesday, October 23
Thursday, October 24
Friday, October 25
Saturday, October 26
Sunday, October 27
About this list
How do I put this list together? It’s largely automated. I have a collection of Python scripts in a Jupyter Notebook that scrapes Meetup and Eventbrite for events in categories that I consider to be “tech,” “entrepreneur,” and “nerd.” The result is a checklist that I review. I make judgment calls and uncheck any items that I don’t think fit on this list.
In addition to events that my scripts find, I also manually add events when their organizers contact me with their details.
What goes into this list? I prefer to cast a wide net, so the list includes events that would be of interest to techies, nerds, and entrepreneurs. It includes (but isn’t limited to) events that fall under any of these categories:
- Programming, DevOps, systems administration, and testing
- Tech project management / agile processes
- Video, board, and role-playing games
- Book, philosophy, and discussion clubs
- ️ Tech, business, and entrepreneur networking events
- Toastmasters and other events related to improving your presentation and public speaking skills, because nerds really need to up their presentation game
- Sci-fi, fantasy, and other genre fandoms
- Self-improvement, especially of the sort that appeals to techies
- Anything I deem geeky
Here’s what’s happening in the thriving tech scene in Tampa Bay and surrounding areas for the week of Tuesday, October 15 through Sunday, October 20, 2024! This list includes both in-person and online events.
Note that each item in the list includes:
✅ When the event will take place
✅ What the event is
✅ Where the event will take place
✅ Who is holding the event
Please note: Before you attend events for the next couple of weeks, check with the organizers to make sure that they haven’t been cancelled or postponed due to Hurricane Milton and the damage it left in its wake.
This week’s events
- Tuesday, October 15
- Wednesday, October 16
- Thursday, October 17
- Friday, October 18
- Saturday, October 19
- Sunday, October 20
Tuesday, October 15
Wednesday, October 16
Thursday, October 17
Friday, October 18
Saturday, October 19
Sunday, October 20
About this list
How do I put this list together? It’s largely automated. I have a collection of Python scripts in a Jupyter Notebook that scrapes Meetup and Eventbrite for events in categories that I consider to be “tech,” “entrepreneur,” and “nerd.” The result is a checklist that I review. I make judgment calls and uncheck any items that I don’t think fit on this list.
In addition to events that my scripts find, I also manually add events when their organizers contact me with their details.
What goes into this list? I prefer to cast a wide net, so the list includes events that would be of interest to techies, nerds, and entrepreneurs. It includes (but isn’t limited to) events that fall under any of these categories:
- Programming, DevOps, systems administration, and testing
- Tech project management / agile processes
- Video, board, and role-playing games
- Book, philosophy, and discussion clubs
- ️ Tech, business, and entrepreneur networking events
- Toastmasters and other events related to improving your presentation and public speaking skills, because nerds really need to up their presentation game
- Sci-fi, fantasy, and other genre fandoms
- Self-improvement, especially of the sort that appeals to techies
- Anything I deem geeky
[Update, Tuesday October 8th] Remember those plans you had to participate in Tampa Bay’s tech, entrepreneur, and nerd scene? You’re going to have to put them off for this week, because the worst (and geekiest) of all hurricanes is headed straight for Tampa Bay!
You might as well consider all the events on this week’s list cancelled unless their organizers tell you otherwise. Even after the hurricane passes, we’ll likely all be busy with cleaning up. Be prepared, and stay safe!
(What would have been) this week’s events
Monday, October 7
Tuesday, October 8
Wednesday, October 9
Thursday, October 10
Friday, October 11
Saturday, October 12
Sunday, October 13
About this list
How do I put this list together? It’s largely automated. I have a collection of Python scripts in a Jupyter Notebook that scrapes Meetup and Eventbrite for events in categories that I consider to be “tech,” “entrepreneur,” and “nerd.” The result is a checklist that I review. I make judgment calls and uncheck any items that I don’t think fit on this list.
In addition to events that my scripts find, I also manually add events when their organizers contact me with their details.
What goes into this list? I prefer to cast a wide net, so the list includes events that would be of interest to techies, nerds, and entrepreneurs. It includes (but isn’t limited to) events that fall under any of these categories:
- Programming, DevOps, systems administration, and testing
- Tech project management / agile processes
- Video, board, and role-playing games
- Book, philosophy, and discussion clubs
- ️ Tech, business, and entrepreneur networking events
- Toastmasters and other events related to improving your presentation and public speaking skills, because nerds really need to up their presentation game
- Sci-fi, fantasy, and other genre fandoms
- Self-improvement, especially of the sort that appeals to techies
- Anything I deem geeky
Here’s what’s happening in the thriving tech scene in Tampa Bay and surrounding areas for the week of Monday, September 30 through Sunday, October 6, 2024! This list includes both in-person and online events.
Note that each item in the list includes:
✅ When the event will take place
✅ What the event is
✅ Where the event will take place
✅ Who is holding the event
This week’s events
- Monday, September 30
- Tuesday, October 1
- Wednesday, October 2
- Thursday, October 3
- Friday, October 4
- Saturday, October 5
- Sunday, October 6
Monday, September 30
Tuesday, October 1
Wednesday, October 2
| Event name and location | Group | Time |
|---|---|---|
| Feeding Tampa Bay with Gen Geek @Trinity Cafe Trinity Cafe |
Gen Geek | 11:00 AM to 1:00 PM EDT |
| Inspiring Authors & Book Immersion Meetup Online |
Lady Lake Memoir Writing Meetup Group | 2:00 PM to 3:30 PM EDT |
| Authors Anonymous presents Writing Workshop Winter Park Library |
Authors Anonymous – Writing Group | 5:45 PM to 8:15 PM EDT |
| Book Club Meeting: Psychology Workbook for Writers by Darian Smith Station House |
Prose Society Writers Group | 6:00 PM to 8:00 PM EDT |
| New Beginnings & Old Rivalries Online |
Central Florida AD&D (1st ed.) Grognards Guild | 7:00 PM to 10:30 PM EDT |
| Writer’s Meetup 8420 Ulmerton Rd |
Largo Writing Meetup Group | 7:00 PM to 9:00 PM EDT |
| Return to the top of the list | ||
Thursday, October 3
Friday, October 4
Saturday, October 5
Sunday, October 6
About this list
How do I put this list together? It’s largely automated. I have a collection of Python scripts in a Jupyter Notebook that scrapes Meetup and Eventbrite for events in categories that I consider to be “tech,” “entrepreneur,” and “nerd.” The result is a checklist that I review. I make judgment calls and uncheck any items that I don’t think fit on this list.
In addition to events that my scripts find, I also manually add events when their organizers contact me with their details.
What goes into this list? I prefer to cast a wide net, so the list includes events that would be of interest to techies, nerds, and entrepreneurs. It includes (but isn’t limited to) events that fall under any of these categories:
- Programming, DevOps, systems administration, and testing
- Tech project management / agile processes
- Video, board, and role-playing games
- Book, philosophy, and discussion clubs
- ️ Tech, business, and entrepreneur networking events
- Toastmasters and other events related to improving your presentation and public speaking skills, because nerds really need to up their presentation game
- Sci-fi, fantasy, and other genre fandoms
- Self-improvement, especially of the sort that appeals to techies
- Anything I deem geeky
DevOpsDays Tampa Bay 2024 took place last Thursday, September 19th, and I’m pleased to report that it was a success, with 230 attendees, great talks, an enthusiastic audience, and a lot of participation, all in my favorite conference venue!
DevOpsDays is a worldwide series of community-run technical conferences covering topics of software development, IT infrastructure operations, and the intersection between them.
DevOpsDays Tampa Bay is “The Other Bay Area’s” edition of DevOpsDays, organized, produced, and executed by volunteers from Tampa Bay and beyond, for the benefit of the tech scene here on “The Other West Coast.”
Here are my photos from the event…
Andrew Clay Shafer opened the conference with his keynote, The Ghost of DevOps Past…
…which was followed by PJ Hagerty’s presentation, DevOps — Philosophy vs. Practice. Unfortunately, I didn’t get any photos of his talk, as I was getting ready to give my talk, Python Meets DevOps!
I was followed by Aman Sharma’s presentation on what he termed “GenOps” — in other words, DevOps for Generative AI applications:
After Aman was Omer Farooq, who gave his talk, Modernized Approach to Container DevSecOp through Software Development Lifecycle.
And then: lunch!
One of the best things about last year’s and this year’s DevOpsDays Tampa Bay was that they took place at Armature Works. It’s not just a great conference venue, but also a great place to eat!
Rather than feed us standard-issue tech conference food, we were each given a $25 coupon redeemable at any of the food vendors.
I decided to try out a new-to-me place, Bap Bap and selected their Korean fried chicken and kimchi fries. I definitely would order it again:
Immediately after lunch was Micahel Levan’s presentation, Production-Ready Platform Engineering: From Conception To Build To FAIL, followed by Gwyneth Allwright’s Escaping the Legacy Infrastructure Labyrinth:
Next up was Al Rodriguez, with DevOps Like a Dev:
…follwed by Luis Hernandez with In The Deep End: My Experience as a Linux Kernel Mentee:
The final talks of the day were:
- Mike Butler, who introduced the Open Space portion of the conference with his quick talk, Open Spaces – The Greatest Thing about DevOpsDays,
- Ed LeGault, with Optimizing Software Delivery with DORA Metrics and EBM, and
- Josh Lee, with Modern Application Debugging: An Intro to OpenTelemetry.
Afterwards, we had 90 minutes devoted to Open Space discussions — I pretty much stuck around the AI-related discussion.
At the end of the Open Spaces portion, the conference came to a close with a quick curtain call by the organizers (listed from left to right, as they appear in these photos):
- James Gress
- Troy Koss
- Obie Muzon
- Seni Aguiar
- Chris Ayers
Assisting them were a number of volunteers, all of whose names I don’t have — but my thanks to them for keeping things running smoothly.
DevOpsDays Tampa Bay was a fun conference to speak at, attend, catch up with old friends, and make new ones. I’m looking forward to next year’s event!
