IT/Dev Connections 2016 Speaker Highlight: David O'Brien

Part of an ongoing series, we're highlighting the excellent speakers we have handpicked to present phenomenal and extremely valuable content at the IT/Dev Connections conference. Want more? Get the Insider’s Scoop About IT/Dev Connections 2016 on September 8!

This speaker highlight is David O'Brien.

David's IT/Dev Connection sessions:

Recently, we asked David to give us a little information about himself. Here's what he shared:

ITDC: Give us a brief introduction to you.

David: Hi guys, my name is David O’Brien. I’m a so-called DevOps Engineer down in beautiful Melbourne/Australia. I moved here from Germany about 2.5 years ago with my wife and are now enjoying life minutes from the beach.

I enjoy automation. I completely subscribe to “everything (that makes sense) should be code” and thrive in environments where I can try to squeeze Microsoft solutions into “cattle, not pets”. I am a PowerShell MVP, some IT Pros would call me very “dev”, all developers would call me very “IT Pro”. I’m somewhere in-between.

If you really want to get me talking, ask me anything about planes. “How will you know that someone has a Pilot’s License? They will tell you.” ;-)

ITDC: Describe the sessions you are presenting and why you feel the topic is important.

David: At this year’s IT/Dev Connections I’ve got four sessions and they are all along the same theme, “automation”. My first session will be on “DevOps – deep dive into the tool chain” in which I want to explain what it takes, from a tools perspective, to do DevOps. I see a lot of confusion around this topic at conferences, on social media and at customers.

My second session is on “PowerShell on AWS”. AWS is seen as the most mature cloud provider out there at the moment and is huge in the *nix community. In this session I’ll show attendees how to use PowerShell to automate the AWS cloud.

My third session will be on something that I spend a lot of time with in my job, cross-platform Configuration Management with Ansible. How can Ansible be used, in combination with PowerShell DSC, to maintain a known state on my Windows servers?

And, the fourth is on Version and Source Control – intro to Git(hub) 101.

ITDC: What should attendees expect to be able to take away from your sessions?

David: My goal is to get a better idea out there into the Microsoft community of what “DevOps” means, what tools are out there to “make it so” and hopefully just get people thinking about some of their internal processes.

ITDC: What is your primary reason to be excited about IT/Dev Connections?

David: This will be my second time at IT/Dev Connections and last year I really enjoyed the audience and the mix of IT Pros and Developers in one room. I’m excited about this year because 12 months are always a nice indication of what changed in the community.

ITDC: What is the one key technology you believe is changing the technology industry right now?

David: Cloud and “serverless computing”

ITDC: Assuming attendees want to know, what’s your favorite, non-technical hobby or pastime? What’s one thing that totally irks you.

David: Aviation! If you want to engage me in a very long conversation, talk to me about planes!

IT/Dev Connections runs from October 10 – October 13, at the ARIA Resort in Las Vegas. IT/Dev Connections has been designed specifically for IT, DevOps, and Developers. You can read all about what IT/Dev Connections offers you HERE.

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