Two Years Late - DevOps Days ATL 2022

Finally, after pushing back the date of DevOps Days ATL 2020, we were able to have DevOps Days 2022. I have been fortunate to be giving back to DevOps Days ATL as an organizer since early 2018. Though with the pandemic, we have certainly had our ups and downs to finally bring back DOD to the Greater ATL Area.

Conference Planning Energy

I learned at my time at Harness, that conference planning really takes a lot out of me. Compared to DevOps Days ATL 2018/19, my responsibilities really increased for launching the first two Harness Unscripted Conferences and much more responsibility at DevOps Days ATL. Since this is a DOD blog, will focus on DOD. For 2019 we had about a dozen or so core ATL organizers. For 2022, we were down to five so the workload certainly doubled up.

Items To Pull Off a Conference

We were fortunate that we had the ability to return to the Georgia Aquarium and were a little familiar with. Like planning a wedding without a wedding planner, every detail of the conference needs to be planned and executed on. From the venue, food, speakers, equipment, sponsors, and all etc logistics need to be planned. Since I have sponsored professionalyl about a dozen or so DevOps Days, I elected to be the sponsor liaison and execute on the sponsors.

Getting Conference Sponsorship

We had a few sponsors signed up for 2020 before we had to pull the 2020 event. Resurrecting the 2022 event which got postponed four times, we had a little quiet period when we were figuring out when we can bring back an in-person event. Eventually, we settled on a date in Jan 2022 [which got pushed to April 2022 which we had]. For our 20 or so sponsors, I had answered about 250 separate e-mails relating to sponsorship. Some of those e-mails were keeping folks up to date or telling folks interested in sponsoring that we were full. Keeping tabs on the sponsors in a Google Sheet is def recommend. DOD does have an Oraganizer’s Guide but certainly up to each DOD franchise to get and organizer sponsors.

Challenges certainly are there. I totally get why folks sponsor conferences, especially since I have sponsored a dozen or so DODs and understand the marketing/sales ROI that needs to occur; e.g the mighty Marketing Qualified Lead or MQL.

Per the ethos of DevOps Days Globally, we would not hand out the entire registration list to the sponsors which was a point of contention. We also needed to drive attendance to support the sponsors and the sponsors supported the event. Events can’t happen without sponsors who are there for attendees, so we have two sets of customers for an event.

Back In-Person

Our mid April event was a success in my eyes for the goal of getting an in-person event back in ATL. Compared to the peak year of 2019, we had about 40% of attendance that we had in years gone by.

Can’t really go wrong at the Georgia Aquarium.

DevOps Days Atlanta 2023?

I am not sure how DevOps Days 2023 will shape up. We certainly have lots of learnings post DevOps Days 2022. I am on the fence about being able to support the 2023 conference at the level of effort of the 2022 I provided, most likely we will need more organizers. Def feel free to come and be an organizer, is rewarding to watch the community grow!