Track host
About the track
If done well, platform engineering can help organizations to deliver software faster, more reliably, and more securely. However, if existing teams of infrastructure, DevOps, and SRE folks are simply rebranded as platform engineers, things tend to turn out less well. Platform engineering done well requires clearly defined goals, well-aligned incentives, and new organizational practices.
Despite what you've heard, DevOps definitely isn't dead -- neither is infrastructure or SRE -- but a new set of best practices is emerging around platform engineering. Join us at QCon to be part of the discussion on how DevOps should continue to evolve. Remember, you can't spell DevOps without “Dev”, and these folks are the core customers of your platform.
In this track, we will explore the people perspective of platform engineering in addition to the technical aspects. We'll draw on the hard-won experiences of our speakers and learn about what it takes to establish, implement, and maintain a successful platform engineering program.
The day in the host's words
Sessions in this track
Tuesday 3 October. 6 sessions per track, chosen and introduced by the Track Host.
10:35 Ballroom A Session Platform Engineering Building a Successful Platform: Acceleration, Autonomy & Accountability Smruti Patel SVP of Engineering @apollographql Do we build a greenfield platform or do we incrementally centralize common foundations? Do we abstract away all complexity or provide upfront knobs and handles for composability? 11:45 Ballroom A Session Platform Engineering Understanding Platforms: What They Are, Why They Work, When to Use Them, How to Build Them Hazel Weakly Head of Infrastructure & Developer Experience; Director, Haskell Foundation; Infrastructure Witch of Hachyderm Technical concepts are something that are thought of, approached, and understood differently across engineers, managers, and executives. Bridging the gaps and providing understanding to a complex and nuanced topic across all three groups can sometimes feel impossible. 13:35 Seacliff D Unconference Unconference: Platform Engineering Done Well What is an unconference? An unconference is a participant-driven meeting. Attendees come together, bringing their challenges and relying on the experience and know-how of their peers for solutions. 14:45 Ballroom A Session Platform Engineering Building Better Platforms with Empathy: Case Studies and Counter-Examples David Stenglein Solo Consultant @Missing Mass, LLC with Over 28 Years in Systems, Software, and Consulting Break out of traditional IT roles with your internal platform. Build a product based on customer empathy and real needs to achieve broad adoption. 15:55 Ballroom A Session Platform Engineering Effective Performance Engineering at Twitter-Scale Yao Yue Founder & Chief Executive Officer @IOP Systems, Platform Engineer, Distributed System Aficionado, Cache Expert Is performance engineering more craft than machinery? How do you scale something that seems to require both domain-specific context and comprehensive knowledge across multiple levels of the software and hardware stack? 17:05 Ballroom A Session Platform Engineering How to Get Tech-Debt on the Roadmap Ben Hartshorne Principal Engineer @Honeycomb, Building Operable Systems with Resilience and Business Value Only doing product-led work can lead to an unmaintainable system with lots of downtime. Unfortunately, getting time to work on the things that would prevent that can be challenging.QCon San Francisco 2023 is a three day conference for senior software engineers, architects and team leads. An international program committee of working engineers selects every session. Patterns and practices, not products and pitches.