Earlier this week, ProfitBricks, a leading cloud-computing company in high-end IaaS, released their list of “Top DevOps Meetups & Their Leaders: 49 Meetups For DevOps Pros,” and the Gainesville DevOps Meetup & I have made the list. And, I’m in good company to boot!
I have to admit, this surprised me somewhat, as it’s only been around since last year. It’s had great attendance, however, and we’ve been meeting & talking about a ton of really interesting topics, like Let’s Encrypt, Infrastructure as Code, Containers, ChatOps, and Continuous Delivery. We’ve also talked at length about the annual State of DevOps reports as they come out.
While it hasn’t always been easy to drum up interest, in a mid-sized town like Gainesville, using Meetup.com has really surprised me with how they seem to be able to draw in users to join the online group. At last count, we had 88 members listed on the site. Originally, I was thinking I’d spring for the cost, just given how much findability we get from being listed, but I’m pleased to report that Chef Inc. has covered the cost of two renewals now, which has helped immensely. I owe a great debt to everyone involved in making the meetup happen — thank you!