State of Open Conference 2023

Earlier this week I had an amazing opportunity to attend the State of Open Conference. I attended talks on how open source can work in companies as large as Boeing, some lively discussions around policies, even talks around the politics of open source from United Nations, the White House, and the UK couterparts, security of open source, and platform engineering.

These were incredibly informative, and speakers did a fantastic job of introducing their content that even for someone at their beginning of their journey like myself it was accessible and I was able advance my own knowledge in a number of areas, but particularly interesting was Kubernetes and Platform Engineering. As well as the talks there also the valuable opportutiies for networking, either going around the stalls talking to different companies and for someone such as myself at the beginning of my tech career the opportunity to seek advice from experienced developers on how to begin my career. It was also fascinating hearing about a variety of companines such as Sonatype, the Linuex Foundation community, how companies such as Red Hat used Open Source, the fantastic experience with the VR headset from Boeing, 3D digital printing by Avande, just to name a few.

This has been a fantastic opportunity, and for me came at exactly the right time as I come towards the end of my time on the School of Code bootcamp, and look towards my journey into tech.

Tips for my next Conference

Write a blog while at the conference. There was so much going on and a fantastic amount of information to absorb, that in future conferences I will blog during the event to capture all my experiences.

Bring a large empty bag for lots of free goodies and those all important stickers!!!