It’s almost that time again: ChefConf ’21 is on the horizon, and we’re bringing together some of the best in DevOps and IT to discuss best practices, new techniques and cutting-edge innovations. Featuring 60+ speakers from H&R Block, Google, PagerDuty, env0 and more, this three-day virtual event is one you won’t want to miss.
With a variety of introductory, advanced, and expert-level sessions, ChefConf ’21 will provide you with the insight you need to succeed in today’s tech-driven world.
Explore some of the highlights of ChefConf ’21!
Day 1
Coffee Chat & Accelerate your Journey | 8:30 AM - 9:45 AM EDT
On September 7th, 8:30 AM EDT, grab your coffee and come hang out with benny Vasquez, DevRel, and Community Manager at Chef for a live chat to talk about everything that's coming.
We will kick off day 1 of our 10th ChefConf with an opening keynote on “Accelerate your Journey” from CEO of Progress Chef, Yogesh Gupta, GM of Chef Business, Sundar Subramanian, and some of our amazing guest panelists. In this session, we’ll also announce the winners of the 2021 Chef Customer & Partner awards, highlighting some of the best work over the past year.
Breakout sessions | 10:00 AM – 12:00 PM EDT
Get ready to learn about the latest innovations, best practices, tips and techniques to thrive in a modern complex environment with breakout sessions. During “A Journey To Improve Infrastructure Compliance With InSpec” Cliffano Subagio will give a brief intro to InSpec and will share experiences using custom InSpec profiles for key security checks, application health checks, infrastructure correctness and compliance requirements. In “ The Unofficially Official Guide for Config Management at Scale,” Brittany Woods will offer some words of wisdom to help drive DevOps for your organization, as well as enhance automation with Config Management. Post mealtime break, Konrad Schieban of Google and Aaron Lippold of MITRE will explore how InSpec can validate security and compliance settings on Kubernetes clusters. Using the example of the CIS benchmark for Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE), the pair will demonstrate how to run InSpec for security and compliance validation of a Kubernetes cluster.
Additionally, we have tech sessions on multiple topics like the future roadmap of Chef Compliance, discuss complexities of edge computing, Bluestem Brands Windows DevOps team sharing their story about streamlining Windows patching, evolving from Infrastructure as Code to Policy as Code, a success story from SAP on how they have scaled Compliance for 10K+ Cloud Accounts and Growing with Chef InSpec, and planning the perfect App Deployment with Habitat. The list goes on! Check out the 5 tech tracks and learn from the sessions that interest you.
ChefConcert | 3:00 PM EDT
Come tap your feet with amazing musical performances featuring Deep Sea Diver and Lakou Mizik. Don’t miss out on a fun ChefConcert.
Day 2
Day 2 starts with our usual coffee chat followed by a product keynote from our VP of Engineering, Sudhir Reddy, and a live Q&A with Chef leadership.
The learning continues on Day 2 of ChefConf, with a panel discussion at 11:00 AM EDT covering challenges in implementing configuration management at scale across a distributed workforce and continuous compliance with Chef Desktop.
Breakout sessions | 1:00 PM – 3:00 PM EDT
“ Chef’ing with Terraform, the New Way,” Kyle Ruddy will discuss what the Chef provisioner deprecation means for existing Terraform configurations, an overview of alternative provisioners, and how to best transition to a different provisioner. Mandy Walls of PagerDuty will lead a conversation about improving automation to give you your time back. Walls will cover the characteristics of good automation and offer a look at PagerDuty Rundeck, an expertise-sharing platform.
Looking for some guidance on Infrastructure as Code? Tim Davis, DevOps advocate for env0, is here to help. In his session, Davis will go over the common pitfalls of IaC, as well as answer any questions you may have about IaC.
A few sessions that can’t be missed: We have a roundtable discussion on DevSecOps practices from soup to nuts. “ DevSecOps Roundtable: Why Automation Matters” featuring great panelists Chris Hughes, CISO/Co-Founder at Aquia, Chris Medina, Solution Architect Sr. Manager at Chef, and AJ Yawn, Co-Founder and CEO at ByteChek. “ Panel: Secrets Management in Complex Environments at Scale” discusses the benefits of implementing the secrets management solution. One last session, “ DevSecOps from the Palm of Your Hand – On a Weekend” discusses how compliance alerts can be set and notified on a mobile device with Krista Soft solution.
We will conclude day 2 by providing a recap of sessions, announcing the winners of our #CelebrateChefConf giveaway contest, and talking about next year’s ChefConf.
Day 3
ChefConf ’21 day 3 starts with a session by Mendy Baitelman, a DevOps enthusiast at Proedge and member of the Sous Chef team. “ Managing Developer Environments with Magic” will examine how Chef shortened Proedge’s new laptop setup from a multi-day process into a simple script that can be set up in minutes.
Hackathon Kickoff | 9:00 AM - 11:00 AM EDT
We will wrap up with a 6-week “Automate for Good” Hackathon challenge. Unlike the hack days during past ChefConfs, this year we're going big, and inviting projects to be submitted that are larger than anything we've done before. This is your chance to show the work you do to positively impact our world. You can go a step ahead and create new and innovative solutions using DevOps practices and you could win one or more cash prizes. We have nine prize categories and a total prize purse of $60,000 USD! Don’t miss out on the fun!
With a range of sessions covering a myriad of topics, ChefConf ’21 is sure to help you expand your knowledge and inspire new solutions. Don’t miss out – register for ChefConf ’21 today!
