Being the Butler - AWS 2023 Edition
Nov. 29th, 2023 08:11 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
canyonwalkerVegas Travelog #4
AWS re:Invent conference - Tue, 27 Nov 2023. 3pm.
This week I've been attending the AWS re:Invent conference to staff my company's booth in the exhibitor showcase. I've done this countless times before for various conferences, including AWS re:Invent at least 3 times in past years, but this time I'm doing it a bit differently. I'm appearing as Jenkins the Butler— a personification of the logo for the popular Jenkins open source project. Well, I've done that a few times before at various conferences, too. But this time I'm portraying Jenkins the whole time.
The go-ahead to go wall-to-wall on being the butler comes amid a shift in attitude of my company's execs toward the Jenkins project. For years we've earned most of our money from selling a commercialized tool based on Jenkins. In return we do a lot of commits to support and improve the open source project. After getting off to a strong start co-marketing with Jenkins we entered a period with leadership that didn't want to associate us too closely with open source. That was kind of nuts because it has long been such a core part of our business. New leadership has embraced Jenkins again, redoubling our investment in building enhancements on it and being proud to tell people that's what we do.
Part of that pride in what we do is including messaging about Jenkins and the Jenkins logo in our branding. At this conference we've gone even further making Jenkins one of our give-aways. Oh, we've always had Jenkins stickers, and we have them again this year. But this year we also have Jenkins masks! There's even a contest— tweet pictures of 3 or more Jenkins in the frame to enter to win an Xbox!
"Being the Butler", as I call it, has been fun, as always. The reactions I get from people are great. Some spot me from 10 to 15 feet away, do a whole-body double take, and beam with smiles as they recognize me. Others don't notice me right away— I figure that's because the conference is pretty crowded, and the show floor is basically nonstop sensory overload with so many things sights and sounds— until they're already talking to one of my colleagues. Then they finally notice me looking at them from 3 feet away with an obsequious smile and basically do a spit-take. Nobody expects Jenkins the Butler to appear live, in 3D!
On Tuesday it was bright out when I walked to the conference center, so I wore my sunglasses when I was on the street. Once at the show I took them off because they're not part of the standard Jenkins character. But I donned them a few times for a variation I call Dark Jenkins. He puts the Security in DevSecOps! He'll fail your build if your code doesn't pass all the tests!
AWS re:Invent conference - Tue, 27 Nov 2023. 3pm.
This week I've been attending the AWS re:Invent conference to staff my company's booth in the exhibitor showcase. I've done this countless times before for various conferences, including AWS re:Invent at least 3 times in past years, but this time I'm doing it a bit differently. I'm appearing as Jenkins the Butler— a personification of the logo for the popular Jenkins open source project. Well, I've done that a few times before at various conferences, too. But this time I'm portraying Jenkins the whole time.
The go-ahead to go wall-to-wall on being the butler comes amid a shift in attitude of my company's execs toward the Jenkins project. For years we've earned most of our money from selling a commercialized tool based on Jenkins. In return we do a lot of commits to support and improve the open source project. After getting off to a strong start co-marketing with Jenkins we entered a period with leadership that didn't want to associate us too closely with open source. That was kind of nuts because it has long been such a core part of our business. New leadership has embraced Jenkins again, redoubling our investment in building enhancements on it and being proud to tell people that's what we do.
Part of that pride in what we do is including messaging about Jenkins and the Jenkins logo in our branding. At this conference we've gone even further making Jenkins one of our give-aways. Oh, we've always had Jenkins stickers, and we have them again this year. But this year we also have Jenkins masks! There's even a contest— tweet pictures of 3 or more Jenkins in the frame to enter to win an Xbox!
"Being the Butler", as I call it, has been fun, as always. The reactions I get from people are great. Some spot me from 10 to 15 feet away, do a whole-body double take, and beam with smiles as they recognize me. Others don't notice me right away— I figure that's because the conference is pretty crowded, and the show floor is basically nonstop sensory overload with so many things sights and sounds— until they're already talking to one of my colleagues. Then they finally notice me looking at them from 3 feet away with an obsequious smile and basically do a spit-take. Nobody expects Jenkins the Butler to appear live, in 3D!
On Tuesday it was bright out when I walked to the conference center, so I wore my sunglasses when I was on the street. Once at the show I took them off because they're not part of the standard Jenkins character. But I donned them a few times for a variation I call Dark Jenkins. He puts the Security in DevSecOps! He'll fail your build if your code doesn't pass all the tests!
