Crossing the Pond: Chef Summit London 2014

Next week is an exciting week for Chef as we kickoff our first Chef Summit in London. If you’ve never attended a Chef Summit in the past, it’s an opportunity for our folks to meet with members of the Chef community to talk about all sorts of things. We’re bringing a bunch of Chefs over from the US to continue the conversation for folks who couldn’t join us in Seattle!

We take advantage of the Open Space format, which makes the Summit events different from ChefConf; the topics aren’t pre-planned, there’s no call for papers, no review process. Come talk about whatever you’ve got on your mind about Chef. Our 2014 Summit in Seattle spawned a lot of really great conversations about all sorts of Chef-related experiences. We’ve documented them on the Summit wiki, to give you an idea of what’s on the minds of our community. You can see the great variety of topics, from the heaviest of hard technology problems, to the onboarding of new users, to extending Chef to do even more amazing things for you. Some of the stuff we’re thinking about:

• Steven Murawski, of our Community team, is interested in Windows configuration, DSC, and integrating Windows with Test Kitchen!
• Dan DeLeo, from Engineering, is going to give a demo of Policyfile, and you are NOT going to want to miss that.
• Nathen Harvey will facilitate an “Ask Me Anything” (AMA) session.  The AMA session at the Seattle Summit was a big hit!
• All of our local staff will be onsite too, so come meet them!

We also have a lot of Chef friends in Europe that we don’t get to see as often as we’d like!

• Jon Cowie of Etsy, author of Customizing Chef will be there. You can see Jon’s ChefConf 2014 talk on our YouTube channel.
• Thom May, who has been involved in the Chef community from very early days; he’s a member of our Release MVP Hall of Fame. Check-out Thom’s talk from ChefConf 2014.
• Stephen Nelson-Smith, author of Test-Driven Infrastructure with Chef, and prolific speaker and trainer is joining us as well.

It’s always awesome to see familiar faces, but we’re also looking forward to meeting as many folks as we can at Summit. Hopefully you!

The other reason I’m looking forward to our London Summit is that I will be joining our London office full time in the coming months. Over the three years I’ve been with the company, I’ve worked with a lot of our users, taught a lot of new Chefs, and learned a lot about what sorts of products you’re building with Chef and how it makes your worklife better. In 2014 Chef has made a concerted effort to solidify our presence outside the US, and I’m excited to be a part of the new team we’re building in London, and working with our customers in Europe and beyond.

So if you can make it, join us for Summit. If you can only get away on Friday, come to the Hack Day! If you’re looking for some Intermediate Training, hang out with me Monday and Tuesday. :) Use the code CHEFWEEK to get a discount on your tickets!
Otherwise, keep an eye out for us in London and other cities and events in Europe as we bring the Chef love to new venues!