GitHub Universe 2024 #

GitHub Universe Swag

I had the pleasure of speaking at and attending GitHub Universe 2024 (GitHub’s main conference for and about all-things-GitHub).

It was AMAZING! Let’s dive in.

General #

The conference was at Fort Mason Center in San Francisco, which was a great venue, I must say. The facility consists of several long buildings, with lots of open air between and around them (perfect for avoiding the “Conference Crud”).

There was tons of excitement and energy, “Hubbers” (GitHub employees), and Octocat-themed everything.

The food/snacks/beverages were surprisingly good (considering how hard it is to “scale” good grub at a conference).

The content of the conference centered around DevX (short for “Developer Experience”, my slice of heaven), Security, and of course, AI.

I almost exclusively spent my time talking to folks in “the hallway track” from about every company imaginable. This is, I imagine, one of the HUGE perks of GitHub Universe (specifically) as a conference. Although it wasn’t for GitHub’s lack of trying to get you engaged. There was a LOT going on!

There was also a special announcement around GitHub Copilot + Anthropic’s Claude that made me (and several attendees, as I found out) very happy.

My Demo #

Me on stage

(Session Catalog: “Merging made fast and easy: Demystifying GitHub’s merge queue”)

I proposed this talk thinking two things:

  • “People love to hate the merge queue, and it’s all for the wrong reasons. They just don’t understand! I wish they had the knowledge. Then they can actually hate it for the RIGHT reasons.”
  • “My chances of getting in are slim, YOLO! … But also, no one’s crazy enough to talk about the merge queue. This may be my ‘in’!”

In the before-times #

Leading up to the conference, GitHub was extremely generous with speaker coaching, helpful sessions, and a wonderful PowerPoint template. Big shoutout to the crew responsible for handling speakers because the love and labor showed.

For me personally, I made my slides, started to rehearse my talk, and mid-October (T-3 weeks until showtime) I attended a coaching session with others where a professional speaker was giving tips, tricks, and advice. Luckily enough for me, this is where the “oh no I did it again” moment set in as I realized I was going to be on “demo stage” and I had prepared only slides. No demo.

Also luckily for me, about a week and a half’s worth of sweat, tears, maybe a little blood, and a small sacrificial set of vacation days later, I had a completely new revamped demo.

It was extremely important to me that when I get on stage there is a blend of information, engagement, and entertainment. Too many talks are too dense, or too boring, or don’t have good takeaways. This is what I strived for, and this is what I’d hope my labor of love would produce.

In the during-times #

At 2pm on Tuesday (the first conference day) I confidently presented what I hoped would be a talk/demo worth the blood, sweat, tears, and poor, poor sacrificial vacation days. I’m a hopeless optimist, so I optimistically felt like it’d go well.

I’m very happy to report that during and after my talk, I feel like I met my high expectations and optimism. I thought it went really well.

(I’m also not sure what blend of circumstances resulted in it, but I was surprisingly not nervous beforehand. That was pleasantly surprising.)

I did my absolute best to jam-pack as much information about Merge Queues (in general), GitHub’s merge queue, AND tips/tricks/practices when running one into 25 little itty-bitty minutes. And it went so well.

In the after-times #

Whoo, what a ride! I can’t imagine the audience had a triple-digit number of attendees, but it feels like at least a hundred people stopped me at some point to say such wonderfully nice things. The positive feedback was phenomenal!

I had people stop me afterwards, in the hallways, on the way to the shuttles, and even someone in the elevator of my hotel!

The great thing was the hard work paid off. People liked that it was engaging AND informational. It seems that most folks I talked to are flying/driving/walking/boating home with the “key-points to take home” that I wanted them to take home, taken home.

Unfortunately, the tragedy is the session wasn’t streamed or recorded. I would’ve loved to share it with others digitally (which I’ll likely do through a recording, or a sister blog post. Neither I nor the content is going anywhere). But that’ll have to wait until I find or make the time for it.

Looking Forward #

I’d love to be back at GHU 2025. I’ll definitely throw my name in the hat for another session.

The conference got me (even more) excited about Developer Experience, and the roles GitHub and myself play in making that better for myself, my team, my org, and well, everyone.

It also made me feel like Copilot is something I might want to check out soon. It certainly seems like it has a lot to offer. I just also wish it came with the free time and energy required to hobby code.

Special Thanks #

A very warm and special thanks goes out to ‘Hubbers who made me feel welcome and supported:

Special thanks to Two Dudes Photo who worked the entire time taking some AMAZING headshots for folks (who I presume GitHub paid to do so). Honestly one of the best perks of going.

And to Graphite who had the best after-party session (involving a 72-foot sailboat, an unbelievable sunset, and wonderful company).