{"id":390,"date":"2021-09-09T20:57:17","date_gmt":"2021-09-10T00:57:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/redmonk.com\/kfitzpatrick\/?p=390"},"modified":"2021-09-16T08:43:04","modified_gmt":"2021-09-16T12:43:04","slug":"notes-from-springone-2021","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/redmonk.com\/kfitzpatrick\/2021\/09\/09\/notes-from-springone-2021\/","title":{"rendered":"Notes from SpringOne 2021"},"content":{"rendered":"

Last week I managed to catch quite a bit of SpringOne<\/a>: the conference devoted to Spring<\/a> and run by VMware as one of the events brought via its acquisition of Pivotal<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The event had the usual tech conference mix of product announcements (e.g., the public beta of the Tanzu Application Platform<\/a>), technical demos, customer stories, breakout sessions, and keynote talks, with the three mainstage sessions expertly hosted (live) by Developer Advocates Cora Iberkleid<\/a>, Tiffany Jernigan<\/a>, and, of course (because this is Spring!), Josh Long<\/a>. This year\u2019s theme, \u201cCode with the flow,\u201d spoke to the idea of coding with minimal unwanted distractions or interruptions, and focused on how both tech and processes can help get us to that state.<\/p>\n

The talks themselves featured some solid production values, including the use of graphic overlays (rather than slides) for the keynotes, and a nicely edited and edutaining troubleshooting Spring Cloud and Tanzu demo<\/a>. With related chat taking place on Slack, the event was not a completely integrated experience, but overall it followed many of the virtual tech event suggestions<\/a> posited by my colleague James.<\/p>\n

SpringOne also made good use of topic tracks, and I love when event schedule interfaces let me see at a glance what is happening on all the different tracks\/stages at once, and then allow me to drop in on different tracks directly from links on the schedule.<\/p>\n

\"Screenshot<\/p>\n

Although talks were not available on demand immediately after they aired–meaning that you had to catch the talks in real time if you did not want to wait a few days–replays of keynotes and breakout sessions (yes, even the talks from the social track<\/a>) are already available.<\/p>\n

While this is the third SpringOne I\u2019ve attended (and the second virtual one), I found this year\u2019s \u201cCode with the flow\u201d theme to be especially relevant. At RedMonk we have been speaking extensively about the developer experience gap,<\/a> which my colleague Stephen describes as a result of tooling fragmentation in which<\/p>\n

\n developers are forced to borrow time from writing code and redirect it towards managing the issues associated with highly complex, multi-factor developer toolchains held together in places by duct tape and baling wire.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

A number of sessions, including Ajay Patel\u2019s Day 1 kickoff keynote, spoke to the developer experience gap and other flow disruptors directly, while other sessions focused on technical and process solutions for establishing and maintaining creative flow.<\/p>\n

One of my favorite talks of the event (and of 2021, really) was Sakinah Hofler\u2019s talk at the end of the Day 1 mainstage session on \u201cUnlocking Developer Creativity\u201d (about 47:45 in the video embedded below).<\/p>\n