Open Letter to the #DevOpsCulture

The DevOps Culture needs an unbiased, inclusive and diverse anchor point where the global community can unite - emancipated from economic interests. We give you the DOC magazine. It's free - but not cheap. It's continuous delicious DevOps content.

Years ago I wanted to gather people and build a community of professionals who see themselves as part of the contemporary modern approach to software development and infrastructure.

You know: DevOps, Continuous Delivery, Infrastructure as Code, Serverless, Automation of tests and software development processes ...and all that jazz.

I've been on a journey over more than 10 years - building that community - meeting a lot of people, hosting a lot of events, conferences, discussion panels, hackathons, CoDe camps, interviewing Continuous Delivery rockstars, done pro bono teaching at universities, scouting and mentoring talent, facilitating blogs and even writing a few pieces myself.

Most of this community building, I did up until now was in the context of the consulting company that I founded in 2007 - specialized in coaching and implementing exactly these contemporary approaches. In 10 years we grew to 50 people throughout Denmark, Sweden and Norway. I sold that company a little over a year ago, so naturally I’m not nurturing the DevOps culture in that context anymore.

But I’ve found a new soap-box to stand on.

Join the DevOps Culture Voice group on LinkedIn and be heard

The Honeypot

In my former company we honestly thought that we could be the ancor of a global community. A bit na?ve, I admit, but never the less I initatied a journey to gather the community. At some point during our endeavours we realized, that in order to build a substantial crowd we need to reverse the direction. We couldn’t reach out to an unorganized imaginary community. When you reach out as a company - people think you are selling. We needed to have the like-minded find us.

The direction would have to be inbound. We needed to create delicious, 1st grade content and gatherings both AFK and virtually.

So, we went out to set up a honeypot of delicious, high quality content. The general assumption behind inbound communication is that like a honeypot in the forest, the animals will surely find it - because it’s delicious - and begin to flock around it.

“Delicious” we realized. That definitely calls for more professionals, but with a skill set completely different from what the average geek in tech or a self-made photo-shopper can provide. We need professionals within communication, branding, writing, photography, video, publishing. Professionals who - by the way - also understand tech.

We couldn’t find any who had those skills - and at the same time understood tech, and for sure not the DevOps culture.

“Hmmm - let’s build them then” we thought. 

We knew that in our line of business, DevOps savvy people were hard to onboard, but we had quite a success in spotting talent and creating them ourselves, so why not use the same approach here? That is; find the people with the most substantial part of the required skill set in check - and teach them the rest?

The Phabled Ones

Through our close network, we approached JC and Bruce in U.K. They were old schoolmates of one of the partners and they definitely had the skills to communicate. At the time JC was an Art Director, creating posh glittery printed magazines in the fashionable London environment of publishing. Bruce had a master in English literature and worked as a technical writer for the oil industry in Scotland - a true word smith - in tech. And the two of them knew everyone in their line of business who was worth knowing - they could pull in more talent from their 1st order network as they needed it.

We started scheming and planning with JC and Bruce, to convince them to quit their day jobs and form a communication and branding bureau, specialized in tech, DevOps and Continuous Delivery - and help us become delicious. Again; addmittedly a bit na?ve, but it was worth a shot.

But JC and Bruce weren't that had to convince, they genuinely liked the idea. We promised to support them, by becoming their first customer and a few of us offered ourselvs as coaches, we would personally teach them the ins and outs of the DevOps culture - so they could create themselves a Blue Ocean to swim in. Finally - completely outside the context of our own company - a handful of people formed Phable with JC and Bruce in the leading force.

The name "Phable" referred to the tagline we had in mind “Branding through storytelling” - like fables. We deliberately put a misspell in the name, so that the name would distinguish itself from the spelling “fable”.

As a direct parallel to the story we tell in DevOps, that infrastructure shouldn't be seen as a cost, but as an enabler. Phable convinced us, that design is not a cost - it's an enabler.

Phable changed our company from being design fed - to being design led - they made us delicious.

Bruce took on the task to educated our techies to become professional bloggers, we created loads of content that was being thought out - and often referred to and shared - by the DevOps community. Phable rebranded our conferences, created posters, developed models. With their help we created a honeypot.

DOC - The magazine

Phable was a success, they managed to pick up customers in the blue ocean that we had imagined: A branding and communication bureau that understands DevOps and tech: Praqma, GitHub, DevOps Days, Prepend, CoDe Academy, Cucumber, Verifa, SpotQA…

But our effort to gather the community wasn't frictionless - to say the least. An anchor of the entire DevOps Culture can hardly be just one company - others have tried and failed (e.g. SAFe? ≠ DevOps). An anchor point to an entire culture needs to be unbiased, inclusive and diverse in it's very foundation. Despite our noble intentions - after all companies do customers - our endeavours to build a crowd we're not embrased by our competitors - and their customers. We were definitely offered a good sunny, sheltered corner spot of the DevOps culture. But we were hardly an anchor.

In the process the apprentice had become the master - Phable grew ambitions to create a posh glittery magazine "DOC - DevOps Culture Magazine" - a natural voice for the entire DevOps culture. After all communication was their thing. First shot at it was one of the most impressive MVP's I've yet seen in my entire professional life. It was a hand out magazine to be distributed at the world’s great DevOps related conferences. A place where thought leaders as well as craftsmen could inspire and where people of ambitions could aspire to become published. 

Delicious content - simply.

The first DOC issue #1 was printed in a few hundred copies and distributed at conferences throughout Scandinavia over a period of a couple of months. It had an overwhelming reception, it was truly delicious - featuring celebs like James Grenning, among the founding fathers of the agile manifesto and Nicole Forsgren, The number cruncher lady behind the State of DevOps Report and co-author of “Accelerate” - as well as stories from everyday backstage crews, hustling with DevOps in their work.

Today all printed copies of DOC Issue #1 are long gone. It's now considered a collector’s item. But you can still find it online at devopsculture.io though. Even without the glittery paper it's still delicious. Read it - if you haven't already.

The DOC magazine started to raise funds to continue the publishing, but since the printed issue was imagined as a free give-away at conferences, the magazine obviously requires, not only funding, but more importantly a real-life audience and in the light of Corona pandemic it made more sense to stop the press (pun intended) and bootstrap the online presence instead.

So that’s what we're doing noing now. When I say “we” it implies that I’m in.

Editor in Chief: @lakruzz

DOC is my new soap-box. I’m taking on the role as Editor in Chief, with Bruce - the phabled one - as my wingman in a combined role as mentor and Editor at Large, to the extent that his work in Phable permits it.

Actually I’m not entirely green in this business - From the previous millennium I hold a master’s degree in Computer Science and Communications combined. And I’ve worked as CMO in my former company - mastermind behind and responsible for our inbound marketing strategy as we set out on that journey.

My job in DOC will probably be less posh than the title implies - I imagine that I'm going to be more of a janitor to begin with. 

As mentioned; the MVP is already out there - DOC issue #1 from devopsculture.io.

To bootstap the online presence we will promote blogs on LinkedIn from our Linkedin page "DOC - DevOps Culture" and we have set up a LinkedIn group - "DOC - DevOps Culture Voice" that will be the voice of the DevOps Culture - to spot talent and stories.

If you come this far in the read - then you sould definitely join that group.

The DOC backlog

On the DOC backlog there’s currently:

• Establish blog on devopsculture.io
• Reach out to potential bloggers and authors
• Interview DevOps rock stars and backstage crew alike
• Fire up a podcast
• Attack audience - gather the DevOps Culture - create a voice
• Create seminars to enlighten non-tech executives - they need to know DevOps
• Offer master classes for tech writers - to grow talent - not in tech, but in publishing

What is DOC aiming for?

Well think big - in regards of contemporary software development and infrastructure - we want DOC to be, what Rolling Stone was to the music industry, what Communications of the ACM was to Computing, what Vogue was to Fashion.

Nothing less.

The content shall be free - but not cheap. Being published or mentioned in DOC will make you proud. Consuming content from DOC will feel delicious and engaging.

On DOC we will also reach out and interview people, and create edited delicious content in writing, graphics, audio and video. Which will essentially become available to the entire DevOps Culture - for free. Sign up on the mailing list on devopsculture.io to get delicious content pushed directly in your mailbox - or follow our page DOC - DevOps Culture here on LinkedIn to get roughly the same content - as pull.

How to Contribute

Join The LinkedIn Group DOC - DevOps Culture Voice

The LinkedIn group is a free speech area. It will become a source of input to the magazine. This group is where we scout for good stories, present ideas, and call for content. It’s the voice of the DevOps Culture - If you want to contribute as a blogger, please join - and be spotted. Even if you are not a blogger - join anyway, engage actively and give feedback on the content - help maturing it. Hint a good story. On DOC we’re ready to go in and invest in talent. If you have a story you want to tell yourself, then we will help you write it - help you become a story teller.

#devopsculture

We are tracking the hash tag #devopsculture - not just inside the group but everywhere on LinkedIn, and even on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram etc. Use it as conspiratory rub-your-nose tag to indcate that your are in on it - that you indentify yourself as part of this culture, a way to identify fellow community contributors.

To get in contact simply mention @DOC - DevOps Culture in a post on LinkedIn and you'll get our immidiate attention. If you want to chat, get advise on a possible story or suggest a DevOpsy angle on an existing story, or if you want to recommend someone for an interview - I encourage your to connect with me (@lakruzz) on LinkedIn and send me a message.

What about the glittery, posh, printed magazine?

Don’t worry, this is our baby, we will not abandon it. When funding, pandemics, social life once again permits real people meeting up in real life - we will once again blow life into this idea - in the meantime we plan on publishing something like a yearbook. A glossy printed version of the best content on devopsculture.io. It will be sold as pre-orders for about the price of the manufacturing and shipping costs.

But let’s build the community first - It’s time to organize - let's get to work. But hey...

Let's be careful out there!