Ansible Contributor Summit is one of Ansible's most significant and undoubtedly crucial events, now renamed Ansible Colab. It occurs on the last day of Config Management Camp at Ghent. Traditionally, the conference takes place next Monday to Wednesday after Fosdem.
We started from Brussels in the afternoon on the last day of Fosdem. My most complicated part was to bid goodbye to my daughter, who was accompanying me at the Fosdem. She tried to convince me to take her by saying, "I will be helpful in the booth duty." Failing that proposition, she finally said bye with a note: "Help [Carol], she works a lot."
We reached Ghent in the early afternoon. Thank you, Boris, for giving us the ride and community help. After a walk around the city in the light festival and experiencing my first bubble tea, we reached the conference dinner. And how nice to meet [Florian] over there.
Days of the Conference
I traveled to this place with a pretty extensive list of agendas:
- Finish working on some (long stuck) PRs
- Plan on some of the technical decisions
- Discuss some future community plans
- Hacking on some issues
- And, of course, a lot of meetings with my fellow community members
Most of us stayed in the same hotel, making travel more accessible and having exciting conversations on tram rides. We started for the venue early in the morning. We had a booth next to our friendly neighbor Foreman's (once again after Fosdem). [Rick], [Greg], [Don], [Carol], and I shared the booth duties. And of there was [Tim] [Felix], and [David] helping us with the questions from our users and contributors. We had 2 Ansible tracks this year at the Config Management camp.
The talk lists
This time, again, I could only spend a little time attending the talks due to the booth duty (which I enjoy to the fullest) and the room moderator duty. The room duty allows us to listen to the talks on the best seat :). There is a list of talks that I could not get to attend but kept on my watch list :
- Terraforming with Ansible by Tim Appnel
- [Where does your Ansible code come from?] by Fabio Alessandro "Fale" Locati
- [Simplifying Cloud Deployments with Ansible for React Next.js on AWS EC2] by Rose Crisp
- We Fear Change by Coté
- [If Dev and Ops had a baby, it would be called Winglang] by D.Aud
- [Automating Hybrid Clouds with Event-Driven Ansible] by Ricardo Carrillo Cruz
- Ansible - State of the Community(https://cfp.cfgmgmtcamp.org/2024/talk/3ZD3WX/) by Greg Sutcliffe
- [Automating project documentation for the win] by Don Naro
- Unstructuring your mind: Ansible vs. JSON by Felix Frank
- Where does your Ansible code come from? by Fabio Alessandro "Fale" Locati
Ansible Colab Day
The last day of Config Management Camp was Ansible Colab Day. We started a little late. It was the day with all Ansible. The day started with [Sutapa] sharing her journey as she changed her career path from being a GIS professional to an Open source contributor with Ansible Community. She joined us online. Witnessing her journey and playing a small part in that felt really nice. Greg shared with us the state of the Ansible Community. Don shared with us what is going on with the Ansible Documentation. Felix, David, and I presented to the community the 'Past, Present, and Future of the Ansible Release Management.' After lunch, we sat for a chatting and hacking session in a more informal session. And with that, we called an end to the conference.
Au revoir
After Five days of friends, festivals, and feasts, saying goodbye is always hard. I finished my todo list and filled my notepads with ideas and upcoming todos. I met some wonderful people and made some great friends. A special note of gratitude to the organizers for this fantastic event over the years. Until we make it the next time (I wish to do it soon), thank you for all your contributions, and see you online.
Moment to cherish
At one of the conference dinners. I introduced myself as a Red Hatter, and he said, "Ahh, Red Hat, you are the good ones." It made my day. 'Yes, we are good ones; we always strive to keep the trust and name going.'