It was a typical day, so I thought…

I’ve been very focused on Microservices and Containers for a bit now and how these fit in the enterprise.

Yesterday morning - like many others, I start my day by having breakfast with my daughter and wife, while enjoying my killer expresso to wake my ass up!

While having breakfast (and this is not typical) I decided to bust out the laptop - yes I had an idea of some imagery I was hoping to find via Google Images for one of my upcoming @Docker posts. So I searched and ran into Patrick Chanezon’s (@Chanezon) blog. I was only interested in the image he used on one of his blog post, but then started reading his last post on joining Docker, and the one prior on joining Microsoft.

I started realizing this guy has such similar background as I do and shares the same vision as I do in terms of how we use technology now and what that looks like in the future. More on this below…

The day continued, I caught up on some work, including testing a deployment of a Docker machine to Azure via the docker-machine and using a YAML to specify my services. That was a total success! I was able to redeploy at will and leverage the Azure native firewall and other services.

NOTE: I’ll spare you the screenshots and step-by-step tutorial on this post, but I am writing up another one on how I used Azure to deploy Docker containers! Stay tuned..

I was feeling damn good, and called it a day to head into San Francisco for the big birthday bash.

The Pre-Party

I drove in and met an old friend at Tres Agaves - because that is a must when around Townsend right? You can’t go wrong with chips n salsa either, seriously.

Anyway, we chatted for a while and we each discussed the things that make us want to get up and face the day. Honestly for me is very clear, there are two things (maybe three):

  • My wife and daughter

  • Technology and solving problems with it

  • Skiing - yes I am a die-hard skier, last year I put in about 70 days, so you get the picture. I’m fairly certain, I’ll be driving up to Tahoe by the time you see this post!

To get back to the point, on item b) specifically Docker has been on my “love list”, I know sometimes I feel like a kid when I play with Docker shit, it is truly amazing to see it mature so much in such short period of time.

So It Begins

We had some drinks and food, we were ready to walk over to the Docker HQ. I have to say, their offices are super nice, just lounging at the front desk felt nice.

People started arriving (I don’t know the final count) and I was going all over taking pictures and chatting with peeps. Met a couple of young cats from Splunk who actually use Docker now.

The presentation started and @solomonstre and @Chanezon take the stage. Anyone can get up on a stage and talk, but you gotta appreciate the charisma and style some folks have like these gentlemen.

In a nutshell, they were cognizant about the newbs vs. the veterans in the Docker community. They provided insightful information that catered to both audiences, and above all kept it fun!

I also had to remark how appropriate it was for @solomonstre to wear Dockers :) https://twitter.com/SharePointOscar/status/842171408826355713

And of course @solomonstre later had a chance to catch up on the twitter thingy and replied with this https://twitter.com/solomonstre/status/842184552026066944

After the presentation, the audience was divided into two. One was for Developers, the other for DevOps folks. It made total sense to me, as I can do both and appreciate the focus on each topic as there is tons to learn.

And then this happened…

I could have sat and followed the hands-on labs but I was like, ah fuck it I can continue my self-paced project at home. So I decided to walk around and chat with more folks.

Was taking a picture of the little whale’s birthday cake, when I saw couple guys chatting, and somehow we started talking about - guess what? Yes Docker!

I was actually chatting with the same guy who’s blog post I had accidentally run into earlier that morning. It was just so interesting how all things aligned for this to happen.

We discussed how back in the dot-com bubble there was Netscape Enterprise Server and how I used it. Turns out Patrick worked at Netscape and Sun Microsystems as well as Microsoft

I gave him an overview of the recent stuff I’ve done at Microsoft and using docker-machine Azure driver to deploy to Azure cloud an modern NodeJS app for a client.

Just a great guy, and man it just felt right to be there at that moment chatting with someone with similar background and as many years in the industry and yet focused on the future and what that may look like with Docker in the mix.

One of those things we discussed was the possibilities of a SharePoint farm being dockerized. My mind started racing, thinking of the possibilities and I could not sleep last night just thinking of what the YAML definition for the compose file would look like :) Sick right??

I’ll be writing up a post just on that concept soon :)

I managed to capture some pictures, hope you enjoyed the event as much as I did.

Cheers, @SharePointOscar