Without setting anything aflame - or maybe that will happen at his presentation? - Carlo Flores will talk about "Smoke" at SCALE 12X. The SCALE Team caught up with Carlo and asked him about his presentation.
Q: Could you please introduce yourself and tell us a little about your background?
A: After entering the field in a support role, I've worked with software and systems as a SysAdmin, Developer, and team Director over the past several years. I think working in so many roles has really helped me understand both the customer experience and my stacks and I'm grateful to have been lucky enough to work with some fantastic teams. I helped start LA DevOps and js.la, two groups in Los Angeles that have some of the best engineers in the city as members, and I learn something from them at each meetup.
Q: You're giving a talk on "Smoke." Without tipping your hand on the actual talk, can you give us an idea of what we might expect?
A: Sure! Smoke is really about trying to address pain with functional tests. When I first wrote it, I was dealing with many unexpected problems on many servers, and I found it interesting that -- almost as a rule -- shops spend tons of time writing unit tests and integration tests but often fail with functional tests. The presentation is both about how we wrote a framework for functional tests as well as the challenges we had making that framework part of our development, operations, and support workflows. It's a talk more about these challenges and culture than it is about specific code.
Q: Is this your first visit to SCALE? If so, what are your expectations? If not, can you give us your impressions of the event?
A: This will be my fourth year at SCALE. It's by far my favorite conference in town. It's opportunity to hear great talks from great folks in this industry, but it's also the time of year where I get a chance to catch up with old friends and then meet new folks. Over the past couple of years I've been lucky to help Ilan and others organize DevOps Day LA at SCALE.
Q: Is there anything else you'd like to add?
A. Just that I'm excited and I'll see you this weekend!
[SCALE Team interview by Larry Cafiero]