In early October, we hosted our second annual DevOps DayCamp to over eighty students, faculty, and community members, acting as a feeder workshop into the year long DevOps BootCamp series. Beyond its promotional function, our DayCamp provided an interactive workshop for those in attendance.

We offered seminars and interactive programs for both beginners and more advanced participants.

For the beginners, the sessions focused on fundamentals and introductions. We began with an explanation of DevOps and its functions and moved into the basics of operating the system, including working with Unix, executing programs and flagging potential problems. Participants also learned collaborative techniques featuring IRC and git.

The advanced track provided the opportunity for attendees to interact with a number of guest speakers, including Mozilla’s K Lars Lohn and Emily Dunham, Facebook’s Mark Callaghan, and IBM’s Spencer Krum, along with members of the Open Source Lab staff at Oregon State, including director Lance Albertson, full-time head of software development Ken Lett, and student system administrator Daniel Takamori.

To wrap up the festivities, we created our first DevOps Panel, a group of experts responding to questions about DevOps. Panelists included Trevor Bramwell, release engineer at the Linux Foundation; Jeffrey Borcean, computer science undergraduate and system administrator; Jordan Evans, Open Source Lab systems administrator; and Mike Cooper, Mozilla web developer.

In the coming weeks, our DevOps BootCamp will hold weekly sessions covering basic software development and system administration skills. The goal is to give students the skills to contribute to open-source projects. It’s free and open to the community so spread the word. For more information, check out our website at http://devopsbootcamp.osuosl.org. See you there!