My DevOps World | Jenkins World Lisbon Experience

Abhyudaya and I boarded our flight from Indira Gandhi Airport (New Delhi) to Lisbon on December 1, 2019 morning at 0500 hours (local time). It was a fine trip with an hour layover in Istanbul Ataturk Airport. We arrived in Lisbon at 1500 hours (local time). The weather in Lisbon was terrific. A mild cold but strong sea breeze was the starting point of me falling in love with the place. We arrived at our hotel (Novotel Lisboa) in an Uber. Oleg met us at the lobby to help us with check-in. It was great to finally meet him in person after months of knowing and working together. We had a good chat about the event, what to expect and other sightseeing areas. After a short time of refresh, Long who traveled from Berlin a day before met us at the restaurant. We had a brief chat knowing each other, had our food and went to bed. The next day was Hackfest. We hit the bed after that as we had to reach Centro de Congressos de Lisboa (CCL) where the event was organised by 0900 hours.

I woke up early for a short jog in the streets. Lisbon is a city made on hills. The streets have beautiful mosaic styled pavements. It was nice to see around the city. Then Abhyudaya and me went for breakfast and reached CCL in an Uber at 0815 hours.

There was a round table sitting arrangement in an auditorium. It was like a meet-and-greet event to interact with other developers (some known and some new). Everybody had to figure out their problem statements and work on it. There was milk, juice, sandwiches which gave us energy throughout the day. I took a small break to come out of the building to go to the other side of the road which was on the banks of Tagus River. From there you could have very close view underneath the Ponte 25 de Abril (looks strikingly similar to Golden Gate Bridge). You can also see The Sanctuary of Christ the King on the other side of the river (again looks similar to Christ the Redeemer in Rio, Brazil). It was great to kick off the event with Hackfest. At the end of Hackfest some of us presented our work. Later, we went to a nearby restaurant to have burgers which apparently was the best burger I ever had (could be because I hadn’t tried too many burgers before :P). We talked and interacted with people from other parts of the world for about an hour and a half then went back to our hotel rooms.

The conference officially began on this day. Abyudaya and me had breakfast and took the shuttle to CCL. We collected our t-shirts and IDs. The event managing team made an app for DevOps World | Jenkins World (DWJW) Lisbon with all schedules and other information which was incredibly convenient for all attendees. There were multiple sessions/events on different topics related to Jenkins or DevOps in general. I attended the Jenkins and Jenkins X contributor summit. Had a nice lunch and went around to explore Lisbon. I went to Padrao dos Descobrimentos and the beautiful Belem Palace. Had some Pasteis de Belem (a popular Portuguese desert). Took a tram to Praça do Comércio. It is Lisbon’s most important square. You will find lots of tourists, street bands, sea food restaurants, shops for every budget, the famous pink street and so much more. Later that evening we had a party hosted by EURODOG (European DevOps Group) at Lisboa Marriott. It was a nice party to network with developers over casual wine and beer. We later head out to a nearby Indian restaurant for Kebab and rice.

The second day began with the opening keynote. Later went to the Jenkins X Introduction, Deploying K8s with Jenkins on GCP, Build top mobile games by King in that order. Also occasionally hitting the sponsors booth to have a chat and collect some swags. In the evening there was the superhero themed party, sponsored by Sonatype. It was probably the most fun event in the entire conference. The expo hall had an entirely different look with the party lights on, people wearing capes, fun events going around. There were artists dressed in a Bumblebee, a Batman, a Superman, a Supergirl, a Thor and more superhero costumes! I was previously made aware of the interesting parties at Jenkins World but the experience was very different. People from all over the world had come together to celebrate the 15 years of success of an open source software. After partying from 5 to 7 we went back to the hotel. I spent some time to prepare the slides for the next day’s presentation and went to bed.

The third and final day of conference began with Jenkins World Fun Run. I missed the keynote for being late and other setup required for the presentation. My laptop was broken so had to do all the setup for demo on a friend’s laptop. The situation felt like a Jenkins admin under fire for a production bug. After being under pressure for a while, took a break to admire the developer comics and had a chat with the graffiti painter. During lunch it was time for the GSoC presentation at the Jenkins community booth. All our presentation went well and we also interacted with real users. Then we had the GSoC Team pic at the Jenkins community booth. Later Abhyudaya and me gave our presentation at the lightning talks as well upon Mark Waite’s request. The event concluded with emotional goodbyes.

All GSoC Students were invited for dinner at Corinthia Lisboa’s Soul Garden restaurant. The party comprised of Oleg, Mark and his lovely wife, Liam, Tracy, Alyssa and Olivier. We had a very nice conversation and I had a very delicious Bacalhau (cod fish) dish. Then bid final goodbye to everybody.

It was a wonderful experience in a wonderful country among wonderful people. Hats off to the management team lead by Alyssa Tong and co. An event this big was carried out without any hiccups! Everybody contributed their part to the event which made it very interactive and fun. Checkout some of my swags:

A big shout out to the Jenkins project and CloudBees for sponsoring this trip. Also thank you Jenkins and Google Summer of Code for support. :)