April 2018 Summaries

DigitalOcean is participating in KubeCon EU with two speakers and a booth in Copenhagen, Denmark. The company will discuss Prometheus exporters, which bridge the gap between Prometheus and systems that cannot export metrics in the Prometheus format. Additionally, DigitalOcean will delve into its approach to container networking using BGP, Anycast, and open-source technologies like kube-router and CNI. This will focus on achieving a fast and reliable container network where Pod and Service IPs are reachable from anywhere on DigitalOcean's global network.

At Statuspage, they emphasize the importance of having an incident communications plan in place, even for small teams. They argue that unplanned downtime can cause significant financial losses and customer churn. To mitigate this, they recommend four steps: defining key roles and expectations, creating a template for boilerplate language, deciding on communications channels, and following three "golden rules" during the incident: communicating as soon as possible, providing regular updates, and being precise without giving non-committal answers. They also stress the importance of post-incident reviews to build customer trust and outline steps taken to prevent similar incidents in the future.

RailsConf 2018 is taking place April 17-19, 2018 in Steel City. The event will feature a presentation by Sam Phippen on "Quick and easy browser testing using RSpec and Rails 5.1", where attendees can learn about the benefits of full-stack testing with modern tools. RailsConf will also have a booth at the event, located in Hall A, Level 2, allowing attendees to meet developers and get hands-on experience with their products. The presentation is scheduled for Thursday, April 19 from 10:50 AM-11:30 AM.

We are grateful for the support of our developer community during our six-year journey to becoming a cloud platform. Our Community Doers, including Aditya Patawari, Samina Fu, and David Endersby, have made significant contributions through content creation, speaker engagements, and Meetup organization. These individuals embody the qualities we value in our community, such as education, collaboration, and promotion of learning. We recognize their efforts and invite others to get involved by nominating a member for recognition.

Tom Spiegelman, an Infrastructure Engineering Manager at DigitalOcean, has successfully implemented a Fellowship Program to foster mentorship and growth within his team. The program brings together engineers from various teams for a two-week immersive experience, where they work on projects with the Infra team and receive guidance from senior engineers. This approach has led to increased comradery between teams, improved tool development, and successful recruitment of talented engineers. By pairing individuals with more senior engineers, Spiegelman believes that strong-minded engineers can be developed internally, leading to better performing teams and a stronger company. The program's benefits include quick iteration, focused mentoring, and the ability to cater to each participant's interests. Despite challenges, such as affecting team members' busy schedules, the program has been successful in achieving its goals and has become an integral part of DigitalOcean's organizational growth.