The Future of Software conference pregame (Part 2)

In this episode of the DevOps Sauna, Darren and Pinja are joined by Lauri Palokangas and Henri Hämäläinen to discuss the history of The DEVOPS Conference and highlight why events like The Future of Software are important to the software industry.

[Henkka] (0:05 - 0:14)

Different people coming together to openly discuss and get ideas and happy faces. Like that's the whole reason for me why I love this.

[Darren] (0:17 - 0:25)

Welcome to the DevOps Sauna, the podcast where we deep dive into the world of DevOps, platform engineering, security, and more as we explore the future of development.

[Pinja] (0:25 - 0:35)

Join us as we dive into the heart of DevOps, one story at a time. Whether you're a seasoned practitioner or only starting your DevOps journey, we're happy to welcome you into the DevOps Sauna.

[Lapa] (0:48 - 0:49)

Welcome back to the DevOps Sauna.

[Darren] (0:51 - 0:57)

Again, this time, we're talking about this road we're taking to The Future of Software conference coming up in London.

[Pinja] (0:57 - 1:45)

Eficode is powering The Future of Software conference in London on March 26 this year in person, where we aim to bring the best speakers in the world of DevOps and building software. And this is episode two. We covered in the first episode the history of building this series, where we started.

We had the first event 10 years ago with 300 people. We also talk about what goes into planning these events. How do we organize them?

And in this part, we talk a little bit more about what happened in the past five years. We get to talk to a couple of people who have had their fingers on how the series has been shaped. And what does it mean when we say that the series is powered by Eficode?

[Darren] (1:46 - 2:15)

And that's the driving force here. The idea, and we'll talk more about it soon, the idea of ‘Powered by Eficode’, but community-driven. We'll talk to Lauri Palokangas to ask what's the driving force behind these events and talk about the twists we found facing COVID over the last few years.

And now we're here talking to Lauri Palokangas, the Chief Marketing Officer here at Eficode.

[Pinja] (2:16 - 2:29)

We mentioned we have Lauri here, but we, as everybody else, know this person as Lapa. And this is a very familiar name, but Lapa, I assume you also prefer being called this but welcome regardless.

[Lapa] (2:29 - 2:31)

Nice to be here on this side of the table.

[Pinja] (2:31 - 2:51)

So, as the Chief Marketing Officer at Eficode, what is your view on how the events fit into the series? Into the general marketing overview of Eficode and for Eficode? Because we are bearing a message towards the community.

We want to be part of the community. We want to inspire people as well. What is your take on this?

[Lapa] (2:52 - 4:27)

I'd like to take one step back and ask what's the role of marketing for Eficode on the whole? And what we regard as our own mission is to find wisdom and then offer those people a platform where they can come across with their wisdom. And naturally, we would do that generally to develop the industry, develop the market.

And then we have our commercial interests in mind always in the background. So what is then the role of events overall? If I talk to field marketers and listen to their thoughts about the event landscape, there are the events where people come together to get inspired, to get some sense of where everything is going, like why should we be doing things or what should we be doing?

Actually, how do we do it? And those are the conferences where there is probably less time for intimate interaction. And then there are, let's say, workshops, hackathons, breakfast seminars, which are of different kinds in the dynamics where individuals can engage very deeply with their specific thoughts pertaining to their company.

So that's the big picture. So marketing's role is to find the wisdom in the company and outside the company related to our industry and then establish platforms where we can disseminate those ideas. And then conferences are probably more one-to-many, maybe a little more unidirectional.

And then you have different ways to turn that into bidirectional communication, to more one-to-few kind of discussions.

[Pinja] (4:27 - 4:50)

There's a community feeling when we go into those events and it feels like we're at a family reunion, and we always love to see people getting together. So there is the servant leadership from our part to look into putting these events together and allowing our speakers to shine and also facilitating the discussions.

[Lapa] (4:51 - 6:11)

Yes. Yeah, there was a book, Servant Leadership, which I had on my shelf for a long time. I never read that book, but that headline and the name of the book sort of talked to me from the bookshelf.

But I remember as we have been developing, starting DEVOPS 2020, then The DEVOPS Conference, Future of Software, and so on and so forth, I've been referring to my colleagues from my earlier roles in different companies, one of them being Björn Wigforss. Hi, Björn. He said that organizations if they have a choice, should portray themselves as professional conference organizers, where they serve the community by way of organizing it and making it possible for others.

And that's why the conference isn't called “Eficode something”. It is powered by Eficode, but it has all along been called something else. And we do take a huge effort every time to put that event together.

And there are countless hours spent on who should be talking, what kind of talks do we want? How do we find the sponsors and partners so that we can make this affordable to the participants? Where do we find the brilliance inside and outside of Eficode?

So, from a community perspective, yes, it's very much servant leadership, or at least being a servant to the community.

[Darren] (6:12 - 6:31)

There's this interesting mentality. We have these values inside Eficode, and one of them is to learn every day. And I'm always kind of impressed how much that radiates out with all the planning that goes into these events, into these conferences.

It always seems to be about taking the idea of daily learning and just shining it on everyone we can reach.

[Lapa] (6:32 - 7:17)

And I need to put a kudos out to our team in Denmark, because when we look back many, many years, our office in Denmark had a conference called CodeConf. And when you look at the way Praqma then became part of Eficode, how the idea where marketing is about telling great stories about what is happening, and then commercial success comes as a result of those stories coming to light. And that is still a very strong culture, as you said.

Let's first and foremost focus on what is worth talking about, and then start from that. And then, look, how do you take that and build a viable commercial success around that rather than the other way around?

[Darren] (7:17 - 7:40)

Now, we've talked a bit about, in the previous discussions, about the years leading up to 2020. And we've heard about the inception of the whole DEVOPS Conference. But things changed in 2020 and 2021 that kind of affected conference goers the world round.

How did that affect us here at Eficode?

[Lapa] (7:40 - 10:40)

I joined Eficode March 2020. And if my memory serves me right, it was the previous fall when CodeConf took place in Denmark, which was the face-to-face event. There was an event being put together called DEVOPS 2020.

And that would take place in April 2020. I joined in March 2020. I was one week in the office, one week on the road, two weeks in quarantine, and then everything shut down.

Everything went remote. And we were basically four weeks away from a face-to-face event with a number of sponsors and partners actually putting down money to sponsor the face-to-face event that would gather hundreds of people. We had so many speakers and everything.

We were going back and forth with our producing partner, venue partner, and all those. And then at the last mile, we decided, OK, we are going to turn this into an online event. And the first online event, DEVOPS 2020, we made a decision to make it free of charge for participants.

And the sponsors who were on board with us, like Atlassian or Red Hat or JFrog, Snyk, and many others, decided to basically tag along with us and continue on with the concept, even though it was turned online. And we basically huddled together a computer, a camera, a blue snowball mic, the one that I'm using right every moment. We stacked briefcases on a high table and made it look like a proper event.

And we had more than 6,000 people signing up. We had more than, I think, 3,000 people joining in two days. So, one day was like a proper DevOps day.

And then we had another day specifically for mobile operators around 5G, which in a 5G and DevOps and continuous development was a big thing then. That was when we realized that, OK, first of all, we can make quick decisions. And second of all, we can keep our audience and our partners along with us.

Now, there were two events, CodeCont, which was originated by Praqma, then became part of Eficode and everything I told before, and then DEVOPS 2020. So we had two brands. We had two concepts.

And the challenge with DEVOPS 2020 was that the domain name every year was different. So you sort of had a little bit of a search engine optimization challenge there that you could potentially mitigate. And the same with two conferences, CodeConf, which wasn't entirely Praqma owned, as I understand.

It was more similar to DevOpsDays where there were multiple parties chipping in to make the conference happen. But Pragma most definitely had an important role there. And then summer 2020, autumn 2020, we were going through the soul searching again for the name of the event.

And that's when The DEVOPS Conference came to be. And then 2021, it was like the first properly originally designed as a remote-only event that took place.

[Pinja] (10:41 - 11:01)

Having 6,000 participants says something about that there was a need. We were in a time when everything was new. Everybody was quarantined.

We were craving to be in touch with other people. Were there any surprising perks that you found from organizing the conference fully online?

[Lapa] (11:01 - 12:33)

Well, the technology stack was very much huddled together. So I think we had a landing page that had Slido on the left-hand side, and it had a private YouTube streaming on the right-hand side and absolutely no integration whatsoever in between. And there was a delay of a good one minute, whatever there was because there had to be broadcasting to YouTube first and then distributing them.

And well, as a consequence, imagine that you tried to create some interaction with the audience as a master of ceremony, you utter a question, and then you need to remember that it will take yet another 30 seconds for your stream to reach the audience. But we were already impatiently looking at Slido for the answers. And, of course, they weren't there yet because the audience were yet to hear the question.

So things like that, the 2021, was already like properly well done because there were vendors like Hopin who had capitalized on the opportunity and had built a proper technology, like integrated experience, both for the organizer and the audience. Maybe one last perk was in 2020, everything was ready. Everything was ready to go.

And just a slight slay of hand resulted in the microphone being unplugged from the USB hub. So everything was happening. And I was an MC.

And then people started to shout at me. We don't hear you. We don't hear you.

And then some instincts told me to sort of secure the USB cable one more time. And that was it. And then we started over.

[Darren] (12:34 - 13:16)

I have to say that on the other hand, because it was actually my first experience with Eficode, I was presenting at TDOC 2021. So I was actually on the other side of this and you made it look very professional. I have to say there was no, no like, uh, surprises or delays from that side.

So it's kind of interesting. But yeah, I also had, I was kind of like in your 2020 where I just had a laptop on this old glass display stand I used to own and just kind of stood there and gave my presentation from this one empty room of my then house. So, yeah, I think, I think it's good that in 2021, you kind of caught up a bit, but some of the rest of us were still living in 2020.

[Lapa] (13:17 - 14:31)

At that point, there was something else also happening in ‘21, because that was, as you said, it looked professional, and we had put more effort into it being professional because we did not have to improvise everything in four weeks of time. And one of them was, we had a proper studio, proper backdrop. And then our producer said, look, our backdrop is kind of dark in its tone.

And Eficode's default apparel is a black hoodie. Well, at least it used to be. And they said, if you as an MC are going to be on stage with a black backdrop with a black hoodie, then you're going to look like a floating head.

So you have to come up with something that doesn't make you look like a floating head. I can't remember how it came to be, but it occurred to us that we would produce a single piece of yellow hoodie. And then we did that.

And it was made for me. It had the Eficode logo in the chest. It had Eficode wordmark on the hood.

And I think that year we had something like 11,000 people registering and thousands of people in the opening speech, including a bunch of Eficodeans. And when we went live, there was an instant revolt in internal Slack, which was basically what is that yellow hoodie and how do I get one?

[Pinja] (14:32 - 15:00)

And come to think of it, now when we have our events and whether we're the ones who power the event, if we're talking about The DEVOPS Conferences or the ones where we are as participants, or we might be one of the companies having a booth, many companies tell us like, yes, I know how to find you. We know how to follow the yellow hoodies. So it started with just that one single yellow hoodie.

[Lapa] (15:00 - 16:04)

It started with just that one. And then, of course, we were still at the heart of COVID. So we started to look around.

Producing one hoodie is a different kind of challenge than producing 200 of them, because you have to think of economies of scale and you have to think of sustainability or things like that a little more differently than producing one of them. And it turned out that there were no vendors around who would still have yellow hoodies in the warehouse that could be embroidered in volume. And Marko, our CTO, and I, we quickly put together a scavenger hunt.

So, we basically put a Google form on the intranet. We took a QR code to the URL to the Google form. And then, we split that QR code into four fragments.

And then we hid those four fragments around our intranet. And then people had to go scavenge our intranet and then huddle up those fragments of QR code to scan it, to get the password for a Google form, so that they could submit a request for the yellow hoodie. And I think that bought us some good six months to then go and source the first batch.

[Pinja] (16:05 - 16:44)

That's how I got my first yellow hoodie and the code via that scavenger hunt. And the community around DevOps and software development knows the brand, knows the yellow hoodie. And we've talked about this already like it was called DEVOPS 2020 before.

We went to a DevOps Conference. Praqma from Denmark organized CodeConf. We had the Future of Product Development from Contribyte that was also acquired by Eficode.

So there is this importance of bringing the community and people together as one family, as we spoke before. How do you see this? And then, of course, the brand evolved around the name of the event.

[Lapa] (16:44 - 18:31)

I mean, probably the only one piece that has stayed intact across all of these years is this desire to find the wisdom and put it on a stage, whether that wisdom is found from inside Eficode or outside Eficode. Because the name of the conference has changed. As you said, Contribyte had Future of Product Development, or actually it was a Product Development of the Future to start with.

That was in Finnish. Praqma had CodeConf. So, the companies had different names.

They have now been amalgamated into Eficode. The conferences had different names, but also the industry has changed. So, I think there was an epiphany, probably for the first time in 2024, The DEVOPS Conference to London, where it was The DEVOPS Conference.

And when you do a cross-section of speakers, one could say, hang on a minute, that speech is not related to The DEVOPS Conference. And that speech is not related to The DEVOPS Conference. So we sort of had an epiphany that we call it The DEVOPS Conference, but we are actually stretching and testing the definition of DevOps, what DevOps stands for.

And then as we went on, we realized that, well, maybe The DEVOPS Conference is not a reflection of what we are doing and also what are those pieces of wisdom that we want to bring forward. So the companies have changed, the brands have changed, the subjects have shaped, the industry has developed. But this desire to find the people who have a hunch of the next best thing since the slice spread, which is something new than last year, and putting our A game in to give an exceptional experience for, be it a speaker, a sponsor, or the delegate, or an Eficode person, that has prevailed.

[Darren] (18:31 - 18:40)

Perfect. Thank you for joining us. Lapa, this has been fascinating, not only to hear about the conference, but also to finally learn the lore of those yellow hoodies I see all over the place.

[Lapa] (18:41 - 18:42)

Yeah.

[Pinja] (18:42 - 18:44)

Thank you so much, Lapa.

[Lapa] (18:44 - 18:46)

Pleasure.

[Pinja] (18:49 - 19:06)

So as Lapa mentioned, it was not an easy task to put together an online event, fully online, with such short notice. And I was very eager to hear the story of the Eficode's yellow hoodies, the ones made a trademark for our company in our events.

[Darren] (19:06 - 19:19)

The direction of Eficode's event management is always changing over the years, though now we are consolidating in one direction. So these events wouldn't be possible without the strong DevOps communities we have inside each of our participating countries.

[Pinja] (19:19 - 19:54)

The people that we are getting into our conferences and the events, they come because they also want to meet the people. Of course, they want to see the speakers, and that is the core attraction for them to come to the events. But there is a thing called a hallway track, where people get to talk to one another during breaks.

There is not much scheduled during changes between the speakers and when you have lunch. And after the conference, we have the mingling part. So you get to meet like-minded people who are working with the same things.

And this is the powering thing, why we want to keep on organizing the events.

[Darren] (19:55 - 20:34)

Yeah. Powered by Eficode, the hallway track. And I think it's critical.

I ran into a couple of clients and a couple of colleagues. It was always interesting to have those discussions of, you know, interesting to meet, interesting to realize how tall people are. That's a comment that gets thrown around a lot.

So yeah, it's always good to have those discussions. And all this leads into this kind of idea that everything's coming together and feeding into this one path. We've heard the history, we've heard the work that goes into it, we've heard how things progressed over the years.

And all culminating into this one idea.

[Pinja] (20:34 - 20:57)

We always want to inspire the whole community. And this year is not an exception for that. And as the name suggests, the Future of Software, we want to take a look a little bit into the future.

What is happening in the world of DevOps and software development. For the conference and DevOps in general, let's have a discussion with Henri Hämäläinen, who is the Head of DevOps and Cloud at Eficode.

[Pinja] (21:04 - 21:09)

We are now joined by Henri Hämäläinen, who is the Head of DevOps and Cloud business at Eficode.

[Pinja] (21:10 - 21:12)

Welcome, Henri.

[Henkka]

Thank you.

[Pinja]

It's good to have you here.

[Henkka] (21:12 - 21:30)

Thank you. Nice to be here.

[Darren] 

So recently, we had an event in Helsinki called the Future of Software.

And this event actually prompted quite a big change on the Eficode side of rebranding The DEVOPS Conference into The Future of Software. So what can you tell us about The Future of Software?

[Henkka] (21:30 - 22:51)

Hey, thanks a lot. Future of Software, of course, DevOps is a big part of the Future of Software, but the storyline is as we used to be, I was the CEO of a company called Contribyte. We used to organize a conference called Future of Product Development.

Back in 2015 already, we started it as an event in Helsinki. And already at the first time, we got something like 320 people to join the conference. And we did six of those throughout the years.

Not every year, always. There is one actually at Oulu, but then the rest of those at Helsinki. And 2022 was the last one we did with the name of Future of Product Development.

That was already when Eficode had acquired us and we did it together as the first common session. And then we kind of buried it for a while. Then it was maybe a bit over a year ago when we started to think that, hey, Eficode, which was an amazing thing, Eficode's vision is building the future of software.

And then at Contribyte, we've always been building the future of product development. And as the future of product development, the future of product organizations is a lot about software. So, it was a perfect match from the start.

So we decided to give it a go and actually have a Future of Software conference at Helsinki also last year, a few months ago.

[Pinja] (22:51 - 23:05)

It was also a very big conference that Eficode arranged, and it was now called The Future of Software. And that is how we're now representing The DEVOPS Conference series as well as Darren mentioned. So, how are we changing things now going forward?

[Henkka] (23:05 - 23:55)

Yeah, of course, maybe it's good to mention from the beginning for all the fans of The DEVOPS Conference, which I am one of the main ways and reasons I got interested in Eficode in the very first place. But it's like we will remain the DevOps spirit there in many of the things. But the point as I was trying to make earlier is that DevOps is in the part of future of software so integrated to everything.

And it's about like, how do we connect things? How do we connect automation all the way from strategy to execution to service management? So we thought that it kind of better describes the future of software development, which a lot of things have to do with DevOps with the name of Future of Software, if that makes sense.

So it's kind of an evolution from The DEVOPS Conference.

[Pinja] (23:56 - 23:56)

It does make sense.

[Darren] (23:57 - 24:24)

Yeah, it sounds a lot like what we've heard already when talking to Heikki. It's all about broadening of scope of like, including more of the things that we find our business touching, and trying to pull them all under one umbrella to represent the biggest cross-section to diversify from just DevOps and then diversifying even further from product development to software or understanding how those are moving forward.

[Henkka] (24:24 - 24:55)

Yes, yes, absolutely. And I think DevOps was one of the first movements to break the silos of development and operations. What we've been doing with the past years has been a lot about breaking the silos between business and development and operations and service management.

So it's kind of it's the same journey, but like, just the next step on the whole same journey of connecting it all together to the like, to make better companies on software development.

[Pinja] (24:56 - 25:23)

To me, as well, this is all about the whole value chain of things. We start from the idea, we go to how does that flow into the development cycle? How do we prioritize things?

How do we use tooling at the same time we add security into it? It's at the very end we get a product out of that cycle. So my understanding, of course, is that we take it all now into consideration in an even better way.

[Henkka] (25:23 - 26:30)

Definitely. And like, I must also add to that, like, it doesn't even like it's not ready when it's because then there's the feedback loops of like, from the operations and service management. So that's all what we try to cover.

And we do cover The Future of Software conference. So that's like the background of it. And I think I'm at least very proud of what we did at Helsinki.

I can say that I have said this was the seventh conference I was organizing. And I have six times said, I'm never going to organize a conference again. So you can imagine, this time, I was like two weeks before the conference, I'm never going to organize it again.

But I have to say that already during the day, I got the idea all right, maybe I'm in for it for the next time also. It was such a fun thing. And it's so nice to see so many people enjoying the lively discussion of everything.

So I think that's like one big part of it, like different people coming together to openly discuss and get ideas and happy faces. Like, that's the whole reason for me why I love this, like organizing these conferences.

[Pinja] (26:31 - 27:03)

There is a lot of magic, from my perspective, in these kinds of conference days that, as I say, we bring the people together as a privilege to facilitate the community talking. And also, I know that people are talking together during the breaks. And we often call that the hallway track.

So it's the unofficial track of the conference that we do not put in the agenda on its own. But to see people from different companies and from different parts of the software loops and the software development cycle to get together is always amazing to see.

[Henkka] (27:03 - 28:07)

And I think this is exactly a really good segway to the origins of the Future of Product Development. Because the Future of Product Development was like the ideology behind it, I'm going to say that I got kind of fed up with these very narrow-scope conferences, like looking from one direction. And like, sorry to say, I'm a big Agile fan, but like for many things like Agile conferences, I just hate going on those because there's like the Agile guys telling what others should do in order for us to be more Agile rather than like trying to collaborate with all the different parties.

So that was like the ideology behind the whole future of product development. Like we want to actually connect these different functions, different people together to kind of understand that the value chain is much more than just the software or just the team. I think you summed it up well.

So that's the whole idea of what we want to do in these types of conferences.

[Darren] (28:08 - 28:20)

It is kind of a curious paradox that we're always talking about breaking down these silos, except in these conferences where they're basically silo conferences, where you take the narrowest possible view.

[Henkka] (28:20 - 28:45)

Exactly. It's so funny. Like it's like when you hear those talks, you so often hear the problems to be somewhere else.

Like, Hey, we are doing perfectly, but then we don't get these business, the infamous business isn't doing their job properly or, or the operators. So, like we, we try to avoid that. And that's much harder to do when, when people are actually in the same, same room together, talking about these things.

[Darren] (28:46 - 29:03)

But talking about getting everyone in the same room, you've talked about this kind of joy of bringing people together, but how do you aim to inspire the people who you bring together? How do you plan to basically deliver this feeling of joy to those who attend the conferences?

[Henkka] (29:03 - 31:01)

Yeah, good question. And this is something I've, I've, and of course, I haven't ever done any of these alone. So I've worked with, we have an amazing, at least I figured now I'm, I'm just like a sidekick of, of things nowadays on, on this.

But like, so I think one really keen thing is that you find a good mix of futurists and, and like, even a bit like idealistic people of the, of the industry and mix those with the real-life case stories of like, Hey, this is what we've actually done. Because like every model is wrong. Some are useful type of idea is that like always these futurists and, and the idealistic ones, they, they kind of paint so nice pictures, which are really good models, but then the reality is much more complex and the, the challenges are, are totally different than the ones shown in the, in the idealistic picture.

So I've always had this idea of like, Hey, mix the, the futuristic views to the real-life stories of some of the leaders in the, in the field to be able to show and tell openly like, Hey, this is what we've done. And, and sometimes they even are a bit embarrassed to say that, like, we've only done this, or we just now did this, what, what was talked like five years ago. And they'll always tell them that, like, Hey, the competition, the others are much worse.

The reality is so much behind the idealistic discussions in these conferences. So, I think like, I at least saw that one to be the one that I get most thanked for is that, like, Hey, it's so nice to hear it is like real-life stories. And it might be even that not all the presentations are fully polished though.

You can actually see that these are not like professionals always telling about, but it's about more about really telling that, Hey, this is what real life is, is all about. So I think that's the magic at least in the past.

[Pinja] (31:02 - 31:41)

And I don't think you're alone in saying that, that those are the most inspiring ones. What I've seen from the conferences and participants as a participant, or as a, as a person working in the machine, trying to get the conference to happen, I see from the people in the audience that when there's somebody telling about their own story, telling that with passion, trying to tell the real deal, and not just something that this is the model that, that we're following, or this is what we came up with, but how does it actually work?

How do we make it work? How do we aim to improve it? And sometimes even more importantly, what are the flaws that it has?

What are the errors that we have made? Those are the ones that actually stick.

[Henkka] (31:41 - 32:44)

Yeah. Yeah. I have to tell you about this one, because in the previous conference, we were so happy to get like one of the most promising startups ever in Finland, which actually failed at the end.

Their CEO came to the stage. I saw him to be like, he was so vulnerable and kind of a feeling that like, hey, can he come and tell about the failure of a startup, which was like the one of the most promising in Finland. He came into the stage and told the story, the learnings especially, but also like, and I think that was one of the most appreciated speeches of the, of the previous conference.

I'm still highly grateful for him. Unfortunately, and I understand exactly why he didn't want it to be recorded because like, it was so personal and emotional as a story. But like, this is exactly, I think, Pinja, what you were also saying that like, those are the parts that people actually remember.

And I at least remember very much that, that session.

[Pinja] (32:44 - 33:15)

I do remember which topic you're talking about. And exactly for these reasons, those are the very powerful talks when people give their persona on that stage, they talk about from their heart. So these are the stories that inspire people.

So what are the future topics that we should be looking at? If we think of not only the conference point of view, but the world of DevOps and software development. So what should we be looking at?

So what are the trends? What is the change that we see at the moment?

[Henkka] (33:15 - 37:17)

Yeah. Thanks for the question. I, like everyone knows that, hey, you, you can't have any conference.

I don't think there's any conference in the world which wouldn't talk about AI. So I have to be, have to be somehow involved and much because like, it's so difficult to understand or even guess what will actually happen. So, of course, I do believe that the hype curves and technology adaptation curves are here also, also true that there's like, we will, we'll go to the valley of despair at some point and like, see, Hey, didn't really bring the value that we were expecting it to be, but it will come.

It's just taking a bit more time than that. We exactly now see. And I do believe that there will be AI agents, which will really like work individually in, in some phases of the, the, the software development, like fully automatizing totally some phases of the, of the development.

And then there will be AI assistants, which will actually like be the helpers of different roles in the software development. The difficult thing is that like, no one knows what roles, what agents, what assistants will be affected the most. There's good guesses, but honestly, no one knows that.

So we will cover some of that for sure. Then the two other things I want to highlight is that the increased demand for security related things, like it's, it's partly because of what's happening in the world, but also like there's so much more power. Also, unfortunately, AI will be used also for, by experienced hackers and like that.

So it's like, there's such a high demand for both like actual security, but, and I mean, like, like that the software is as bulletproof as it can, but also like how to prevent like social hacking type of things, because people normally are the worst part of any security related things on our company. So, so that's, that's one of the things that we will for sure somehow cover. Different organizations need to take and are taking it seriously and, and, and taking actions on, on this, this end.

And then the third one is a bit related to the AI topic, but, but only a bit, but because before this like economic turndown, like what was happening already was this like fight for, for, for good workforce or the best workforce. So all in all, like at the same time, there are like, are all the roles necessary in the future? And then like, will it be so that we will have these like super developers or super product owners who actually, with the AI tools can do most of the work?

And then there's a lot like less people needed, or will it go so that like, we still like as one forecast is that like when the resource availability grows, meaning that like, it's so much easier to produce software, the amount of software just like goes so much up that we will again be in this like fight for the best workforce. So no one knows really what's going to happen on these.

And I, I do believe that these like developer experiences and employee experiences are something that like companies have to use time for it and have to start like investing on those because of like, otherwise you, you, you will lose even worse than you used to because of like the division between like really good one and average one will start growing exponentially because of like usage of the, of the AI tools.

So, I think it will be a very interesting time from that perspective also. So it was this AI driven software development world, then demand for, for more, more security and then like developer employee experience.

I would say those are the three topics that I think will be quite hot for the upcoming years.

[Pinja] (37:18 - 37:23)

Thank you so much. It has been a pleasure talking to you. Thank you for joining us here today.

[Darren] (37:23 - 37:41)

Thank you. Following on from the idea of inspiration and building events that the community wants and the ecosystem needs. We arrive here where everything comes together in the run up to The Future of Software in London coming up in March.

[Pinja] (37:41 - 37:56)

We have an amazing program coming up in London. We have Kelsey Hightower talking about what the future entails. The Godfather of DevOps himself, Patrick Debois will be on stage as well.

[Darren] (37:56 - 38:14)

And I think another important thing we're talking about, we're going to have a panel on the responsible use of AI, where we're going to hear from experts across the field about how we can develop with AI in a way that's responsible and in line with regulations and non-damaging to both the environment and society.

[Pinja] (38:14 - 38:38)

When it comes to these conferences, what speaks to me the most is, and I don't think we can stress it enough after these two episodes that we have now been doing, is the community. It's a feeling of a family around DevOps and software development. It's about the inspiration that we see in people's eyes after these days.

What about you, Darren? What is the key thing for you?

[Darren] (38:38 - 39:06)

It's the hallway track. It's the conversations with people you didn't know before the event and the impact they can have on you even after you've left, and the meeting of people you may have only seen in a small image on your Teams meeting or whatever, and then finally meeting in person and being able to discuss things outside specific projects. It's just great to hear what everyone's doing and understand that everyone's in the same boat and we're all doing this together.

[Pinja] (39:07 - 39:27)

That is a very key element for myself in these conferences, so please bear in mind. The next Future of Software event is coming to London on March 26, and as we mentioned a couple of highlights from the program, we are pulling together some of the biggest names in the world of DevOps and software engineering, and we're going to bring them to one place.

[Darren] (39:27 - 39:34)

We hope you join us there on the day, and we thank you for joining us here today. Thank you for listening, and we hope you join us next time.

[Lapa] (39:34 - 39:34)

Thank you all.

[Darren] (39:38 - 39:43)

We'll now give our guests a chance to introduce themselves and tell you a little bit about who we are.

[Lapa] (39:43 - 40:05)

Hi, my name is Lauri Palokangas. Everybody calls me Lapa.

I'm the Chief Marketing Officer at Eficode. I used to be a geek and a nerd, and I made my living by writing Pearl more than is healthy, and then I slipped into product marketing and marketing, which has now given me daily bread for a good 15 years.

[Henkka] (39:43 - 40:05)

Hi, I'm Henri Hämäläinen, Head of DevOps and Cloud at Eficode.

[Pinja] (40:06 - 40:10)

I'm Pinja Kujala. I specialize in Agile and portfolio management topics at Eficode.

[Darren] (40:10 - 40:13)

I'm Darren Richardson, Security Consultant at Eficode.

[Pinja] (40:14 - 40:16)

Thanks for tuning in. We'll catch you next time.

[Darren] (40:17 - 40:22)

And remember, if you like what you hear, please like, rate, and subscribe on your favorite podcast platform. It means the world to us.