SPOTcon 2022 Recap
SPOTcon 2022 is an annual conference hosted by Scout APM that empowers developers with solutions that drive leading-edge transformation in application development and observability. This year’s event took place virtually and was an educational couple of days filled with insights into the current and future states of application monitoring and observability.
Didn’t make it to SPOTcon 2022 this year? Not a problem! Here’s a recap of everything that went down. You can also access recordings of all the talks on SPOTcon’s youtube channel.
Day 1
The first day of SPOTcon was May 10th and consisted of topics on monolith observability and and optimizing application performance. Scott Ernst, VP of Engineering for Scout APM, kicked off the morning with a keynote address on the future of observability and how the industry is shifting with the addition of new open-source projects. Kat Cosgrove, developer advocate at Pulumi Corporation, followed with a strong overview of CI/CD through the ages.
To wrap up the morning, Shai Almog, a developer advocate for Lightrun, spoke about going beyond APM and logs. Almog compared monitoring tools to the bat signal, describing the developers who deal with the performance issues as “heroes” for going in to fix the errors.
The afternoon consisted of three thought-provoking talks by Caroline Ada Ehmke, Gautam Rege, and Jeremy Meiss. Ehmke, an engineer and activist, captured the attention of everyone attending the event with her talk titled “Thomas Edison vs Three Teslas in a Trenchcoat”.
Finally, Rege and Meiss wrapped up the afternoon with two captivating discussions on scaling a tech enterprise and the state of software delivery, respectively. Rounding out the day with a most unique metaphor, Meiss utilized a panini to demonstrate how software delivery is critical to the success of a business. We definitely recommend checking out his talk if you’re intrigued by that comparison.
Day 2
The morning of May 11th brought with it compelling talks on observability. To start the morning, Dave Anderson, Scout APM’s very own Chief Technology Officer, gave an engaging keynote address about how context is critical when it comes to observability. As May was mental health awareness month, Mary Thengvall followed Dave’s keynote with an important discussion on burnout and what happens when you take on too much. Thengvall is the director of developer relations at Camunda and prides herself on building and fostering communities in the world of software development. Check out a recording of her talk below!
James Hunt, a principal consultant at Vivanti Consulting, spoke next on disaster recovery. Following Hunt, Developer Advocate Mike Hartington, gave a talk on the new mobile stack. Hartington began his talk with a brief history of mobile application development and how it led to such a large part of the software industry today.
In the final hours of SPOTcon, PHP Developer Davey Shafik gave a talk titled “Open Source, Love, and Social Responsibility” followed by Jhonnatan Gil Chaves showing the attendees how to use OpenTelemetry for instrumentation in Python. We have a full breakdown of all the SPOTcon speakers on our blog if you’d like to learn more about this amazing speaker lineup!
Wrapping Up
SPOTcon 2022 was a successful event sponsored by Scout APM and hosted by Developer Advocate, PJ Hagerty. Scout boasted a 60% attendance rate for this year’s virtual event and was happy to see highly engaged and respectful community involvement by attendees and speakers alike. Scout APM used the event hosting platform Vi.to to foster a safe and welcoming virtual environment for everyone attending.
Want access to the keynote addresses from SPOTcon 2022? Visit this page and fill out the form for exclusive access to the recordings! You can see all the other talks from both 2021 and 2022 by visiting the SPOTcon YouTube page.
