What to Expect at the Jenkins Contributor Summit

Published on 10/18/2018 by Tracy Miranda

The Jenkins Contributor summit is where the current and future contributors of the Jenkins project get together. This summit will be on Tuesday, October 23rd 2018 in Nice, France just before Jenkins World. What should those planning on joining expect at the event? Earlier this year in September we had a contributor summit in San Francisco which gave us a pretty good outline of what to expect. First of all it was one of the biggest contributor summits ever with lots of first-time attendees.

Morning

There are plenty of exciting developments happening in the Jenkins community, which meant there was a packed program. One of the most anticipated updates was Kohsuke Kawaguchi speaking about Jenkins Shifting Gears.

There were also updates on the '5 Jenkins Superpower' projects in active development:

As ever Jenkins is a community driven by its members so it was also great to get an update on Google Summer of Code.

Birds-of-a-feather (BoF)

After a packed morning of updates, it was time for a break and some lunch. After lunch attendees divided up into groups and gathered around tables for unconference style discussions of specific areas. Each table ran differently: some had demos, some did presentations, some hacked on code and others brainstormed ideas. There was definitely alot of energy in the room and huge exchange of ideas.

Ignite Talks & Wrap-up

To finish off the session we had a set of ignite talks. Attendees were invited to volunteer on the day - no easy task given the pressure involved- and many did. Hats off to Liam Newman, Mandy Hubbard, Eric Smalling, Pui Chee Chan, Martin d’Anjou and Vishal Raina for getting out of their comfort zone and doing talks. There were two surprise ignite talks, one for James Strachan and one for Kohsuke Kawaguchi which were highly entertaining gave the audience lots of laughs. Someone even captured KK’s talk on video. The sound isn’t great but it was a truly visionary talk:

Finally the event finished with swag presentations and a fun Kahoot quiz to wrap things up.

Contributor Appreciation Event

After the summit, contributors were invited to join at the after party at Spin. Spin was a unique venue in San Francisco where attendees could socialise and also play ping-pong! While some took it seriously most enjoyed the relaxed way to get to know their fellow contributors.

See you in Nice

The event was a lot of fun and the contributor summit in Nice will follow a very similar structure. All levels of contributor are welcome, there will be lots of opportunity for in-depth discussions and you can even do an ignite talk! While we won’t be repeating the ping pong event there will be something equally unique to follow on from the summit.

Attending is free, and no DevOps World | Jenkins World ticket is needed, but RSVP if you are going to attend to help us plan. See you there!

As long as you’re in Nice for the Contributor Summit, join Tracy, Kohsuke, and hundreds of other Jenkins users at DevOps World - Jenkins World on October 22-25. Register with the code JWFOSS for a 30% discount off your pass.

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