February Meetup Summary

February 14, 2025

In person attendance at the February meetup was 200+, which was amazing given the weather (heavy rain and it was cold). The room was at capacity and we filled the IBM parking lot. Overflow attendees were directed to another adjacent / overflow lot. This marked the first time additional parking was needed at an ATO meetup.

Books and Swag

John Willis, our featured speaker, signed 50 copies of The DevOps Handbook for attendees and made them available free of charge, which was an incredibly nice gesture. The ATO team made many t-shirts, hats and stickers available as well.

Upcoming Events

Three upcoming events were announced:

  1. All Things Open AI – a two-day event in downtown Durham focusing on AI. It’s a collaboration between Mark Hinkle’s AIE Network and All Things Open. Monday, March 17 and Tuesday, March 18. Carolina Theater, downtown Durham.
  2. Developer Day 2025. We’re thrilled to once again co-host Developer Day 2025 with the wonderful team at RIOT. We did this last year and it was a tremendous success. All Things Open will host our own track at the event, which will feature 4 world-class speakers and talks. Details from the RIOT website. More about RIOT.  Tuesday evening, April 22.
  3. May meetup – The ATO will host its May meetup onsite at Fidelity Investments. Speaker and topic to be announced soon, but plan now to attend. Tuesday evening, May 6.

DevOps Days 2025 – April 16-17, McKimmon Center NC State

The wonderful team at DevOpsDays is offering 50% off registration to the All Things Open community! Simply enter the code ATO50 when registering to receive the discount. See the website and learn more. 

*Note, the code is only good through Wednesday, February 26, so hurry if interested.

IBM Granite

Brad Topol of IBM, our venue host partner, delivered a 4 minute presentation on IBM Granite. Be sure to check out Granite today!

From the IBM website: Our third generation of AI language models are here. Fit for purpose and open sourced, these enterprise-ready models deliver exceptional performance against safety benchmarks and across a wide range of enterprise tasks from cybersecurity to RAG.

Granite Links:

Meetup Recording

The meetup was live-streamed and recorded. The edited recorded version will be made available next Tuesday, February 18 on our YouTube channel. You can watch the unedited live streamed version in the meantime.

John Willis

John Willis was our featured speaker, and he did not disappoint. John delivered a 45 minute talk on the history of AI and where’s it’s going, with a special focus on CIO’s. It was fascinating and engaging. John is an incredible speaker with more than 40 years of experience in the IT industry.

  • Recording: You can watch the unedited version of John’s talk by clicking the link above. John’s talk starts at the about the 19:00 mark. Audience Q&A that followed is included. The edited version of John’s talk will be released next Tuesday, February 18 on our YouTube channel.
  • Slides: Check out the website for John’s upcoming book Rebels of Reason (The Heroes of ChatGPT and Modern AI). Subscribe and you’ll get access to his presentation slides. A link will be sent to you in a confirmation email. 
  • Author Page: John is a prolific author. Check out his author page and purchase a copy of one or more of John’s books today! 
  • Podcast: Check out John’s Profound podcast.
  • John on X: https://x.com/botchagalupe
  • John on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/johnwillisatlanta/

Pictures

We took many pictures at the event. Here are just a few.