PowerShell + DevOps Summit 2016: a complete recap in HD & enhanced audio

In April 2016, a special event took place in Bellevue, Washington, right near Microsoft's corporate headquarters. The PowerShell + DevOps Global Summit 2016 was a unique educational event, run entirely by members of the IT community. It included more than 30 technically-deep sessions delivered by Microsoft product team members, Microsoft MVPs and community enthusiasts. The live event also included an evening reception with much of the Windows Management Framework team, lightning demos of upcoming features and projects from those team members and a "State of the Shell" address from two of the team's leaders.

Summit is different from what most of us think of as a "conference." There's no giant expo hall, no bags of swag and no badge scanning. Instead, there's session after session of incredibly hardcore material that simply can't be found anywhere else. There's amazing networking and friendship-building. And it's all done by community—none of the organizers get paid a dime, and most speakers pay their own way to attend and present.

 

The event has been running since 2013, and is the spiritual successor to the PowerShell Deep Dive conference held as part of Quest Software's The Experts Conference. European events were included in 2014 and 2015, and those have now spun off into their own successful PowerShell Conference Europe. In 2014, members of the community supported a $10,000 crowdfunding campaign to purchase session recording equipment. Because so much of the Summit content is absolutely unique, the feeling was that it should be preserved. And, ever since then, nearly every Summit session (barring technical glitches) has been captured and offered for free on PowerShell.org's YouTube channel. Of course, the quality kind of is what it is—audio is captured using a room mic, for example, and there's no video of the presenters. But it does help preserve and share this important content.

This year, Pluralsight offered to step in and help. The company hired two full camera crews to capture the two full-time session rooms (a third, part-time room was not captured). So in addition to the screen captures, Pluralsight was able to get HD video of the presenters, and take an audio feed right from their microphones. Those enhanced recordings are being offered free of charge to all the in-person attendees of Summit (the normal screen-cap-only is still on PowerShell.org's YouTube page). 

And now for an added bonus: Pluralsight subscribers now have full access to almost all of the Summit session recordings, including exclusive full-HD video of the presenters and a cleaner audio feed. You'll find PowerShell & DevOps Global Summit 2016 in the Pluralsight library as a course.

Everyone who works with Summit, and the folks from Pluralsight who made this happen, is extremely proud of the project. A lot was learned, and it's hopefully something we'll be able to repeat together in the future. In the meantime, if you're a PowerShell or DevOps enthusiast, you've got around a work week full of video waiting for you in the Pluralsight library, or on PowerShell.org's YouTube channel.

If you like what you see, keep an eye on the Summit for upcoming events, which are usually held in April. Or, follow the Summit on Twitter for official announcements. The event often sells out at its 200-attendee limit, so it's worth watching closely in November, when registration usually opens. You can also check out the parent organization, The DevOps Collective, which - true to its community-based origins - is a US 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization. 

Enjoy, PowerShell people!