For software nerds, conferences like New Relic’s FutureStack are the perfect opportunity to gain insight into software engineering trends and draw inspiration from peers and industry veterans. These conferences continually remind me of the importance of creative engineering and of the growing number of ways technology is able to address today’s challenges.
In addition to presenting on BLUE Sky Thinking About APM, I attended several notable sessions hosted by Amazon Web Services, RackSpace, Microsoft Azure, Pandora and Loggly. The conference was stimulating with no shortage of big ideas on the future of modern software.
Here are four takeaways from my time at FutureStack:
1. A New Era of SaaS – A prominent theme at the conference was the future of software engineering and new “stacks” of application and infrastructure components that will deliver services to users in the new era of software as a service. For example, future software will be able to communicate with underlying infrastructure in order to grow and shrink capacity according to demand.
2. New Relic’s Rubicon – New Relic CEO, Lew Cirne announced a major new release of functionality for their namesake application monitoring service called Rubicon. Rubicon will combine web analytics with traditional application monitoring to provide a 360 degree view of the how users interact with applications and measure their experience.
3. Cultural Shift – I noticed a marked shift in culture to emphasize creativity, innovation and small, rapid releases in software engineering with less emphasis on methodology, big releases and drawn-out development cycles. Business software users have experienced rapid and continuous improvement in their consumer technologies, and now expect the same from their business software.
4. Hyper-connectivity – The Badge of the Future – FutureStack’s conference badges, covered by Wired magazine, symbolized a hyper-connected future where sensors and connected devices will be embedded in everything. Each badge contained a small computer called an “Electric Imp” and a near-field communication antenna, allowing attendees to exchange contact information by “bumping” badges.
From big ideas like building code for social good, to the seemingly simple act of bumping badges, the conference was an energizing experience and had me thinking...BLUE sky’s the limit!
