I don’t know about your experiences, but my kids are perfectionists — though they each manifest that trait in different ways. My youngest two often quit when they get frustrated that they aren’t perfect at something. My oldest gets really upset when he feels like he’s not doing something perfectly and/or anyone is thinking less than the best of him. Honestly, I’m not sure which of the two it is the real issue yet. It seems that life can be difficult at times when you’re striving for perfection in a world where perfect isn’t possible and people aren’t always going to think you hung the moon.

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I just got back from the DevOps Enterprise Summit last night. This was the 2nd annual installation of the conference and it was three solid days of great content. My colleague, Dominica DeGrandis, was there last year and was on the organizing committee for the conference and she promised me this would be great. This was my first attendance at a DevOps specific conference so I wasn’t sure what to expect.

There were notable big names there like Jez Humble and Gene Kim. But, I found it refreshing that, in large part, the plenary sessions were comprised of people in the trenches telling stories about their company’s journey to improving quality and time to market by using DevOps principles. There were great presentations from Nordstrom (here in Seattle!), Target, Netflix, Ticketmaster, USPTO and many more. Instead of spoiling the surprise to be had from viewing the upcoming presentation videos, I wanted to share some of my overarching thoughts I had while attending the conference.
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