DevOps World | Jenkins World 2019: Sacha Labourey Q&A

Source: devops.com

We’re always actively looking at deals that make sense. To be truthful, we’ve set the bar pretty high at the moment. Not only are we focusing hard on executing on those acquisitions, we’re delivering on a vision we’ve laid out for the future in a category we call Software Delivery Management.”

What are you most looking forward to at DevOps World | Jenkins World 2019?

“Always the same: Meeting with great people, hearing about the great innovations in the Jenkins and Jenkins X community, and really, checking out everything all these talented companies are doing. The amount of creativity and innovation we see year after year at DevOps World | Jenkins World is truly amazing.”

How is CloudBees addressing gender and diversity at this year’s event?

“We have supported diversity at DevOps World | Jenkins World for a very long time. We’ve tried to encourage diversity in our recruitment of speakers and in our acceptance of them. Specific to this year’s conference, on the Wednesday of the conference week (August 14), CloudBees is sponsoring a Women In Tech mixer, as part of the conference activities. On Thursday, August 15, we’re sponsoring a Diversity and Inclusion luncheon. At the luncheon, a panel of speakers tackle the topic Connecting Diversity and Inclusion with Business Outcomes.

Outside of DevOps World | Jenkins World, here are some other ways we’ve been trying to be inclusive and supportive of diversity:

• CloudBees encourages diversity in our hiring. Our industry is heavily white male, but we are committed to achieving more diversity within the company. We’ve been benchmarking ourselves against the industry to see how we rank, relative to our peers. We are not satisfied with the results. We employ highly capable transgender, minority and culturally diverse people. We will continue to make this a priority.
• We are currently a customer of Power to Fly and are working with them to help attract more women into technical roles. We hosted a Women in Tech event in conjunction with Power to Fly in our Raleigh office on June 25.
• We have actively supported women in DevOps (as evidenced by the blog series on our website about Women in DevOps). We have had specific breakouts at company meetings and at past DevOps World conferences for Women in Tech.
• We have supported an internal team of women who applied to speak at the Grace Hopper conference. We are very proud that two have been accepted.
• Our Customer Advisory Board has increased female representation from two to six (out of about 30 total members).

As positive as this is, it’s not enough and we are not satisfied with our gains in diversity. We continue to focus on this important area.”

How has the evolution of DevOps World mirrored CloudBees’ growth?

“We’ve really witnessed it all since 2010 and before. We’ve been part of the first steps of CI, the move to the right and the quest for ever-increasing automation. We’ve seen the fantastic chain reaction where cloud has enabled organizations to do so much more in DevOps and DevOps has returned the favor, opening up so many opportunities for cloud. We are really witnessing the birth of a new tech era. It is a unique privilege for CloudBees to be part of that small group of change agents!”

One of the sessions talks about how to become a “DevOps superhero.” What is your personal DevOps superpower? 

“That’s easy: open source. After years in the JBoss community, at Red Hat and now at CloudBees, where we are the leads on the Jenkins and Jenkins X projects, I still love open source. It is part of our DNA here at CloudBees. There is so much innovation going on in the open source communities, and the developers who are involved are so passionate about what they do. I do think, for the most part, open source developers are among the best in the developer community. They are also inclusive and really have a desire to impact the world.”