Community post by Christian Hernandez, head of community, Akuity

GitOpsCon Europe 2023 took place, virtually, on December 5th and 6th. It took place as multiple tracks, spread over two half days. There were multiple talks spanning all user levels, so, whether you were just beginning your GitOps journey or are a current user of GitOps practices, there were talks that provided valuable information for everyone.

From stories of how GitOps helped and where systems broke down, to end user talks around GitOps implementations, how users convinced larger organizations to adopt GitOps, how-tos, and more – there was something for everyone.

We heard talks from many different industries, including Deutsche Telekom, Bank Hapoalim, Orange, and FOND OF GmbH. Also, a variety of vendors, such as Weaveworks, Codefresh, Akuity, AWS, and Red Hat, shared their stories of helping their customers implement GitOps..

Noteworthy Talks

It was a great GitOpsCon with lots of great content and conversations! Still, there are few that stood out over the course of two days. 

Keynote: After Six Years, is GitOps Boring?

Alexis Richardson, CEO of Weaveworks, had an opening keynote that was very interesting – to say the least. Alexis took us on a journey where GitOps came from, how it has become the operating model for Kubernetes, and has the question of “Is GitOps Boring”.

Managing Legacy to Cloud Native with GitOps at Deutsche Telekom

Michal Sewera, Team Lead 5G cloud native core at Deutsche Telekom, shared how GitOps helped to bridge the gap between legacy applications and cloud native application over at Deutsche Telekom. Michal had 3 key learnings to consider when you take this type of journey from legacy to cloud native.

Two GitOps Titans, One Powerful Solution: Flamingo (Flux + Argo)!

Priyanka Ravi of Weaveworks & Microsoft’s Joaquin Rodriguez demonstrated what the combination of Flux and Argo CD can look like. The solution is called Flamingo. With Flamingo, the user gets the best of both worlds:op-notch Helm support, an easy-to-use GUI, and support for terraform infrastructure when needed.

The Art of GitOps: Rendered Manifests

On the second day, Christian Hernandez from Akuity described a new pattern that takes the responsibility of Kustomize or Helm from the GitOps controller and puts it into the CI pipeline. This is achieved by rendering the deployment manifests in the CI pipeline, which already shows possible drift in the CI step.

GitOpsCon North America 2024

The GitOps Working Group is proud to announce that GitOpsCon North America will take place on April 15, 2024 in Seattle, Washington! This event will take place co-located with Open Source Summit, so once you’ve gotten your GitOps fix, you have the rest of the week for more open source talks and events! The CFP is open through Sunday, February 4th, so come share all the cool things you’ve been doing with GitOps and make sure you join us on April 15, 2024 in Seattle!