The Performance Tour Season 03 (2022) Episode 10 was released on October 19, 2022. If you have not seen it yet, you can check it out here:
The introduction segment (sponsor thanks) was filmed at Bryte Studios in Jacksonville, Florida.
Serverless Performance (Jeremy Proffitt)
Originally, Jeremy was going to be attending the road show event in Nashville, Tennessee in late August. I was planning to use that venue as part of the interview. Unfortunately, Jeremy could not make it so I decided to come to him. It was an 8-hour drive each way, but I really wanted this to get done as early as possible. I drove into Charlotte, North Carolina on a Friday and set up the cameras in a meeting room at the hotel for a Saturday morning interview.
I had a total of five cameras and three lights, and I took extra time to set up the room and the equipment. Unfortunately, it becomes very apparent to me that I am not a professional video producer and I really miss it when I don’t have Luke Taylor around to make things look awesome. One of the cameras went out of focus for the whole interview and was totally unusable. The main cameras I use for the faces were not positioned properly, so it limited their use as well. I could never get the lighting the way I wanted, but we made it work.
Fortunately we did get the shots. Jeremy was very cordial and the main thing is that the content was awesome. I learned a lot from Jeremy and I was very surprised to learn that one of the biggest concerns for those working in the serverless world is EVERYONE ELSE they depend on. As more companies use more services that abstract control away, the more Observability will play a key role to determine when and where issues are and what to do about them.
2022 Nashville RoadShow
I wanted to do a roadshow in Nashville in late August because we were filming the skits that appear in the last few episodes of the 2022 season (including the Meat Loaf tribute in September that you have probably already seen).
I contacted my long-time connection Chris Spintzyck (or “Spin” as we call him) because he knows everyone and every business in town working for Vaco – one of the best known IT consulting and staffing companies in the area. When I asked him if he knew of any companies that would be receptive to hosting the road show, he said, “how about here at Vaco?” I found out that they had a WONDERFUL facility that works extremely well for meetups, user groups, and presenting to small and medium sized crowds. I am so appreciative to Spin and Frances Harpole (their event specialist). We catered the event with the local favorite – Martins BBQ – and it was really good food. I’d hope to have PERFTOUR events at Vaco again in the future.
The footage you see in this episode is only 8 minutes of highlights from more than an hour of stuff that we talked about. Expect me to release more of this footage as I find opportunities to share it. As always, James Pulley brought the golden wisdom, imparting it to us all. I always learn something by listening to James. It gives me a lot of material to steal and make myself look smarter than I am. We had several special guests that included Joe Colantonio, Kevin Kline (Database guru), Tricentis, J.R. McNeely (who makes all of the parody music), and some of my own family.
Many people showed up that have been my friends and clients for almost 20 years were there and it was almost like a family reunion. These roadshow events are always special and I enjoy them immensely because of the people who attend.
No Skit?
I know some will ask about the skit. There was just too much footage from the interview and the Nashville event to pack anything else into the episode. In fact, we went through three rounds of content editing to keep it to 24 minutes. I try to keep the episodes at around 15 to 20 minutes, but it was just too good to shave some of the content out this time. If you are hungry for more, we will release the full 47 minute interview with Jeremy Proffitt as a separate “Highlight” video. At some point, I’ll have the full Nashville event available as well. Don’t worry, the skits will return in November, and it will be hilarious. If you watched this episode all the way to the VERY END, you will get a glimpse – but don’t tell anyone. And we have something very special planned for December. I think it is safe to say that no one in the performance engineering space has taken a parody involving this topic to such extremes to make it entertaining.
I hope you enjoyed this behind the scenes look at Episode 10. Time to get to work on Episode 11 now.
Links:
Luke Taylor – https://www.luketaylorfilm.com/
Dave Humphrey and Bryte Payment Solutions – https://www.linkedin.com/in/dave-humphrey-19400913/ and https://bryteps.com/
Tricentis – https://www.tricentis.com/
QA Consultants – https://qaconsultants.com/
Chris Spintzyck – https://www.linkedin.com/in/spinmantv/
Frances Harpole – https://www.linkedin.com/in/frances-harpole/
Vaco Nashville – https://www.vaco.com/
Don’t forget to subscribe to the YouTube Channel: http://bit.ly/smcllcyoutube
And visit The Performance Tour web site often: https://theperformancetour.com