The Performance Tour Season 03 (2022) Episode 11 was released on November 16, 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.
Service Level Objectives (Brian Chandler Interview)
Originally, I had asked Brian Chandler to come up to the Bryte production studios in Jacksonville, Florida. The initial schedules did not work out, so I decided to take the PerfMobile to Tampa. We first set up an interview in the office, which had three camera angles. It went well. After filming, I thought it might be good to take a PerfMobile ride and continue our discussion on service level agreement. That interview turned out so well, I decided to use it the episode unedited. It perfectly summarizes what I wanted to get across in the show. The office interview was great too, so I’ve released that footage unedited as a highlight reel in a separate video.
The day of the interview, a Dynatrace user group meeting had been scheduled in the Tampa area. This made my trip even more productive because I was able to catch up on the latest product announcements from Dynatrace. It was the first time I heard about Grail, and before anyone was talking publicly about it online.
I hope you will enjoy both of the interviews with Brian that we recorded for this episode. Brian has been on the SMC Journal podcast since. Each time we talk, it is a very easy conversation. You can tell he loves what he does working at Dynatrace. I hope we are able to work together in the future.
Devo(ps) – Test It! (Skit)
This parody of Devo’s “Whip It” pop song hit from 1980 was so much fun to do. The band name lends itself to a renaming of “Devo” to “DevOps”. The lyrics were easy to change to make the subject about testing. As with previous parody songs on the show, J.R. McNeely put all of the music instrumentation and production parts together for the audio and made it sound as good or better than the original. I sang multiple takes for vocal tracks, and sent them to J.R., who knows what to do to make it sound like I can actually sing.
We rented Studio Instrument Rentals (SIR) in Nashville, Tennessee for the video shoot. I had several friends that made up the “band”. This included James Pulley, Ron Foster (long time friend and previous employee at Loadtester Incorporated), George Ochoa (guitarist and producer for bands like Deliverance, Worldview, and Human Code), and Matt Parker (Nashville musician who has been on previous parody videos). Links to everyone at the bottom of this page.
I wanted to recreate the look for two of Devo’s music videos I grew up watching on MTV. The first one is obviously the original song “Whip it”, however there is some pretty messed up stuff in that video that wasn’t appropriate to approach even in parody, so I added the additional “minion” looking outfits from their cover version of “I Can’t Get No Satisfaction” by the Rolling Stones that was featured on a Saturday Night Live episode back in the early 80’s.
In the original video you can see “DEVO” in black letters across their yellow outfits.
Putting “DEVOPS” on ours just made it that much more hilarious in my opinion. Don’t say James Pulley and I don’t carry the DevOps label. LOL!
One of the largest expenses for the costumes was the hats. We originally tried to make these ourselves with 3D printers or some other way, but nothing looked close. I ended up getting them from the official Devo fan club website (link is below). They are rather expensive and you still have to purchase the inner hard hat holder and tape it into the hat with gaffer tape (a procedure outlined on the site). It was worth it to get the authentic look and feel of the band.
Final Thoughts
I was very pleased with this episode and how it addressed the subject of Service Level Objectives in simple terms and why we’re moving towards different metrics than those from the past with traditional application monitoring. As always, we had a LOT of fun making the parody skit video and giving the Quality Assurance and Testing professionals everywhere another anthem they can sing and enjoy for years to come.
I hope you enjoyed this behind the scenes look at Episode 11. Time to get to work on Episode 12 and close out 2022 strong!
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/
- Brian Chandler – https://www.linkedin.com/in/brian-chandler-8366663b/
- Dynatrace- https://www.dynatrace.com/
- Devo Fan Club – http://www.clubdevo.com/
- Matt Parker – https://linktr.ee/parkerthebandit
- George Ochoa – https://humancodemusic.com/the-band
- J.R. Mcneely – https://www.youtube.com/c/jrmcneelymusic
Don’t forget to subscribe to the YouTube Channel: http://bit.ly/smcllcyoutube And visit The Performance Tour web site often: https://theperformancetour.com