It seems that the Internet is bustling with online communities. No matter the job or the skills, there are online forums, message boards, and blogs dedicated to exactly your position. But what about DevOps? Where are all of those guys hanging out?
DevOps, in its nature, incorporates many skills and ideas, many of which are included in other jobs. In its aim to establish a culture and environment where building, testing, and releasing software can happen rapidly, frequently, and more reliably, it requires that all members of the team work together fluidly. Therefore, depending on your specific role within the team, you have many options at your disposal. Depending if you are in the Dev part and are looking for software engineers and developers or the Ops part and are looking for advice from IT professionals, you can take a look at Github, StackOverflow, or Slashdot to ask professional inquiries and better learn about the field.
However, the best way to interact with other DevOps members and to stay updated on DevOps news is through social media. Twitter, LinkedIn, and Reddit specifically offer many options for groups and people to follow that can help connect you with a wealth of DevOps information.
On Twitter, there are literally hundreds of people posting about DevOps daily, but I’ve chosen some people that post quality, original content that will be helpful. Gene Kim (@RealGeneKim) is an award-winning DevOps expert and author and who runs online DevOps chats that attract many DevOps people who are good to know. Jez Humble (@jezhumble) is another DevOps hero, having co-authored Continuous Delivery and Lean Enterprise, and running the website ContinuousDelivery.com. James Turnbull (@kartar) is currently the CTO of Kickstarter and consistently contributes valuable posts about DevOps. (You may also want to follow @DevOpsReactions because they post a stream of hilarious GIFs that sum up the trials of working in DevOps to a T.)
On LinkedIn, there are various groups that are active and can offer valuable DevOps information. DevOps, DevOps Professionals, DevOps Discussions, and DevOps at Scale focus on understanding DevOps, by posting interesting and relevant articles, updating the community about meetups and answering technical questions.
Reddit also offers various forums that deal with answering general questions about DevOps and better understanding DevOps tools. The subreddit /r/devops is dedicated to discussing new technologies, meetups, conferences and really just about everything else that is involved with DevOps. It is quite an active forum, assuring that any relevant post will receive replies fairly quickly. Other subreddits like /r/Docker and /r/Puppet discuss their respective DevOps-related configuration tools, while /r/sysadmin is dedicated to the profession of Computer System Administration, and /r/ITIL that is dedicated to aligning IT services with the needs of businesses.
Another great place to find the DevOps crowd online is on gaming sites. Sites like Kotaku and GameSpot are teeming with DevOps engineers who just can’t seem to resist a little gaming on their free time.
But there are also many annual conferences and meetups where you can meet members of the DevOps community in person. DevOps Enterprise Summit, DevOpsDays, and DevOps Conferences are popular and informational as are the many DevOps related meetups.
So while there may not be one clear and specific hangout place online for the entire DevOps community to gather, I hope that this list can help you connect and hear from educated DevOps professionals who can provide you with information about everything DevOps related that you need to know.
