Where it all started

Having attended various conferences in the Bay Area (notably CodeConf and Velocity), Jonathan and Duncan found themselves wishing that there were more tech conferences of that calibre accessible locally.

At dinner one evening in October 2011, they decided that they would have to hold one themselves, and since their areas of expertise revolved around DevOps and high availability, the idea of ScaleConf was born.

With Duncan leaving to work for Facebook in February 2012, they only had two and a half months to make the idea a reality.

Thanks to the expert help of Marije and Jen, a bit of luck, and several willing speakers and sponsors, they organised the first conference, which was held on January 26 and 27, 2012.

Meet the team

Duncan Phillips
Tech Consultant
N/A
@N/A

Duncan automates infrastructure so humans don't need to, and then builds tools for everything else.

Jonathan Hitchcock
Software Engineer
Discord
@vhata

Jonathan has been involved in organising tech events and meetups for several years, and has an equal fervour for community building and for DevOps, high availability, automation, and the culture and mindset that supports these things.

Marije Pierson
Operations
Inventory Planner (part of Brightpearl & Sage Group)
@marijep

Experience in operations, organising, consulting, managing, conferencing, admin, customer supporting and streamlining things.

Mike Jones
COO
Inventory Planner (part of Brightpearl & Sage Group)
@imsickofmaps

Heckler, speaker, organiser. Fails to Get Stuff Done often but tries to make up for it with eventual consistency, hugs and high-fives.

High Fives all around

ScaleConf is organized by a small team who all have regular day jobs. We could not have made this conference without the help of all the people below.

Contributors

  • Calvin Brizzi
  • Shaun O'Connell
  • Russell Cloran
  • Stefano Rivera
  • Vanessa Berger
  • Adrian Moisey
  • Jennifer Poole

Minions

Every year the minions help us run the show on the day. Ben, Siobhan, Calvin, Julia, Jacques, Sibulele, Shaheen, Ednecia, Martin, Salem, Carla, Neil, Ibrahim, Manenga - thank you!

Community

Finally, a thanks to the community for supporting us. We would also like to mention some other great conferences to look out for:

rubyfuza, PyConZA, Devopsdays Cape Town, DevConf.

Get in touch

Email

[email protected] for general queries

[email protected] for payment related questions

Social Media

Follow us on Twitter @scaleconf

Find us on Facebook

Community

This site is hosted on Github, please feel free to look around and contribute.

Code of conduct

© ScaleConf 2022