This year's SUSECon was held November 2-6 in Amsterdam, the capital of the Netherlands. This was the first SUSECon I've attended, and I was impressed with the magnitude of the event. The venue was Beurs van Berlage [1], which was designed as a commodity exchange by architect Hendrik Petrus Berlage and constructed between 1896 and 1903. SUSE's creative teams did a magnificent job of SUSE-fying the inside of the building.

The Event

My perception is that the conference had three focus areas: 1) ISVs and partners; 2) developers and DevOps; and 3) new talent. SUSE brought many of their big and small partners under the same roof: IBM, Intel, HP, SAP, Fujitsu, etc. IBM came with their LinuxONE mainframe, which was a center of attraction, with many people trying to get their picture taken with this monstrous machine.

The conference also featured hundreds of hands-on workshops and talks, which ranged from topics like OpenStack and Docker to the very basics of Linux. The target audience for these sessions was developers and DevOps teams. Full days were dedicated to certification exams and other training. The conference was a complete package: You had vendors who bring business, developers and admins who handle the infrastructure of these businesses, and fresh blood.

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