By: Steve Persch, Technical Product Marketing Manager

If you read much of the Pantheon blog, you almost certainly have noticed a word we are using a lot lately: “WebOps.” Pantheon co-founder and Head of Product Josh Koenig says, “Your Website is Your Results Engine. Keep it Tuned with WebOps.” Our CEO Zack Rosen says that WebOps is the key to getting unstuck. I even wrote about how you can avoid WebOoops with WebOps.

We think WebOps as a term helps tell the story of cross-functional web teams. For us, it passes the Goldilocks test. It is not too small, not too big. WebOps is just right. And it’s a concept we have built toward since our founding.

“Hosting” Is Too Small

Often when I travel to WordPress and Drupal events, the attendees ask me how Pantheon is different from other hosts. They want to comparison shop storage, memory limits, and price. That’s a really limited view of what teams do with Pantheon. Our CEO, Zack Rosen wrote back in 2013:

Pantheon is not hosting. In the same way your smartphone isn’t really a phone but an internet connected pocket computer with a phone calling app. Yes, Pantheon hosts Drupal sites, but it is architected completely differently and built to do much more. 

As a WebOps platform, Pantheon enables web teams to drive value with their websites. Sure, that includes having a place to host the live website. But it also means supplying a git-backed pipeline to move through Dev, Test, and Live environments. It means an easy way to spin up disposable new environments to do feature branch development. It means performance monitoring, HTTPS at the edge, and disaster recovery, all baked in. A team using Pantheon does not need to re-answer these questions with every project. We implement these features in a standardized way for every site using them. “Hosting” is just a fraction of the picture.

“DevOps” Is Too Big

The wide world of DevOps has answers for Internet of Things gadgets, iOS apps, machine learning, and much more. Of course, the management of websites can fit comfortably under the umbrella of DevOps. But teams focused entirely on delivering business value through the web, specifically, should have an ecosystem and a culture that acknowledges that constraint. For example, technologists practicing DevOps might expect to pick which Linux distro is best for a given use case. Practitioners of WebOps will build on a platform like Pantheon that abstracts that problem away.

When I was working as an agency developer for clients with a limited budget, I did not want to spend a single billable hour on Ubuntu vs CentOS, or NGINX config, or backup scripts. I liked the vision of “Website DevOps” that Josh Koenig sketched out in 2015. Now, we call that “WebOps.”

“DevOps” Doesn’t Encompass the Whole Web Team

Josh ended that 2015 blog post with a prediction:

I predict that the definition of “technical organization” will continue to expand, encompassing more and more departments, groups, and companies. Marketing is getting technical, as are marketing-oriented agencies. They all have a lot to gain from adopting a DevOps mindset.

I think that prediction holds up really well! The vision of WebOps we are building now includes marketers, site owners, designers and more. And we think we need a word other than DevOps to fit them in. In my observation, much of the DevOps community views roles beyond the  “Developer” and “System Operator” as outside of DevOps. Business stakeholders are important, but separate. Sometimes the word will even get expanded to include single extra roles like DevSecOps to include a “security” role.

At Pantheon, we think the set of roles in a WebOps culture is flexible, and that it includes business stakeholders. In my own recent WebOps blog post, I wrote:

WebOps brings together developers, designers, marketers, content editors and more. Everyone whose job it is to change the website in significant ways (the code, the visuals, the content, the measurements of success) needs to think of themselves on the same team and working towards the same goals.

Concretely, if your team does daily stand ups, then you should not often have to go outside that meeting to get a decision or know whether a proposed change is feasible. The people changing the website are represented in that group.

WebOps Wins

We want to focus the WebOps conversation on cross-functional teams because we have seen people get lost in the shuffle. “Hosting” can be a race to the bottom where price is paramount and value is lost. “DevOps,” at its best, is an empowering cultural movement that frees people to do great work. That can be hard to see if you are neck deep in a mess of config files and failing builds. With “WebOps,” we maximize our chances to make good on the offer in the very first blog post on pantheon.io, that we want to put the human at the top of the stack.

By David Bisset

I’m David and along with being a remote developer, I also have been involved in speaking and organizing meetups and conferences for the past 15 years. You come to appreciate that these events, especially when they are open and welcoming, help communities grow and thrive.

Speakers play a big part in sharing stories and knowledge, sparking new thoughts in the minds of their listeners, and sparking conversations in the community. But for those eager to share but timid because they are new or not as experienced, it can be a challenge.

As a result, here are some things I would like to share that have helped me and others as we have given talks to crowds of all sizes and types throughout the years – a list that even “experienced” speakers use as reminders.

I hope it’s of some benefit and take comfort that by speaking you are benefiting your community and you have the support of others who are also bravely doing the same.

Top Ten Things New Speakers Should Remember:

• Practice makes perfect but don’t over do it. If it makes you feel better have a script in your notes in the presenting app if possible but aim to be comfortable enough not to have read from them constantly. But feel nice you have something to fall back on if your mind goes blank.
• Get honest feedback from friends, family, your local meetup or anyone you feel comfortable with. Don’t wait until you are completely done with your presentation. Depending on the subject, get feedback from friends and the community about your subject – you might find a particular angle or point that is worth bringing up. Record yourself giving the presentation and examine the video afterwards (some even listen without the video to focus on the audio). 
• Strive to make slides high enough contrast and large enough font for those not sitting in the front row to be able to read it comfortably. Don’t stress on having fancy designs or cute animated GIFs – clear and easy to read slides that stress the main points of your talk have a longer shelf life.
• Confirm with conference organizers if someone will be recording your talk and taking photos. You’ll want this later for personal and promotional purposes. Don’t wait until after your talk to ask these! Ask a good friend or (worse case) fellow conference attendee
• Have a backup of your slides on a USB drive you bring with you (having an online backup doesn’t hurt and could be faster to pull up potentially but always bring a physical backup).
• If your talk needs Wi-Fi for some reason (demoing a website) plan for the unfortunate scenario if internet isn’t available. Have a backup plan (perhaps a screenshot or a video recording of whatever you were about to do live).
• Confirm with conference organizers about Wi-Fi, power, and adapters that might be needed. Even if they claim to have all of that available, plan just in case they don’t. Have your own adapter or dongles for your laptop. Even if they have an adapter sometimes, they don’t (well) with all laptops.
• If you are concerned about ending on time – especially if you plan on taking questions – figure out a way for you to be alerted comfortably as you speak. Some use the trick of setting a phone vibrate alert. This might be useful even if there is a room moderator tracking your time or not.
• Give thought when you want to share your slides. Often speakers upload this prior to the talk and share the URL in an opening or closing slide. Removes the “where can I find your slides” question. Also, you can tweet this information out (set a scheduled tweet to remind people near the close of your talk perhaps). Consider multiple formats for your slides (PDF, html) and even more than one language if it makes sense (part of a multi-language conference for example).
• Relax. You should consider your first conference talk – no matter how much you practice – as a “practice talk”. In other words, don’t stress yourself out. Expect to make mistakes (seasoned speakers make lists of things after many of their talks). Setting proper expectations might help you dealing with stress and imposter syndrome before, during, and after the talk. But you have a story to share. You got this.