This is a story about resilience and what it means to be resilient. It’s a bit about how we, as humans are uniquely equipped to handle constant change and surprises if we’re given the right support. It’s a story about how crafting systems in our likeness is both inevitable and desirable. It’s about how our capacity to adapt to changes or respond to incidents is dependent on our ability to interconnect with and rely on each other. Drawing from my experience with Resilience Engineering, community building and gender transition, this talk will show how strong communities and building power at the sharp ends of our systems gives us the resilience to thrive during change. It aims to offer lessons and insights into how we can build and operate safer, more reliable socio-technical systems for the machines, but more importantly for the people involved in them.

Notes and comments

This was a talk initially thought up for DevOpsDays Austin’s theme of “Change is in our Bones”. Immediately after reading those words I could feel like a trigger in my brain and started making connections from Dr. Cook’s famous “bone talk” to gender transition to mutual aid and building communities of support. I want to share that spark, the hope that keeps me moving through difficult times.

Developer Advocate @ Equinix Metal

Fen is a Developer Advocate at Equinix Metal and a periodic organizer for DevOpsDays Hartford, NYC and Boston. Passionate about Resilience Engineering and Mental