What I’m Excited About At HashiConf Global 2022

This post was sponsored by HashiCorp, see the bottom for more details

As I prepare for HashiConf Global in a couple weeks, I thought I would share the things that I am most excited about. That includes the sessions, the hallway track, and the other hallway track. What do I mean by that? Read ahead to find out.

The Sessions

Looking over the session catalog, there are a few talks that immediately jump out at me. Now, granted I am a little biased towards Terraform and Vault, but that being said I also am curious about Nomad and Boundary. I should also note that some of these sessions will not be streamed to virtual attendees; however, all talks will be accessible about a week after the conference is over.

What’s New in Terraform for Azure?: In terms of provider support, Azure has always lagged a little behind AWS in terms of features and functionality. The 3.0 release of the azurerm provider represented a huge shift in terms API parity and speed. Microsoft has also been busy developing the AzAPI provider and Azure Terrafy tool. I’m curious to see what they have in store to further improve the Terraform experience on Azure.
Terraform AWS Cloud Control Provider - Under the Hood: In a similar vein to the AzAPI provider, the AWS Cloud Control API added a set of common APIs to improve the developer experience of working with the AWS APIs, which if we’re being honest were incredibly inconsistent across their portfolio of services. I’m super curious to see how the use of the AWS CCP will alter usage of the standard AWS provider.
Managing Terraform Enterprise At Scale: Want to see how things break in new and unexpected ways? Do it at scale. From this presentation, I’m hoping to gain some insight into how to administer thousands of Terraform Enterprise workspaces effectively, and some best practices and patterns for managing modules, credentials, and variables.
Using OIDC with HashiCorp Vault and GitHub Actions: I mean, I’ve got to plug my own talk right? I feel like the title says it all. We’re going to explore the magic of OIDC together, and sprinkle some JWT fairy dust on GitHub Actions and Vault.
Nomad: Past, Present, and Future: Nomad is one of the HashiCorp products that is constantly on my list of things to take a closer look at. I’m hoping to get a sense of where things stand today for Nomad, and maybe how I can start integrating it into my existing projects.
Validate Infrastructure, Detect Drift, and Enforce OPA Policies with Terraform Cloud: One tool that I am incredibly interested in knowing more about is Open Policy Agent (OPA). So much so, that I am doing a Hallway Track talk about it to force me to learn more. This session is a learning lab to give you hands-on experience around using Terraform Cloud to run OPA.
Distributed Flexibility: Nomad and Vault in a post-Kubernetes World: Post-Kubernetes world? I had no idea! Once again, I am curious about Nomad as a product and this presentation promises to show a different architecture than the K8s cluster with service mesh that we’ve just started getting used to. I also see Web Assembly is involved somehow, so color me intrigued!

Those are all the main track sessions, but there’s a whole other hallway track. Which brings me to the next two sections, and why you may want to attend in-person if you can.

The Hallway Track

At HashiConf Global, there will be a series of smaller, hallway-style presentations. These presentations will be only 15 minutes in length, will not be recorded or streamed through the virtual conference option, and will literally be in the hallway between the main room and the session halls. The full list of talks is available on the HashiConf Global site, so I won’t go through them exhaustively, but here are a few that jump out at me:

Configuration Driven Terraform using Generic Reusable Resource Modules
Secure Every Data Source
Serverless Vault for Dev

If you took a gander at the full listing, you may have noticed there are impromptu talks over lunch each day. Got an idea? Want to give a quick talk? Swing by around lunch and see if the slot is available!

I love these quick, informal talks. They force the presenter to get right down into the meat of the presentation and skip all the effluvia of a longer, more formal presentation. You also tend to get more esoteric or experimental talks that might not work for a longer format. And, I’m not the only one who feels this way.

I'll be at HashiConf and my plan this year is to mostly hang around the hallway track! Just happy to chat with our community, hear what you all are doing. https://t.co/QBmy02LUg0
— Mitchell Hashimoto (@mitchellh) September 16, 2022

That’s right, the co-founder of HashiCorp, Mitchell Hashimoto is planning to spend most of his time checking out the hallway presentations. If you want a chance to meet Mitchell, and some other excellent folks, the hallway track is where it’s at!

The Other Hallway Track

Yes, there is an official hallway track with rapid presentations, but there’s also the less formal hallway track just like any other conference. It’s a series of organic conversations that you get to have with like-minded people. This is always my favorite part of any conference. There’s a spontaneity and serendipity to the in-person experience that we have yet to replicate in a virtual context.

Walking through the expo area, you might catch a fragment of conversation about Vault and auth methods that piques your interest. Getting lunch you may sit down at a table with folks talking about Packer for GCP or get sucked into a chat about the best way to bootstrap Nomad. While waiting to get into a talk about Boundary, you might find yourself talking to a HashiCorp engineer about how to use Terraform with Boundary’s dynamic inventory feature.

I’m sure the virtual experience will be top-notch, if HashiConf EU is any indication, but there’s still something about being there in-person that we have yet to capture with various chat and streaming tools. If you have the means and are able to, I highly recommend making the trip out to LA. You won’t be disappointed.

In fact, HashiCorp has given me a handy little discount code you can use at checkout. Just use the coupon code HASHICONFVIP2022 when you start your registration and you’ll pay $599 which is $300 off the list price!

Hopefully I’ll see you in LA! And if you find me, you just might get a fun little knick-knack to take home.

Sponsorship - This post was sponsored by HashiCorp. Although I received compensation, they did not tell me what I could/couldn’t write about. All opinions and thoughts remain mine. Big thanks to the fine folks at HashiCorp for helping me keep the lights on!