It was still daylight when I emerged from the office on Natoma street, nearly touching the new SF MoMa. I was off to my first meet-up in nearly two years–the HashiCorp User Group. I’ve gone from backpacking through foreign countries to biking from work to a tech meet-up. Oh the places you’ll go.
Court was held at the GitHub headquarters on Brannan Street. The place was swank–and complete with nerdy in-jokes. I see the security guard turn his back, and instead of the usual SECURITY emblazoned on the back, I just saw SSH in the same font and gray color. Jesus, I really am back in Silicon Valley. I sign in, and after checking my ID they give me a green 21+ wristband–like I’m at a concert or something.
The ceilings are about 20 feet high, all exposed wood. Whatever shit-hole warehouse this place was, it barely resembles it. There’s a big beautiful open-space that seems to be the hanging out / conference / lunch area for GitHub employees. It’s dominated on one side by a huge long bar that was well stocked with fine liquor. A lone casually dressed bartender in a t-shirt is being pulled in different directions by meetup guests that want some free booze.
I’m rubbing elbows–literally–with people trying to get a glass of champagne. I end up befriending and chatting with a fellow queuer who was kind of your somewhat handsome but awkward engineer with a generic single-syllable American first name. It turns out he has many other counterparts with generic single-syllable names. And just like I’m in an episode of Silicon Valley, one of these counter-parts is the tall long-haired security nerd, complete with an Electronic Frontier Foundation hoodie–my kind of people.
It’s all as I expected. Free high quality alcohol in unlimited quantities for the near 100 guests that were attending for free. I get my glass of champagne, and then later on another two draught Mission Brewery Hefeweizens. There was of course catered food–and it was great. A burrata salad and some tender spare-ribs were the real highlights. These things are soft recruiting events for the hosts that put them on–everyone needs good talent down here.
So after eating some quality chow and having some boring conversations, the presentation is on. We know this, because the event organizer–one of the three girls in attendance–is going around and telling everyone to file into the presentation space. I’m feeling like I’ve got the timing down perfectly, a full hefeweizen in my hand. I swoop on a lone chair–made of solid wood–just in time to catch the AV dude complete with baggy t-shirt and snapback finish setting up the stage. At last, the reason I’m here. I see Mitchell Hashimoto present for about 45 minutes. I learn a few new tricks about Terraform, but there was a bit of a soft pitch for their Enterprise offering. The hefeweizen is half-empty at this point.
During question time I ask Mitchell a question that I was debating with someone about earlier in the day–should we use multiple state files for different pieces infrastructure in the same environment–only to have him side with the guy I was debating with. Shit. Well, at least I got told by the Founder and CTO of HashiCorp, who also happens to have created Terraform. If you’re going settle a debate, you get it straight from the horses mouth I suppose.
The guest speaker afterwards was wearing a purple t-shirt and had a total Mitch Hedberg vibe about him. But instead of epic one-liners he was telling us about his immutablish infrastructure deployment at Trulia. Pretty cool stuff. One of his friends was a shill and asked him a joke question after about the obsidian crystal he was wearing. It helps him see into the future–useful for terraform applies. I talked to him after, he was chill AF.
It was dark out when I emerged from that office, and I felt like a bigger nerd than ever before.
