SKILup Content Guide

Get Involved with Supporting the Humans of DevOps

How To Get Started

At DevOps Institute, we work to create a safe, welcoming, inclusive learning environment where all  DevOps professionals, at any level, can connect, learn, and advance their capabilities and career. We serve a number of different audiences and want to provide high-quality content and learning experiences for the Humans of DevOps. 

If you are interested in creating content and extending your capabilities and expertise to the DevOps Institute community, you are in the right place!  There is no minimum or maximum content obligation. This guide shows the variety of options with the intention of allowing contributors to select content types they are interested in and provides more information about the many different opportunities for speaking, writing, and connecting with others through DevOps Institute.

**All content will be subject to approval by DevOps Institute. Fore recorded content, a sample recording of 1-2 minutes will need to be provided ahead of supplying actual content to ensure the quality is in line with the DevOps Institute standards.**

Why Partner With Us?

  • Reach up to 20K Members
  • Elevate  your personal brand into action through key engagements and with a call to action including your website and/or contact details displayed at the end of sessions.  (Note that sessions cannot be direct sales and must provide value to the community.)
  • Extend your capabilities to advance the Humans of DevOps with the SKIL (Skills, Knowledge, Ideas and Learning) framework
  • Expand your connections and impact by connecting with global Partners, Ambassadors, and DevOps Institute team members
  • Earn DevOps Institute Continuing Education Units (CEUs) towards DevOps Institute Certification renewals or other professional development requirements
  • Earn a DevOps Institute Content Contributor digital badge to showcase your expertise and contributions to the DevOps community on your social channels and resume
  • Validate your DevOps skills and knowledge by receiving a discount on a DevOps Institute Certification exam
  • Further your continuous education journey in DevOps and IT by receiving a discount on  a DevOps Institute SKILup IT Learning online subscription
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Content Contribution Opportunities

Events

Events by DevOps Institute are impactful, tech-centered webinars, virtual conferences and in-person events. Check out our upcoming events and learn more about opportunities to be involved like speaking and sponsoring.

 
SKILup Days

SKILup Days are virtual micro-conferences focused on DevOps and the tech industry. Featuring expert speakers from both the DevOps world and top IT companies, these one-day events offer everything you’d expect at a traditional conference, including virtual sponsor booths, competitions, and networking opportunities with other attendees and speakers.

 

SKILup Hours

SKILup Hours are live, interactive webinars for IT professionals moderated by industry experts. These roundtable discussions provide practical, how-to knowledge on DevOps topics including people, process and technology.


SKILup Festivals

Not your typical conference but rather an exciting opportunity to network and engage with participants and share the latest in the market. Festivals are intimate settings with workshop tracks and significant networking opportunities. 

 

SKILup Meetups 

SKILup Meetups are regional groups for people interested in DevOps in and around their specific city/country. Meetups occur regularly online and in-person and are open to all who want to talk about anything DevOps and usually co-organized by DevOps Institute Ambassadors in the region. An opportunity to connect, engage, and collaborate with others from around the world and just around the corner.

Digital Learning Content

SKILup IT Learning by DevOps Institute is a self-directed learning platform focused entirely on DevOps and Digital Transformation providing the resources, guidance, experts, and encouragement to learn. There are many different series, types of videos and ways to contribute.

Short Microlearnings (SKILup Moments) are short 5-7  minute long bite-sized versions of self-recorded video. Keep it simple – just you and the camera (we’ll do the production) – no slideshows, please.  Our goal is to have authentic conversations or explanations by real people as if the other person were there with you. 

Longer videos  (15 – 40 minutes) on a single topic or a video series that breaks the topic into 10-15 minute episodes providing deeper practical learning experiences.  Depending on the topic, your content may be a good fit for one or more of our learning categories such as the Technical Essential Series, Technical Best Practices, KnowledgeBoards, Author Series (technical or human), Human Aspects, Leadership, or People and Culture.  

Whether they are standalone video sessions or an entire series, you can include different types of learning: audio, visual, reading/writing, kinesthetic, dependent, and independent learning preferences.   The key is to keep the content practical, meaningful, engaging and maybe even a little fun. Rather than referencing episode numbers, just say “in this episode” we are introducing, discussing, exploring topic or subject x, y or z. 

Visit the SKILup IT Learning platform to learn more about subscriptions. If you are interested in submitting a video, please reach out!

Essential Series

Our Essential Series gives members an overview of a particular topic including vocabulary, context, key practices, and use cases.  It is not intended to be actionable but more informative.  The series should “tell a story” about the topic so the member comes away with a good understanding and hopefully the desire to learn more. The entire series could be as short as an hour or as long as needed.  Each episode in the series should be no more than 15 minutes. Rather than referencing episode numbers, just say “in this episode” we are introducing, discussing, exploring topic or subject x, y or z.  Do not overload the content with slides – use the slides as focus or cues but spend more time looking at the camera and explaining/sharing.

If you are working on a series with us, click here to request access to the Essential Series outline information or send us an email at skilupitlearning@devopsinstitute.com.

**Read our guidelines  for supplying recorded video content.**

Fireside Chat

Fireside chats are informal conversations. These sessions are interactive and personal, featuring stories about humans and their thoughts on various topics in a relaxing atmosphere. The idea is to create a connection with the audience. These can be live at events or remote for all to attend. Although this is informal in nature, it is best to discuss topics and questions in advance with the moderator to be familiar while still having an organic conversation.

**Read our guidelines  for supplying recorded video content.**

"Day in the Life" Series

Our “Day in the Life” Series are quick videos that are entertaining and tell a story. Show the spirit of the role from the business and human side and why it is so important. Share what you’re  responsible and accountable for and why it’s important for you and your  team but also the rest of the business. Not just sharing technical skills but also behaviors you are looking for in team members and why they are important to the business. Potentially describing leadership and practitioner behaviors that are important for that area of the business. Using the CISO as an example, why it’s important to have good policies, how they have to instill that thinking not only for the C-Suite and the business team members, but the entire business.  You can record segments and change positions. Will need to pause between each question. We can always cut out parts and edit.

 

See full interview questions for “Day in the Life” series here

**Read our guidelines  for supplying recorded video content.**

Additional Content Opportunities

Podcasts

The Humans of DevOps Podcast is a DevOps Institute-supported podcast series. The podcast is focused on advancing the Humans of DevOps through skills, knowledge, ideas and learning, or the SKIL framework. Featuring guests from around the world, we dive into the human elements of DevOps.

Blogs

DevOps Institute Blog articles are vendor-neutral, vendor-agnostic and NOT promotional in any way (this includes links). Blogs should be between 800-1,500 words in length and can be based on any IT-focused topic ranging from human elements of IT to high-level technical know-how relevant to the DevOps Institute audience.

Additional tips for articles:

  • Consider keyword(s). Use them in your title and headings, but don’t overload the article by using them too frequently.
  • Pick one clear angle to your topic and stick to it.
  • Make it readable. Overuse of large, technical language can make the article bulky and hard to read.

Articles should be your own and autonomous work. All sources and aids used have been indicated as such. All texts either quoted directly or paraphrased have been indicated by in-text citations. Read more about plagiarism and paraphrasing.

SKILup Discussions - Returning 2023!

SKILup Discussions is a safe, open, and collaborative community of like-minded practitioners exploring a variety of DevOps topics. Discussion boards are an excellent way to get answers and stay informed on the newest DevOps technologies and practices. Join discussion boards on topics such as SRE, Kubernetes, CI/CD, People & Culture, and many more.

Content Topic Categories

PEOPLE - Human Aspects

Insights or perspectives for the humans behind our technology

  • Leadership
    • How to build teams, Empathic Leadership, psychological safety, 
  • People and Culture 
    • Communication, work/life Balance, emotional intelligence, etc.
  • Be Well
    •  Self-care and wellness
    • Meditation, mindfulness and other preventative measures to maintain physical, emotional and well-being
    • Physical, mental and emotional health awareness and challenges in the tech space 

PROCESS

  • Site Reliability Engineering (SRE) 
  • GitOps 
  • Agile
  • Value Stream Management (VSM)
  • How frameworks work together
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TECHNOLOGY

  • Technical topics ( How to/best practices/what it means)
    • e.g. Kubernetes, microservices, Docker, supply chain
  • Discussion of Tools 
    • e.g. what is Prometheus, Cloud Native, Observability, APM, Cyber Security, DevSecOps, 
  • Essential Series Possibilities
  • Agile/Scrum
  • AIOps 
  • Application Performance Mgmt
  • AWS 
  • Azure
  • Chaos Engineering 
  • Cloud Native
  • Cloud Security
  • Continuous Delivery 
  • Continuous Testing 
  • DataOps & Analytics 
  • DevSecOps
  • GitOps
  • Google Cloud
  • Kubernetes 
  • Microservice Architecture 
  • Observability 
  • Open-Source Applications 
  • Product Management
  • SRE tools
  • Value Stream Management

Content Submission Requirements

Personal/Corporate Branding

You can talk about yourself and your business briefly at the end of your video or show a slide. Please do not refer to other links/events. We will be creating a bio for you under our ambassador or “Humans You Need to Know” pages. Please send us an up-to-date bio with headshot and LinkedIn profile with a  short description of your content that we can add to your page. Let us know if you would like us to include other relevant items.

Video Recording Best Practices

Please review our video content page for best practices when supplying recorded video content. After you have recorded your .MP4 video, you will need to upload this to our shared drive (details will be provided upon requirement) for final editing. Once complete, we will share it with the global DevOps community members.

Content provided to DevOps Institute may be used under Creative Commons (CC) licensing.  DevOps Institute is home to a global community of practitioners with a shared mission: to advance the human elements of DevOps. As such, content may be shared with DevOps Institute community members for educational purposes. 

Should you have any concerns regarding public presentation outside your business or conflict of interest, please address with your organization or legal team before submitting content.  Please note that content should be of genuine interest and educational value for the DevOps community and should not be used for sales presentations or pitches.

By submitting Your Content to us, you agree that you have read, understand and accept the following terms in relation to the content and information (“Your Content”) you will send to  DevOps Institute:

  1. Subject to the following provisions, Your Content may be published in any media or format and/or used for marketing and communication purposes generally.  Your Content (including your name and location) may be put into the public domain and it could therefore become generally known and available (including on the internet).
  2. DevOps Institute shall exercise reasonable efforts to include credit to you when using the content, provided that  details such as your name and/or social media identity (i.e., LinkedIn or Twitter handle) are included by you. 
  3. You agree that:
    • You are legally responsible for Your Content.
    • Your Content is not false or libelous and does not infringe the privacy, data protection or confidentiality rights of any third party.
    • Your Content does not plagiarize or otherwise infringe any third party copyright, moral rights or any other intellectual property rights or similar rights.  For example, you must not submit to us any photos, drawings or any recordings of any type unless you are the copyright owner or have the relevant consent of the copyright owner.
    • Your Content is truthful and not misleading.  It relates to your own genuine personal experiences and/or is based upon your own knowledge. 
    • Your Content is not hateful (including without limitation in relation to race, religion or sexual orientation), harassing, malicious, profane, discriminatory, obscene, sexually explicit, offensive, prejudicial to any active court proceedings or encouraging of violence or criminal action, does not breach any court orders, and is not otherwise unlawful. 
    • Your Content does not amount to commercial speech or advertising or amount to an investigation by you and you have clearly and truthfully disclosed your interests in the subject matter (including any potential or actual conflicts of interest) and Your Content.
    • Your Content does not impersonate anyone else or otherwise misrepresents your identity, affiliation or status.
  4. Your Content is not technically harmful (including, without limitation, viruses, logic bombs, Trojan horses, worms, harmful components, corrupted data or other malicious software, harmful data or conduct).
  5. We may edit, add to, remove or otherwise amend Your Content (or any part of it) in any way as we see fit in our sole discretion for journalistic purposes (for example without limitation we may edit Your Content for length and style and/or use it for or incorporate it in social posts).  We may do any of these things whether or not Your Content has been published.  We are not obliged to do any of these things and we may not. 

You have read and understood our Privacy Policy and Terms and Conditions.

Want to know more? Contact us to speak to a member of the team about contributing content.