Last week I was able to attend THAT conference in Wisconsin Dells, Wisconsin. It was my first time in the great state of cheese, and the conference lived up to its reputation.

As a developer focused conference (rather than a database conference), I didn't have much expectation that my session about automating database changes would strike a chord with this crowd. Nonetheless, I spent the day and night before prepping my demos (again), re-ran the demo in the morning, and was ready to go at 1PM when the session started. Five minutes before the session started there were maybe 15 people in the room. Again, I wasn't expecting this topic to be a big draw and I was delighted to share what I had with whoever showed up.

One minute before the session started, there were about 35 people. To my surprise, by the time I was three minutes into the talk, the room was almost full. And not just full, the people present were engaged in the topic.

I'm happy with how the session went and I felt like I was able to give the attendees a vision and some hope for how they could start to make positive changes in their development processes to include database changes. My main challenge was to start small, choose one thing they could begin to change now, and slowly incorporate more processes as time goes by.

By the end of that first day and follow-up conversations during the "hallway track", I learned two things by attending THAT and presenting a database DevOps session.

First, somebody is always at the beginning of their journey. I've been working with database change management for years now. I've invested time and energy into understanding it because I knew there was a better way than what I did for the first half of my career. Many of the people that attended the session had questions about how to get started, how to overcome resistance, what their biggest challenges would be, and more. They're in the spot I was 10 years ago. Again, there's always someone around you at the beginning of their journey. Be kind and patient with them.

Second, big changes can't come all at once. Whether in life or business, change takes time. When I am able to realize that many of the people that I'm talking with are at the beginning of their journey, it's so much easier to make progress with small, concrete steps. Find the next, small change that's important to tackle and find progress. For DevOps, taking just one process and shifting it left in your workflow can have a significant impact in your ability to deliver customer value. In other areas of your life, it might be the spark to make the positive change that's been needed for a while.

What do you think? Ready to tackle something new and make that first, small change?