After all the turmoil in 2018, we didn’t really feel like going out and participating in community events for a while. However, “community” has been one of our core values from the start, and now that another year is coming to an end, it’s time for us to join the conference circuit again.

At freistil IT, we always found conferences and meet-ups great opportunities to share and receive updates on the progress we’ve made as an open-source community. And by that I mean both our technological advances and the things we’ve learned about creating, operating and maintaining the software on which we’re building our hobbies and businesses.

I’m proud to announce that I’ll be speaking at two events in October. Both WordCamp Dublin and DrupalCon Amsterdam invited me to talk about fighting burnout and building resilience. Looking back on not only the recent past but almost three decades of working in IT, I can think of many situations where resilience was a key skill for myself and the people around me. I’m happy that mental health has become a topic that we talk about openly. But there are still too many people who aren’t aware how sneakily conditions like burnout creep into our lives and cause all kinds of mental and physiological effects. I hope that I can share a bit of practical advice on how to recognise and combat pressure and stress. Are you attending WordCamp or DrupalCon? Let’s arrange a time to meet!

Without O’Reilly and its animal-covered books, I wouldn’t have learned half of what I know (or at least knew at some point…) about programming and operating IT infrastructure. That why I’m a bit envious that Markus will get to visit Velocity Conference in November. With “Performance. Resilience. Security.” as its subtitle, it’ll cover a different kind of resilience and hopefully give us a lot of inspiration on how to improve our managed hosting products for our customers.

As Markus mentions on his personal blog, it feels good to get away from our desks for a bit, talking to people in person, sharing experiences and building community together. I can only recommend you do the same!