Autocon 4: Austin Notes from the Hallway and Main Stage

Autocon was a late addition to my calendar, and I am glad I made it. The week split cleanly between hands on workshops and the conference program. Workshops ran Monday and Tuesday, and the main conference ran Wednesday through Friday.

I arrived Monday and, because I registered late, I could not get into the workshops I wanted. That pushed me into the hallway track, which turned out to be productive. The WiFi was fast, there was plenty of seating and power, and the NAF Slack was active with per‑workshop channels and quick answers on logistics. I kept up on work, met a colleague in person for the first time after years of only video calls, and had a steady stream of conversations. A few people asked what NetActuate does. I explained our API driven platform and how we can deploy across our footprint within minutes once a Terraform package is ready.

Culture matters here. During workshop hours, the halls were nearly empty because rooms were full of people with laptops following along. It felt like people came to do the work and level up skills, not to loiter. That tone carried into the conference days as well.

A surprising session for me was The NAF Network Automation Framework: A Modular Reference Architecture. Ryan Shaw was on the program, but he could not make it, and Dinesh Dutt spoke instead. The talk sparked real conversations and a lot of good natured debate about how teams map their tools into a common model and vocabulary. The point was not to sell a product, but to give practitioners a way to compare notes in a vendor neutral way.

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My last session before flying out was Cat Gurinsky’s Lifecycle Automation: Troubleshooting, Upgrading & More. It was a practical walkthrough of guardrails that keep the boring but important tasks reliable. Think pre checks and gates that stop you from upgrading both switches in a pair at once, checks that catch single homed racks, validations around firmware version compatibility, and the usual pre, upgrade, and post phases that prevent surprises. Her framing of repeatable troubleshooting and maintenance as data driven workflows was spot on.

I was disappointed to miss Srividya Iyer’s Do not start somewhere: A methodical approach to implementing Network Automation on Thursday, since I had to leave early. I have seen her speak before and had high hopes for this one. I will catch it when the talks are posted after the event.

In short, Autocon delivered. It is the kind of event where you can learn, compare notes without the product noise, and leave with specific ideas you can apply. Now that I know how it runs, I plan to register early next time so I can get into the workshops I had my eye on, Nautobot and OpsMill, and take full advantage of the format. It really does feel like the automation conference to attend, and the productivity and value for attendees show why.