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Pete Crocker - Director of Product and Solution Architecture - IPFabric - Explaining the business value of network automation - Or why I succeeded the second time around!

At a previous $dayjob I was brought on board a network engineering team to bring in some expertise in network automation. Along the way, I built a greenfield DC in the UK fully automated, just to watch manual config changes happen on day 2, and the code abandoned. I’ll discuss what I learned about making sure leaders are aligned on the business value of automation, and how I succeeded at the next major project, including why we chose Ansible and netbox as the core of the solution.

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Steve Corp - Director - Evolvere - Network Automation in Financial Services

Challenges and successes from recent customer engagements, common themes, some predictions for future directions

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Miles Sutcliffe - NetSec Team Lead - ISAM  - From Network Zero to Automation Hero: A Journey in Network Automation

In this presentation I'll explore my transformative journey in network automation over the past three years. Starting with my departure from a company lacking interest in automation and my subsequent entry into a new role with a visionary boss. Initially plagued by self-doubt and imposter syndrome, my perseverance led me to significant achievements. We implemented NetBox to manage a network inherited from multiple MSPs, paving the way for subsequent automation projects including automating core network deployments using Arista Validated Designs (AVD) and a Django-based firewall management tool called "Forge."

These tools allowed us to model firewall rules based on device grouping, streamlining configuration and deployment processes and empowering business units by creating a self-service application named "BUG" (Business Unit Generated Firewall Rules) which enabled developers to request firewall rules easily.This journey demonstrates the transformative power of network automation and how my journey can hopefully help others to overcome challenges and drive impactful change in their organization.

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Jason Edelman - Founder and CTO - Network to Code - Transforming Enterprises and Careers with Network Automation

Network Automation continues to grow at a rapid pace enabling transformation for both organizations and individuals. In this session, the goal is to share general approaches and techniques for network automation covering everything build vs. buy, the importance of data and Source of Truth, and how to think about teams and career growth preparing for a fully automated network.

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Chris Wade - Co-Founder and CTO - Itential - Evolving from Individual Automation to Team Automation

Networking teams are identifying the benefits of working collectively on automation initiatives. In this session, we will discuss an automation maturity model focused on the data, processes, and benefits that incorporate IaC and platform engineering concepts into your network automation journey.

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Ian Chilton - DevOps Engineer - LONAP - Network automation in the real world: at an Internet Exchange Point

LONAP is a not-for-profit, neutral Internet Exchange Point established in 1997 and based in London. With around 250 members, over 350 connected ports across 8 points of presence and peaks of 1Tbps (or 130Mpps) of traffic. We operate with 4 full time staff so rely on automation to be able to grow in members, ports and traffic year on year, while reducing our pricing. This presentation will give an introduction to us, our network and our tooling.

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Rick Donato - Founder - PacketCoders - I've been teaching networking automation for a long time now, this is what I've learned!

After teaching and interacting with thousands of eager network automation students and community members, I've noticed a few patterns. In this session I'll share what those are, and how you can learn from them to accelerate your network automation journey.

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Steinn Örvar Bjarnarson - Lead Product Development Engineer - Advania Ísland - When you are an MSP/DC/ISP, all rolled into one; the network automation big picture is big!

This talk explores the complex world of network automation from the viewpoint of MSPs, DCs, and ISPs. We'll decode the idea of Lego orchestration, compare imperative and declarative automation methods, and showcase how Netbox serves as our reliable Source of Truth (SoT).

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Dan Finneran - Principal Community Advocate - Isovalent - k8s and gateway API for managing on-prem and edge networks

A session around Kubernetes and Gateway API (Which is the evolution of Kubernetes networking) and how this is leading into new ways of automating on-prem and edge networks from the control plane to areas such as IPAM and routing.