LagoonCon Portland 2024, a specialized gathering for developers and tech leaders, is set to take place on May 6, 2024, at the Hyatt Regency Portland adjacent to the Oregon Convention Center. Following its victorious debut in Pittsburg last year, this free event by amazee.io promises to offer insights and discussions centered around Lagoon. It is an open-source application delivery platform designed to enhance the development and hosting processes for various applications, from Drupal sites to expansive multi-app environments. The organizers aim to exceed the previous year's event with an additional session and more speakers.
As the proud media sponsors of LagoonCon Portland 2024, The DropTimes brings to our readers everything you need to know and anticipate about the event. The conference is scheduled to run from 6:30 PM to 10:00 PM PDT, commencing with a check-in and welcome session featuring drinks and hors d'oeuvres, followed by a series of presentations and a networking hour to conclude the evening. The event’s agenda is tightly packed, starting with opening introductions and leading into a detailed discussion on Lagoon’s current achievements and future roadmap by Toby Bellwood, Lagoon Product Lead at amazee.io.
"Attendees can expect to get an overview of the work that the Lagoon team has been doing over the last year or so. We’ve released some pretty huge features, definitely targeted at the enterprise userspace. “Organizations” is one example, that helps customers to self-service their own groups, projects, and users - placing a lot more flexibility in their hands (whilst removing a significant support bottleneck). I’ll cover a bit of the backstory, and reveal some of the development process we went through. “Insights” is the other large piece of work, that whilst not new, has undergone a significant reworking to better fit how our customers want to use it."
said Toby Bellwood to The DropTimes [TDT].
Toby will discuss the positioning of Lagoon's product and platform, identify key competitors, and outline Lagoon's defining characteristics and unique adoption points. He will provide insights into the product's strategic direction and introduce some of the upcoming developments that align with the broader strategy.
"I’ll reveal a little of what we’re working on, where it aligns with our broader strategy, and throw a few tidbits out. Expect to see a reworked version of the user interface in there…"
2023 has been particularly impactful for the Lagoon Community, and 2024 seems promising. Drawing from their experience and community collaboration, Toby noted that the Lagoon team is rich with innovative ideas poised for implementation. A key move in 2023 was enhancing resources for User and Developer Experience, which provided deeper insights into how users engage with Lagoon and manage their workflows.
"Leaning on the work we did towards “Organizations”, and expanding our work on “Insights”, I see the Enterprise user as a key persona for us—these are users running dozens, (or even hundreds) of sites."
Toby added.
In conjunction with the UX/DX initiatives, the Lagoon team is exploring ways to better target their user personas and differentiate Lagoon from other tooling or platforms.
"We’ve always maintained that Lagoon takes Continuous Delivery way past delivery—the enterprise work here is all aimed at day 1 onwards, and is focused on continuous maintenance and improvement."
Toby Bellwood emphasizes the need for Lagoon not only to continue reducing the time and effort required to get a site, user, or customer up and running but also to enhance the overall usability and enjoyment of the platform. He pointed out that websites are rarely a "set and forget" application; they require ongoing attention, fine-tuning, tweaking, and analyzing. Toby stressed that the last thing they want is for this work to be burdensome for their users.
Following the opening session, attendees will delve into the technical nuances of integrating large language models (LLMs) with private and highly sensitive data, a session led by Christoph Weber, Solutions Architect, Pronovix. This talk aims to explore,
● Why is a Private LLM important and necessary for customers like ours? ● What are the benefits of Retrieval-Augmented Generation over generic LLM like ChatGPT or Gemini, and why does that matter specifically for companies with technical documentation? ● Lessons learned as we set up our POC for the Ansys Developer Portal.
Christoph Weber
"Michael Schmid presented the concept of Private LLM at last year’s LagoonCon, and it was immediately apparent to me how much potential the technology had. It was also clear that the potential needed to be validated “in the wild” with content from an existing content-heavy website that is already hosted on amazee.io’s Lagoon. As it happens, we have several such customers, and I proposed the project presented here to Michael. In this session, I will present what happened next."
Christoph noted.
Christoph detailed the mechanisms in place for gathering user feedback on the performance of their LLM-driven chatbot. The Pronovix team collaborates with Ansys subject matter experts to evaluate the accuracy and quality of responses provided by the chatbot. This collaboration is crucial for fine-tuning and prompt engineering, especially in the initial stages of the project. Additionally, Christoph mentioned that they are exploring various feedback mechanisms to understand everyday usage better, recognizing the fast-paced nature of AI and LLM technologies. Christoph Weber emphasized the importance of metrics and feedback in assessing the project's success and its value within the context of Ansys developer documentation.
Ultimately, we also want to prove the value of Private LLMs in the broader field of “digging up useful information from vast bodies of technical documents in ways not seen before.”
concluded Christoph.
Bryan Gruneberg, CEO and CTO at Workshop Orange, will then outline the benefits of open-source hosting platforms, particularly focusing on their alignment with the goals of the Open Website Alliance. This alliance, comprising major open-source CMS communities such as TYPO3, Drupal, WordPress, and Joomla, emphasizes collaborative efforts to improve web technology standards.
The session will focus on how Lagoon's Kubernetes-based hosting environment enhances CMS adoption by providing a robust, scalable, and flexible hosting option that aligns with the open-source ethos. Attendees will gain insights into the perspective of an active Lagoon user on what the open-source ethos means in a hosting context, as well as some practical benefits of adopting an open-source hosting platform.
Bryan Gruneberg
"Expect some real-world examples, an interactive Q&A, and food for thought about integrating open-source hosting into your web strategy booth practically and from an embracing open-source perspective."
highlighted Bryan Gruneberg.
Lagoon offers a fundamental advantage by being inherently more flexible and transparent than proprietary solutions. This transparency allows developers within the Open Website Alliance to audit, modify, and enhance the hosting environment to better serve their specific needs without waiting for vendor updates or facing restrictive licensing. Moreover, open-source solutions foster a collaborative environment where innovations can be shared freely, speeding up the innovation process and reducing duplication of effort across different teams and projects.
"By using an open-source hosting platform, we, as Drupal and Lagoon communities, can drive quicker adaptations to emerging web technologies and standards. This not only leads to better, more secure, and more efficient web solutions but also aligns well with the open-source philosophy of shared success and community-driven development that we see in Drupal. Typo3. Joomla, etc."
added Bryan.
The event will wrap up with an interactive roundtable featuring both live and virtual participation from the Lagoon team. This hybrid roundtable will offer insights into new features and updates directly from the Lagoon maintainers and developers, complete with demonstrations of upcoming functionalities. Attendees are encouraged to actively participate by bringing their questions, suggestions, and concerns. Additionally, the Lagoon team will be available for further interaction during the networking session that evening and throughout DrupalCon Portland 2024.
Designed specifically for CTOs, developers, site builders, project managers, and product owners who are navigating the realms of decoupled and composable architecture, LagoonCon Portland 2024 not only aims to educate but also to cultivate a community around the innovative potentials of open-source application delivery.
"It won’t be recorded, so please join us in person! Although not confirmed, there are plans for a LagoonCon in Barcelona later in the year."
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