Writing a book is the hardest achievement I’ve set out to accomplish. I finished it like a marathoner at the end of a long race, crawling toward the finish line. I was empty.

But finishing the book isn’t the interesting story. The journey is where I learned the valuable lessons. Only in the tears and the toil, in the mud of my own emotions and self-doubt, did I learn the truths of struggle, resiliency and creative work.

Long ago, communities believed a person’s creative contributions were the work of a muse. They believed the gifts we treasure most from those ancient civilizations — sculptures, paintings, books — were the result of a human momentarily capturing the divine.

Then we discovered science. We began to understand pieces of the universe we inhabit. We moved away from the old god-like division of labor. We worshipped humans. And we equated truth with fact.

Engineering software is creative work. Yes, we talk about algorithms and lambdas. But our work transcends science and technology. I believe it is the next step in our evolution — merging modern technology with the primal need to create. And it’s the lessons I learned in the trenches of my own creative work that I think we can apply to writing code as much as writing words.

Attendees will leave with tangible ways to apply DevOps principles. I’ll cover how to draft their own DevOps plan, iteratively improve and fearlessly tell the stories of their successes and failures. I want them to feel inspired about their work and their potential to effect change in their organizations and communities.

Emily Freeman is a thinker and a storyteller who helps engineering teams move faster. She believes the biggest challenges facing technologists aren’t technical, but human. Her mission in life is to