Isolation: VMs, Containers, Namespaces, Oh my! | DenverScript August 2026

This month you'll hear about all the ways to isolate development work including VMs, Containers and Namespaces.

We're always looking for speakers. Submit your talk here: https://forms.gle/5A26sY5475X8J14S8

Food and drinks will be provided.

This meetup will be recorded and uploaded (not live-streamed) to our YouTube channel - https://www.youtube.com/@DenverScriptMeetup

Agenda
6:00 PM - Networking
6:15 PM - JS News
6:30 PM - Public Access Technology: Library technology services
7:00 PM - Isolation: VMs, Containers, Namespaces, Oh my! by Sam Currie

Talk Descriptions
Public Access Technology: Library technology services

As an industry seeped in technology, we often overlook the fact that access to technology is not always a given. This is one of the gaps that libraries have stepped in to fill. As a member of the team responsible for technology at the Boulder Library's five branches (and an archive), I'll give an overview of the technology services we provide, the challenges we face, and the benefit to the community.

Isolation: VMs, Containers, Namespaces, Oh my! by Sam Currie

There's a ton of isolation mechanisms out there (e.g. for agent operations), each with advantages and disadvantages. Let's review the basic levels of isolation and good applications for each:
- Basic Linux namespacing, cgroups, etc
- Node isolates
- Common isolation methods for different agent harnesses
- Container runtimes
- Virtual machines & KVM
- Use cases and tradeoffs
- Isolation within application architecture

Speaker Bios

Sam Currie was previously the head of infrastructure at Flatfile and Obvious AI and now the CEO at Heyo Computer. He has run workloads at scale on various technologies including Kubernetes/containers, VMs, Node isolates (and predecessors) lambdas, and sandboxes (e.g. E2B).