London Platform User Group (LOPUG), Wednesday 11th March, 6.30pm onwards

For our March meetup, we're back at the fabulous Accurx offices. We have two excellent talks lined up, the agenda will be:

• 6:30pm - arrive, drinks, networking
• 7:00pm - Welcome & Housekeeping
• 7:15pm - Talk 1: "Devops 2014 Revisited - a Dozen Years of Noise and Confusion"

It is 11th February 2014, a nervous Andy Burgin takes the stage at Agile Yorkshire and begins to share the current thinking from the burgeoning DevOps movement. Fast forward 12 years: DevOps is different — or is it? During a recent clear-out at chez Burgin, an old, forgotten laptop was discovered discarded between a box of floppy disks and a collection of old Computer Shopper magazines. While the laptop was no longer functional, a painstaking data recovery process rescued the files on its hard drive via a collection of old adaptors and half-working wires. Among the files saved from the Wakefield Council recycling centre was a copy of the very PowerPoint deck presented at that meetup 12 years earlier. But what was in this digital "time capsule"? What happened to DevOps? What did it become? Is it now a tool, a job title, or did something "bad" happen to it? Are the thoughts shared over a decade ago still relevant today? Join Andy as he looks at how we travelled from DevOps to Cloud, SRE, Platform Engineering, Team Topologies, Developer Experience, and VibeOps - Most importantly, we'll explore what the future of DevOps can learn from its past.

Speaker: Andy Burgin, Principal Platform Engineer @ Flutter UK and Ireland
Andy is a Principal Platform Engineer at Flutter UK and Ireland. He considers himself a Kubernetes, AI and DevRel fettler, spending far too much of his spare time running software in containers that really shouldn't be. He is a small part of the organising team for DevOpsDays London and ran the DevOps meetup in Leeds for almost a decade hosting over 50 events. He’s attended and has spoken at a bunch of DevOps conferences and in his own words is an "all-round DevOps nuisance".

• 7.45pm - food, more drinks & networking
• 8.00pm - Talk 2: "Navigating From Tension to Flow: A Human-Centred Guide to Overcoming Misalignment"

Behind every stalled project, missed milestone, or unclear decision is a story of tension between what people want, what’s needed, and what’s possible. But tension isn’t failure. It’s feedback. This talk explores how to recognize and respond to tension using Team Topologies principles, flow first thinking, and a healthy dose of human insight.
We’ll show how organizational patterns, team boundaries, and interaction modes can either amplify or ease misalignment — and how trust, empathy, and bold conversation are just as important as structure, if not more so. Packed with real-world examples, this session blends organizational design with emotional intelligence to help you design for flow — and for people.

Speakers: Faye Benfield, Product Leader, Independent & Rich Allen, Fast Flow Facilitator @ Conjurer
Faye Benfield is a Product Leader with over 15 years experience in product management, agile delivery and digital transformation. Specialising in helping organisations adopt product practices, Faye has a proven track record of embedding product teams, evolving ways of working, and aligning stakeholders to achieve strategic goals. Faye has held leadership roles, including Head of Product and Delivery at Parkinson’s UK and Head of Product at Comic Relief, where she spearheaded digital transformation initiatives and cultivated effective, people-centred teams. As a consultant at Armakuni, she combined hands-on coaching with practical tools and techniques to help clients navigate the complexities of product delivery, with a focus on balancing human dynamics and practical constraints.

Rich Allen is a sociotechnical architect, consultant and creator of User Needs Mapping, a practical technique for aligning teams around what matters. With over 20 years’ experience across software engineering, technical leadership, and organisational design, Rich helps organisations reduce friction, clarify boundaries, and improve flow by working outside-in from real user needs. He was a foundational contributor to the development and teaching of Team Topologies, helping shape the core materials now used in Team Topologies training and consulting worldwide. Rich is the author of User Needs Mapping: Aligning Teams Around What Matters.

• 8.30pm onwards - drinks and networking.

So, please come and join us, we look forward to seeing you there.
The LOPUG team.

• Food and drinks provided
• Good time will be had by all