MacDevOps YVR 2023 Conference Roundup

Each year, the MacStadium team looks forward to connecting with the MacDevOps community at the MacDevOps YVR conference, and the 2023 conference held in Vancouver, BC did not disappoint. Expert talks this year covered everything from key lessons from one developer’s first year to personal online privacy to the future of MDM declarative management. While the presenters each put their own spin on things, the definitive hot topic among attendees was security. Below, we’ll recap some of our team’s favorite sessions.  

Stories & Learnings from macOS Continuous Integration at Scale

Tim Sutton of Block (fka Square) took conference attendees through a day in the life of an iOS development team supporting a dozen apps and running more than 50 builds per day. The MacStadium team knowingly laughed along with his recounting of what it can look like to a development team when your data center gets too hot. And his pros and cons of leveraging the AWS EC2 Mac minis was insightful for anyone who is considering AWS as a solution to their capacity struggles.

Why your data center will love declarative management

You wouldn’t know it based on the name, but Katie English of Jamf gave one of the more controversial talks of the conference, called “Why your data center will love Declarative Management.” Despite being announced by Apple 2 years ago, Declarative Device Management (DDM) is still in the early days of development and adoption. As the name suggests, DDM allows devices to proactively send specific updates to the server, rather than waiting for an inquiry from the server to provide the information. And while this sounds like an ideal state, much of the discussion following the talk related to the reality of the solution based on how it works today. If you want to spend a few minutes (or hours) fantasizing about the future of device management, check out the WWDC 2021 announcement of DDM and Jamf’s overview blog post.

Online Privacy and Risk Management 

Ritu Gill of OSINT Techniques kicked off “Security Day” at this year’s conference with a bang. As a member of the RCMP (Americans, think FBI), the session revolved around surprising ways that you (or your users) may be sharing sensitive, personal information online. Did you know that someone can figure out what neighborhood you live in based on your Instagram photo of a Starbucks cup?! Like most attendees, our team immediately re-checked some account privacy settings and recent posts.  

If you’re interested in diving deeper into these or other MacDevOps topics, MacDevOps YVR conference organizers post session recordings to their YouTube channel. This year’s sessions haven’t been posted yet but stay tuned to watch full recorded versions of all the 2023 conference sessions.  

Be on the lookout for the announcement of the 10th annual MacDevOps YVR 2024 conference. Hope to see you there!