Cockroach Labs hit the road in 2024 with RoachFest, our annual database conference! We were so glad to host everyone in Menlo Park and London in June, and in just 2 weeks we’ll be capping off RoachFest24 in our hometown – New York, NY on September 26.
There is so much to look forward to, starting with our incredible headliners including Estée Lauder, Microsoft, and Global Payments. Join our Table Talks, where you can grab a bite while discussing tips with CockroachDB wizards away from the main stage. The Cockroach University Expert Zone also debuts, where the Cockroach Labs Education team guides you through our freely available, self-paced online courses, certifications, and more.
RoachFest is the place to learn how to modernize your data infrastructure, so you can have a resilient foundation to rely on. Whether you’re already running your data-intensive workloads on CockroachDB, or just eager to learn about the latest developments in enterprise-grade distributed databases, RoachFest is for you: from DevOps engineers and database administrators to developers and application owners.
Now, it’s time for an inside look at RoachFest with Chris Casano, Senior Director, Customer Engineering - Americas, at Cockroach Labs. He was the MC for RoachFest Menlo Park this year, and he had such a blast that he’ll be picking up the microphone again in The Big Apple!
In this Q&A, Chris shares his perspective on seeing RoachFest grow over the years, the importance of learning in community as the data landscape changes in the face of mass outages and new AI developments.
Taking RoachFest global
Chris, now that Menlo Park is in the books, how would you describe your experience of that event?
It exceeded my expectations. One thing that I thought was super valuable is that a lot of the folks that came to Menlo Park had never been to a RoachFest before, and a majority of them lived in the Bay Area. So we hit it right: a big theme of RoachFest being multi-region this year is that “We are coming to you.” We saw a big local presence there, and there was a good mix of customers as well as people that were learning about CockroachDB.
There's nothing better than having a customer get up there and being authentic with the audience, saying, “Hey, this is where CockroachDB is great. Here's where I hit a roadblock, but here's what we learned along the way.” That's invaluable.
Seeing the range of technical approaches, paired with the most unbiased viewpoint of how that technology worked for them – that was the best part of it for me. You can really learn how this stuff works or how it doesn't work, and how things can be better.
That’s a great observation! So, when it comes to the New York City RoachFest agenda, what are you looking forward to?
This is our third RoachFest in New York – I think back to our first year where we had it here, in our office building, and we were packed in. It was our first time running that type of event, and learning what our customers are doing at that scale.
Now, as we’ve continued to grow the event, we’re getting so many more people excited to share their stories. Just seeing the whole show grow from where we started three years ago to now has been incredible.
And New York is our old stomping ground, so I’ll get to see some of my own customers that I started with a long time ago, up on stage, which will be a fabulous full-circle moment. What better place than in New York to cap off this year’s RoachFest events?
Yes, I completely agree. So, why do you like being the MC for RoachFest?
Well, I was very honored when I was asked to serve as MC for Menlo Park, and I’m glad I get to take up the microphone again – I don’t have a big social media presence, and I’m not trying to self-promote or anything like that. But I really appreciate helping to facilitate and drive the discussions.
I want folks to know the real life story of what it’s like to take the CockroachDB journey – the good or bad. I don’t want to sugarcoat anything. I’d rather the presentations be genuine : If you’re looking to use CockroachDB for the first time, you should be able to learn how it works, where it works, where it doesn’t work and what you can expect.
Navigating the data landscape together
Working in Customer Engineering, you talk with our customers every day, learning from them and their experiences. How is it different seeing those aha moments unfold on stage in a presentation, with other people learning as well?
There's definitely more gravitas that goes with those customer presentations. It's real. It was also interesting to see what each customer focused on in their presentations. Most customers on the West coast are using Kubernetes and containers and having a lot of success.
However it was apparent to me that everyone deploys and manages these clusters differently. So from a product and engineering perspective, we want to create a similar operational experience for everyone.It’s terrific that we offer all of this flexibility for our customers but this is a great area for us to make the experience seamless. It’s fascinating to see all the different ways that teams are actually implementing the technology and we can learn what the best operational routines are.
We were in Menlo Park and London just a few months ago, in June, and yet the world moves so fast. What are some recent developments in tech that have impacted the data landscape? How do you think this will change RoachFest NYC?
Absolutely. There has been so much going on lately. Of course, AI has totally changed how so many people do things – it’s everywhere, and it’s a part of so many important conversations.
Then I think about one of our themes this year: resilience. Just looking back at the recent CrowdStrike outage, I’m excited that resilience will be a front-and-center topic, which is what we pride ourselves on as a company. We have a great story for resilience that can gracefully abstract out infrastructure outages and allows for zero downtime maintenance.
Even at Cockroach Labs, I’m excited for all of the product announcements that are coming out soon, which will further enhance the customer experience. But those will have to remain confidential for now!
RoachFest is an in-person experience – what does a live event mean in terms of participants’ ability to learn and connect?
You know, someone said this to me: “10 remote conversations equal to one in-person meeting.” In real life you can share so many thoughts and ideas, connect with people, build relationships, have one-off conversations about shared interests, and network like humans have for generations.
In-person activities like this really help you grow as a person, learn from others and get invigorated about your career ahead. What you get is time to value, and these live in-person conversations are certainly invaluable.
And I love RoachFest because you find a lot of folks that might have similar problems or similar interests, but bring different perspectives. The diversity of folks that the event attracts is great. You witness all of the different ways folks are deploying CockroachDB – it’s eye-opening, you think, “Wow, I never would have thought that was possible.”
Attending the event, you overhear all of these conversations between people and little communities forming through those interactions. That’s where I feel the brilliance and innovation really emerges, through these spontaneous interactions.
NYC recommendations and more to come!
What are your free-time recommendations for RoachFest attendees hitting NYC?
At the end of September, the weather in New York is going to be beautiful. So I would definitely recommend visiting any of our parks – Central Park, Prospect Park. RoachFest will be held in Chelsea Piers, and if you’re out there, there’s nothing better than shooting golf balls over the Hudson River – that’s really neat. You can also take a stroll down the Highline or run down the Westside Highway all the way down to Battery Park.
Don’t stay indoors! Go outside – enjoy the beautiful outdoors that New York has to offer at that time of year.
Save your seat at RoachFest24 in New York, NY on September 26!
