DockerCon 2023 will be held October 4-5 in Los Angeles, and we are working hard to make it an incredible experience for everyone. The program is now online so you can plan your experience by day, time, and theme, including AI and Machine Learning, Web Application / Web Development, Building and Deploying Applications, Secure Software Delivery, and Open Source. This year we’re offering talks, workshops, and panel discussions, plus the usual vibrant DIY hallway track. We can’t wait to see you there — whether you’re joining virtually or in person. (If this will be your first DockerCon experience, read “4 Reasons I’m Excited to Attend DockerCon 2023” to see why I can’t wait to go to LA next month.)

On October 3, we will have several DockerCon hands-on workshops, organized by fantastic presenters, covering a variety of topics. If you’re joining in person, the workshops are included in the price of your admission. Just don’t forget to register for the workshop you’d like to attend! 

If you’ll be attending DockerCon virtually, the Getting Started with Docker workshop is free, and the other workshops cost US$150. This is a fantastic opportunity to use any learning and development allocations you might have!

What are the workshops and what will they cover? I’m glad you asked! Let’s dive in.

Getting Started with Docker

Are you new to Docker? Are you overwhelmed with everything there is to learn? Are you unsure why you should learn about containers and you don’t understand their benefits? Or do you just want to help your team be more productive? If so, this workshop is for you!

This workshop will walk through the basics of containers and images, including answering the question: Why should I even care about containers? You’ll then learn how to run containers, create your own images, and set up your own development environments to enable the success of your team. The workshop will close out by introducing Docker Compose, which makes it even easier to share your dev environment — devs will only need to run git clone and docker compose up and then focus on their code.

After this session, you’ll have the basic knowledge to help your team be more productive with containerized dev environments. It’ll also be a fantastic primer to help you get the most out of the rest of DockerCon.

Docker for Machine Learning / AI / Data Science

The AI/ML space has exploded with activity and excitement over the past year. There are many great tools available, but keeping up with everything can be hard. If you want to get caught up and started with AI/ML, this is the workshop for you.

This workshop is being provided through a close collaboration with OctoML and Docker. In this workshop, you’ll start with a crash course on the latest developments in generative LLMs and image generation models, after which you’ll learn about fine-tuning your own model. You’ll then take that knowledge and create a multi-modal containerized application using Python and Docker. The workshop wraps up with a fireside chat and Q&A with the presenters and speakers, allowing you to dive in deep!

After this workshop, you’ll have a better understanding of the recent advancements in the AI/ML space and have successfully created your own AI/ML-supported application.

Secure Development with Docker

Modern applications are composed of many libraries and components from various sources being built and deployed on various systems, making it difficult for developers, platform teams, and security professionals to know what software is running and whether it is secure. Issues may arise from your own code, its dependencies, base images, and many other sources — and new vulnerabilities are being discovered all the time! If you want to secure your software supply chain, this is the workshop for you.

In this workshop, you’ll start off by learning about and remediating several common attacks against your software supply chain. From there, you’ll dive deeply into securing the software supply chain, taking a comprehensive view of the problem and possible solutions. With this knowledge, you’ll learn how Docker Scout helps you understand what’s in your images, how those images are constructed, what’s running where, and providing actionable feedback early in the process so concerns are eliminated before they become problems.

After this session, you’ll know how to take these learnings back to your organization so your team:

• Understands and can verify how their applications are built
• Quickly and easily identifies problems with your software supply chain and remediates them
• Uses policies to encourage best practices across your organization without blocking fixes getting to production
• Provides visibility into the security stance of your software to others within your organization

Docker for Web Development

Are you a web developer who isn’t quite sure why you should use Docker in your development environment? Or are you just not quite sure how to get started? If so, this workshop is specifically for you.

The Docker for Web Development workshop is being presented by Timo Stark, a Docker Captain and Principal Engineer at NGINX. This hands-on workshop starts with an overview of Docker Desktop, ensuring everyone understands the basics of containers and images. With that foundational knowledge, you’ll spend the remainder of the workshop building an application, containerizing it along the way, using a combination of NodeJS and PHP backends and a React frontend. You’ll learn how to connect multiple services together and build a development environment that will require no installation and configuration (beyond Docker Desktop), helping speed up productivity and ensuring reliable environments across your development team.

After this session, you’ll have a strong understanding of how Docker can be used to speed up your web development stack and how you can help enable your team to be more productive and have more consistent environments.

Register now

DockerCon is coming up quickly! We’d love to see you in person, but you’re welcome to join us virtually as well. Visit the DockerCon site to register for the conference, see the program, and register for workshops now.

Learn more

• Register for DockerCon
• Register for DockerCon workshops
• See the DockerCon program
• Get the latest release of Docker Desktop.
• Vote on what’s next! Check out our public roadmap.
• Have questions? The Docker community is here to help.
• New to Docker? Get started.

DockerCon is back! DockerCon is back! DockerCon is back! I can’t tell you how excited this makes me. Now, you may recognize that I work at Docker, but I haven’t always. Although I’ve worked at Docker for about 18 months, I’ve been in the Docker space for a long time. In fact, my first presentation about Docker was all the way back in December 2015.

Since then, I’ve helped organize, run, and speak at many meetups, and I was recognized as a Docker Captain in March 2017. I even received the inaugural Community Leader of the Year award for the North America region in 2018. As I look back throughout my career, many of my fondest memories can be attributed to my time at DockerCon. This will be my sixth in-person DockerCon, and here are four reasons I’m happy to be back in person this year.

Let’s go!

#1 — Developer-focused content

We’ve all been to many “developer-focused” conferences, only to find out most of the sessions are sponsored sessions, the keynotes are relatively boring, and there really isn’t much focus on developers. I remember going to DockerCons and learning everything about Docker’s latest features, scaling our efforts to my team and across the organization, deepening my understanding of various cloud-native design patterns and architectures, and helping my team be as productive as possible. Especially earlier in my career, this experience helped me become the developer I am today.

As I’m helping plan DockerCon this year, I’ll admit we want all of the same things from the past, just updated. We want to help each and every developer better their craft and better deliver results for their customers… whoever they might be.

#2 — The hallway track

Honestly, this is probably one of my favorite parts of DockerCon.The Hallway Track is a special track of DockerCon in which attendees can network and learn from each other. If you want to learn about something, simply make a request! If you want to teach others, submit a session! Then, small groups get together and just chat. These hallway moments have truly been some of the best moments of DockerCon, both learning and teaching. There’s simply no better way to learn than from others who have walked the same journey.

#3 — Reconnecting with and making new friends

During my time as a Docker Captain from 2017-2022 (I had to semi-retire when I joined Docker), DockerCon was such a fun time to get together and spend time with my fellow Captains. In many ways, this felt like a family reunion. We learned together, taught each other, and provided insight and direction to the Docker product and executive teams. 

Although connecting with old friends was great, I always made new friends every year. Many of those came from the Hallway Track, but random conversations at meals, the conference party, and other one-offs have provided me with friendships and contacts I still use to this day. Whenever I’m stuck with any problem, there’s a good chance I can reach out to someone that I met at DockerCon.

#4 — Fun all around!

I may or may not be known for roaming around the DockerCon EU 2017 vendor hall in an inflatable dinosaur suit or using that same suit to start my “Containers for Beginners” talk at DockerCon 2019. Why? To be completely honest, because it’s fun! And while a conference isn’t only about having fun, it’s certainly a lot easier to be a part of a community when you’re doing so. DockerCon is not afraid to have a little bit of fun.

While these are some of the reasons I’m excited to have DockerCon back in person this year, and I’m sure there are tons more! We’d love to hear what makes you excited. Tweet #DockerCon why you’re excited, and we just might highlight you.

Learn more at the DockerCon 2023 website and register by August 31 to take advantage of early bird pricing. 

Learn more

• Register for DockerCon 2023.
• Get the latest release of Docker Desktop.
• Vote on what’s next! Check out our public roadmap.
• Have questions? The Docker community is here to help.
• New to Docker? Get started.