Monthly meetup organized by Backstage core team with contributors.
- Topics to discuss are collected by GitHub issues in this repository.
- Want to propose a topic, present a demo, share your Backstage journey, or add something else to the agenda? Just comment on the open issue for the upcoming session.
- Add this public Calendar to see upcoming event details.
- Google Calendar: Use this email address
[email protected]to subscribe. - iCal format: Use
https://calendar.google.com/calendar/ical/c_qup9gbhn9sqpuao6trttd8mk5s%40group.calendar.google.com/public/basic.icsfor other applications.
- Google Calendar: Use this email address
We stopped updating the list below — but Community Sessions are still happening every month!
👉 You can find the agendas for all Community Sessions, past and future, in this repo's issues.
📺 Recordings of past sessions are posted to the Backstage Community Sessions playlist.
See details and propose topics to discuss - #136
See details and propose topics to discuss - #131
See details and propose topics to discuss - #128
See details and propose topics to discuss - #124
See details and propose topics to discuss - #118
See details and propose topics to discuss - #117
See details and propose topics to discuss - #116
See details and propose topics to discuss - #108
See details and propose topics to discuss - #101
See details and propose topics to discuss - #99
See details and propose topics to discuss - #97
See details and propose topics to discuss - #94
See details and propose topics to discuss - #81
See details and propose topics to discuss - #72
See details and propose topics to discuss - #66
See details and propose topics to discuss - #64
See details and propose topics to discuss - #62
See details and propose topics to discuss - #61
See details and propose topics to discuss - #58
See details and propose topics to discuss - #54
See details and propose topics to discuss - #52
See details and propose topics to discuss - #49
See details and propose topics to discuss - #46
See details and propose topics to discuss - #44
See details and propose topics to discuss - #41
See details and propose topics to discuss - #39
See details and propose topics to discuss - #37
See details and propose topics to discuss - #36
See details and propose topics to discuss - #34
See details and propose topics to discuss - #32
See details and propose topics to discuss - #30
Recording - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9_f7hMHAZqY
Minutes of the meeting
- Our seventh official meetup is jam-packed with new faces and new features.
- Backstage maintainers tidy up and close out some RFCs.
- Then, we hear about all the latest additions to Backstage Search. When we released the new and improved Backstage Search platform, it shipped with Lunr as the default search engine. Since then, the community has been busy adding support for two more search engine options for you to choose from:
- PostgreSQL-based search: SDA SE presents their database-backed approach to search, which features simple setup and short boot times.
- Elasticsearch: Roadie.io demos this highly requested and popular search option, which gives you greater scalability and better query language options.
- Plus, the return of Splunk — and even more demos!
- AWS S3 URL Reader: Splunk extends support for reading from AWS buckets in Backstage.
- XCMetrics plugin (https://xcmetrics.io): Spotify demos a dashboard tool that parses your team’s XCode build logs in order to track build times, error rates, and other productivity insights.
- And, of course, plenty of Q&A , including a discussion about the various methods for incorporating diagrams in TechDocs (iframes, PlantUML, GraphViz, Draw.io), where to find a list of currently supported TechDocs plugins and extensions, ideas for Backstage tutorials, and thoughts on how to track how much time people spend on a page inside Backstage.
Recording - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3dV3aZo6JN8
Minutes of the meeting
- Our sixth official meetup is a special summer edition — with over 80 members of the community taking time out from backyards, patios, beaches, and idyllic Swedish summer cabins to dig deep into the latest Backstage features and updates.
- The new product roadmap is here! See what features and improvements the team is prioritizing this quarter. Feedbacks are welcome!
- Mike and Himanshu from Spotify walked through Scaffolder templating engine improvements.
- Ruben from Spotify talked about composable homepages, including a live coding demo.
- Pallavi and Heather from Splunk gave us a peek into their Backstage portal. Internally known as “Pink Phonebook” — a uniquely branded name isn’t the only way the team customized Backstage to fit their engineering and tech culture.
- We celebrate standout contributions with our first Contributor Spotlight. (Spoiler alert: Congratulations, Dominik Henneke @dhenneke!)
- And finally, Q&A with the Backstage team about Golden Paths and more.
Recording - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z78FFaObTfk
Minutes of the meeting
- Issue used for topics to discuss - #20
- Emma and Eric introduce an all-new version of Backstage Search! It’s more than just a box you type into — it’s a mini platform all by itself. https://backstage.io/blog/2021/06/24/announcing-backstage-search-platform
- A live demo of integrating Stackoverflow Questions and Answers into Backstage Search. And it worked! Live demo ghosts were asleep.
- Austin Lamon shares what Spotify is investing in next for Backstage. https://backstage.io/blog/2021/06/22/spotify-backstage-is-growing
- A new website to help companies adopt Backstage https://backstage.spotify.com !
- Separate community sessions for adopters and contributors
- Introducing reviewers role https://github.com/backstage/backstage/blob/master/GOVERNANCE.md#reviewers
- Further Q&A with the community
Recording - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UZTVjv-AvZA
Minutes of the meeting
- Issue used for topics to discuss - #16
- Spotify won the CNCF Top End User Award. Thanks to the Backstage community. Read more
- TELUS Digial and ThoughtWorks share their Backstage adoption journey for their 8,000 engineers. They call their portal Simple — and it’s a beauty. Highlights:
- The team envisions their portal as “the go-to place to find answers about development and delivery at TELUS, from getting to your first commit to reaching the right person, API, or tool.”
- It will provide “self-serve onboarding for new team members and a one-stop shop for technical documentation.”
- It will “enable reuse and findability for all their developers,” and allow developers to “create, manage, and evolve the technical health of everything they build.”
- Backstage didn’t just allow TELUS to integrate their technology into the portal, but also their brand’s look and feel.
- Material-UI and React components allowed the team to align with brand standards to present a seamless TELUS experience for their devs.
- They built a custom plugin for Contentful, allowing them to incorporate the CMS they were already using.
- Along with Contentful, they also integrated GitHub and Swiftype to create a unique TechDocs-like experience.
- Anyone can write docs where and how they want — but now all that documentation is centralized and discoverable behind Backstage’s “single pane of glass.”
- Maintainers shared the work they have been doing on Software Catalog, to make it production ready by handling large scale deployments. Hear more from Johan (@jhaals) and Fredrik (@freben) in the recording.
- Raghu (@soapraj), EM@Spotify gave a demo of the new Backstage homepage inside Spotify.
- Further questions and discussions from the community.
Recording - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6sg5uMCLxTA
Minutes of the meeting
- Issue used for topics to discuss - #14
In our third official community meetup, online fashion platform Zalando shared what they learned on their journey to adopting Backstage. Watch to find out how a small internal team went from proof-of-concept to building a platform serving thousands of developers, including:
- Why Zalando decided to move away from their existing developer console and migrated to Backstage instead
- The value of providing your developers with one, centralized place for tooling, information, and resources
- The beauty of types and TypeScript
- The joys of being part of an open source community (bugs fixed before you even have time to report them!)
- The advantages of providing a platform that is composable, has shareable components, and is easy to build for
- The importance of taking a “trust-first” approach to collaboration
Thanks for the great presentation, Govind (@GoWind)!
Recording - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rRphwXeq33Q
Minutes of the meeting
- Go through the issue with proposed agendas by the community - #7
- Tyson Singer (VP, Head of Spotify Platform) shares Spotify's open source approach and journey
- Q: If the Backstage open source is different from internal code base, is there a plan on replacing the internal one?
- Q: Do you have any plans on increasing/reducing the investment (headcount, etc) on Backstage? What about monetizing?
- Q: What are some risks/concerns to consider when a company is thinking about adopting Backstage?
- Q: Is there a plan at Spotify to use Backstage as a way to provide APIs to external entities?
- Expedia group share their journey with Backstage Adoption.
- Q: The project is moving at a high pace 🚀 is there anything community can do to help you (the maintainers) to make your life easier?
- Tips and tricks of contributing to Backstage (multiple people sharing their personal views).
- Updates and/or discussions on some of the major RFC in progress.
About 85+ people joined the meetup. A partial list of attendees -
- @adamdmharvey, DXC Technology
- @andrewthauer, Andrew Thauer, Wealthsimple
- @Bennie2000, Bennie Johnston, Just Eat Takeaway
- @chagretes, dti
- @danielcrisap, Daniel Cristian,
- @dhenneke, Dominik Henneke, SDA SE
- @errskipower, Emily Roth, Wayfair
- @Fox32, Oliver Sand, SDA SE
- @JacobValdemar, Jacob Valdemar, Lunar
- @lindgren, Erik Lindgren, Expedia Group
- @OrkoHunter, Himanshu Mishra, Spotify
- @petejespersqbe, Pete Jespers, QBE
- @robburger, Rob Burger, OfferZen
- @rustynail86, Russ Nell, Kohl's Inc/Infra & Ops
- @samwiskow
- @vaimo-magnus, Vaimo
Recording - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4-VX9tDdJYY
Minutes of the meeting
- Go through the issue with proposed agendas by the community - #2
- Meet the Backstage Maintainers and Sponsors
- How to promote Backstage within your organization
- How does Backstage avoid the wiki problem - everything is in the wiki, hard to find relevant information
- How do you keep consistent UI with many other teams contributing plugins
- Do you have any key non-engineering personas using Backstage e.g. Product managers, Engineering managers, etc.
- Why Backstage - what are the goals of this project
- Overview of Backstage roadmap
- Oliver (@Fox32) gives a demo - Adopting Backstage @ SDA SE
- Govind (@GoWind) talks about adopting Backstage at Zalando SE
- Experience with using React to work on Backstage
- How to adopt Backstage - creating a standalone app vs cloning the repo
- How to adopt Backstage - Tips for upgrading a Backstage app with packages and plugin releases
- How to adopt Backstage - how to disable existing plugins best
- What are the typical challenges you faced when Backstage was first launched in Spotify
- Developers Certificate of Origin (DCO) going live on March 1st
- Future plans for the meetup: more demos, recognition of contributors and friends of Backstage, more personal community interactions using breakout rooms, etc.
- Next session is on March 17th.
About 110+ people joined the meetup. A partial list of attendees -
- @adamdmharvey, Adam Harvey, DXC Technology
- @ashvince, Ash Vincent, Tide
- @bobalong79, Rob Long, LV=
- @cjnygardtw, Carl Nygard, ThoughtWorks
- @DiogoLopes24, Diogo Lopes, Talkdesk
- @dtuite, David Tuite, roadie.io
- @emmaindal, Emma, Spotify
- @Fox32, Oliver Sand, SDA SE
- @himadriganguly
- @JacobValdemar, Jacob Valdemar, Lunar (@lunarway)
- @jhaals, Spotify
- @K-Phoen / VOI
- @kaos, Andreas Stenius, Svenska Spel
- @karlhaworth, Karl Haworth, American Airlines/Delivery Transformation
- @koolwithk
- @laceyallyn, Lacey Nagel, Zalando/DeveloperProductivity
- @mfrinnstrom, Mattias Frinnström, Husqvarna
- @MinnSoe, Minn Soe, Curve (curve.com)
- @mjayaram
- @OrkoHunter, Himanshu Mishra, Spotify
- @petejespersqbe, Pete Jespers, QBE
- @raffitzz, Rafael Batalha, Talkdesk
- @rbideau, Raphaël Bideau, onepoint
- @Rugvip, Patrik Oldsberg, Spotify
- @rustynail86, Russ Nell, Kohl's Inc.
- @stefanbuck, Stefan Buck, Brandwatch
- @stefanhoth, ResearchGate
- @szubster, Box
- @tadashi0713, Exawizards Inc.
- @Xantier, Roadie
- @yousifalraheem
You are welcome to update this list via Pull Requests.