My first exposure to a DevOps Days was in 2010. I was an early adopter of most of the tools, took part in the heated iClassify debate, was contributing to Chef before it had a name, back when it was still a pet project at HJK Solutions.. As things evolved, we tried the offshoots that we hoped would fill the gaps.. MCollective, opscode-agent, but really we were just trading one problem for another..
DevOps Days was started in this gap, and over the years I have seen more and more vendor and product encroachment, and fewer people (especially outside of SF) who grasp the roots and the spirit out of which this event was born.
I will be talking about the original spirit of DevOps Days, which i feel started in 1942, and has mutated into a flavor specific to our modern world. I will not be discussing any vendor products, and this is not a sales pitch for anything.