The Magic Of Disney AND Splunk .Conf 2016

Another Splunk .conf has come and gone. It was a great week filled with fun, family, and learning. The road construction orange “Aplura Family Reunion” shirts were definitely a conversation starter and once again were a hit. Splunk also held up their tradition of coming up with great new t-shirt slogans like “Because you can’t always blame Canada”. Splunk definitely knows how to throw a party. I think everyone will agree that everyone had a great time at Hollywood Studios.

But the week wasn’t just about t-shirts and parties. There were great use cases for Splunk on display. It was interesting to see how a transportation company can use sensors sending data to Splunk to determine that not only does a bus have tires with low tire pressure but they could also determine which tires were low. They could predict how pulling a bus out of service could impact the riders. Then there was the example with monitoring our soldiers. They able to tell what injury a soldier had as well as statistics like breathing, body temp, environmental conditions, where the nearest hospital was in relation to the soldier. It’s pretty amazing the use cases that people can find. There were also some very good sessions given by some of the SplunkTrust members.

Martin Mueller’s session on “Fields, Indexed Tokens and You“ was very interesting. Once you realize how Splunk breaks terms into tokens and then searches you begin to think about new ways to construct searches so that they are faster and more efficient.

Kyle Smith’s talk on lesser known search commands was also interesting. It was a great showcase of commands that aren’t used often because people don’t realize their power.

George Starcher and Duane Waddle’s talk on the KV Store was very informative. I walked away from that talk with new ideas about how the KV Store can help me in my future projects.

Once again .conf was a great experience that will provide me with knowledge that will help in my future projects.