🎩 of DevRel & Developer 🥑 at Elastic, speaker, and author from Vienna (Austria).

“xeraa”? #

First things first — what is xeraa? If you rotate the letters of my last name krenn by 13 places (ROT13), the result is xeraa:

k → x
r → e
e → r
n → a
n → a

Work #

I live to demo interesting technology. Having worked as a web, infrastructure, and database engineer for over ten years, I am now the head of Developer Relations (DevRel) at Elastic — the company behind the Elastic Stack consisting of Elasticsearch, Kibana, Beats, and Logstash. I am frequently traveling Europe and beyond to speak and discuss search, databases, observability, and security.

In case you are wondering what a developer advocate is doing, I would describe it like this: Help users be successful with your software by showing them what is possible and solving problems. Or read my blog post on the topic of What Do You Do as a Developer Advocate at Elastic?

Events #

See my list of upcoming and past events.

Are you looking for a speaker? Get in touch, and I’m more than happy to join!
Please note I am only interested in speaking at conferences with an enforced Code of Conduct. I prefer to speak at events that are actively working towards improving diversity amongst both attendees and speakers.

Meetups #

I am organizing three groups in Vienna:

Elastic Vienna #

The official Elastic meetup in Vienna covers Elasticsearch, Kibana, Beats, and Logstash. Our talks are about specific features in the stack or use cases from companies like George.

ViennaDB #

The group covers everything around databases — from relational databases to NoSQL with talks about PostgreSQL, MySQL, MS SQL, Redis, MongoDB, Hazelcast,…

Papers We Love Vienna #

While the other two groups are hands-on, this meetup focuses on computer science’s academic side. There are many Papers We Love Meetups around the world, and we are the Vienna chapter.

Podcasts #

I’m happy to join podcasts. Ping me if you’re looking for a guest.

The Changelog — episode 292 #

Philipp Krenn joined the show to talk with us about Elasticsearch, the problem it solves, where it came from, and where it’s at today. We discussed the query language, what it can be compared to, whether or not it’s a database replacement or a database complement, Elasticsearch vs Elastic the company.

Software Engineering Daily #

Philipp Krenn from Elastic joins the show today to discuss how search works and how Elasticsearch scales. We use Wikipedia as a running example for how a query is processed and how documents are stored.

DevOps Paradox — episode 29 #

Elasticsearch: Is It A Database Or A Datastore?
We speak with Philipp Krenn today about Elasticsearch. We go through it’s history and some of the more interesting stories where it has been used.

Developer Advocast — User Zero #

Developer Advocates wear a multitude of hats in an organization. But one of the functions that they are usually tasked with is being the first to test new features and applications and then provide feedback to the development teams.
In this episode we talk with Philipp Krenn from Elastic and Liran Tal from Snyk about their experience with being User Zero and how it impacts the delivery of new tools and features. We also talk about what the feedback loop looks like and the pushback they can sometimes get when offering feedback.

Pure Performance #

We all want to leverage technology to solve problems. New and shiny toys are appealing to look which sometimes means we loose the insights on the base technologies that powers most of our connected lives, such as DNS or TLS.
In this podcast we invited Philipp Krenn (@xeraa), Dev Advocate Team Lead at Elastic, and learn about DNS, TLS and other bad config changes. We learn about Log4Shell, how the Java Security Manager was a big help in fighting Log4Shell, why its been deprecated and also get his thoughts into CDD (Conference Driven Development).

All Things Ops — episode 07 #

Some products solve a huge issue for their users. But sometimes, it is this big innovation that stands in the way of users adopting newer features. The product falls victim to its own success.
Philipp Krenn, EMEA Team Lead at Elastic, shares how they dealt with it, and talks with Elias about Elastic’s experience.

PodRocket #

Developer Advocate, Philipp Krenn, joins us to talk about all things Elastic including Elasticsearch and the Elastic Stack.

programmier.bar — deep dive 110 #

Hinter jedem Suchfeld auf einer Webseite steckt eine Volltext-Suchengine – häufig ist das Elasticsearch. Die Suchmaschine entstand aus Shay Banons Idee, eine einfache Suchmöglichkeit für die Rezeptsammlung seiner Frau zu schaffen. In dieser Folge haben wir Philipp Krenn zu Gast, Developer Advocate und EMEA Team Lead bei Elastic, und damit Experte für unsere Fragen!

DeveloperMelange — episode 037 #

Seeding communities for your product: If you can’t reach your audience with classic marketing, Philipp Krenn explains the different aspects of working with their community at Elastic.

Data Engineering — episode 23 #

Search is a common requirement for applications of all varieties. Elasticsearch was built to make it easy to include search functionality in projects built in any language. From that foundation, the rest of the Elastic Stack has been built, expanding to many more use cases in the proces. In this episode Philipp Krenn describes the various pieces of the stack, how they fit together, and how you can use them in your infrastructure to store, search, and analyze your data.

DevOps Shorts — episode 11 #

What’s the role of playfulness in IT. Why you would want to be a developer advocate. How automating your infastructure makes everything better - even education. Why Strigo is so great and why we both use it. Is AIOps a real thing or just a BS hype.

Book #

Ages ago, I wrote a book called SilverStripe 2.4 Module Extension, Themes, and Widgets: Beginner’s Guide. Sources and errata are available on my GitHub account.

Google Summer of Code #

I have been a student (2007, SilverStripe), mentor (2012, SilverStripe), and organization admin (2018 & 2020, Elastic) for Google Summer of Code (GSoC). It is a great experience both for students and open source organizations that might open up many future opportunities. It did for me, leading to writing a book and now working for an open source company.