As the novel coronavirus causing COVID-19 continues to spread, Docker has been taking precautionary measures to support the health, well-being, and safety of our global team members and their families, as well as ensuring our customers and community at large can continue building and shipping apps using Docker. We are also following the World Health Organization (WHO) and the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) guidelines, as well as guidelines from local public health administrations.
Docker has always been about community, and here are the steps we have taken to ensure employees are taken care of as well as to ensure business continuity for our users worldwide:
Protecting Employees
- On March 2, 2020, we asked all global employees to cancel or postpone any non-essential, work-related travel.
- Additionally, on March 9, 2020, we closed all of our offices globally to employees and visitors. We are using all available technologies like our phones, Zoom, Slack, GitHub, and Confluence now that we have transitioned to a fully remote workforce.
- While Docker is a geographically distributed organization, we understand this is a big shift for many of our employees and, as such, we are encouraging as much flexibility around work schedules and hours as possible as we all adjust to these new circumstances.
Delivering for Our Users
- Docker Hub is, by design, a highly-available cloud service which means it is accessible 24×7 for developers and teams of developers, including now during this difficult period, regardless of other limitations that may be on teams due to a pandemic.
- The team at Docker is well-positioned to work remotely without interruption, allowing us to be agile and adapt to changing market and other conditions.
- We remain focused on executing our public roadmap and continuing to deliver a unique connected experience from source code to cloud deployment for developers and development teams.
Keeping our Community Strong – and Safe
- Back in December 2019, prior to the widespread virus outbreak, we announced that DockerCon 2020 would no longer be a physical event and would instead evolve into DockerCon LIVE, a virtual event for our community taking place on May 28, 2020. This is the safest and healthiest option for our community, and we are excited to still bring everyone together to learn and share from one another.
- We miss in-person meetups too, however, there are many ways to still remain connected with the Docker community including Docker Community Slack and the Docker Virtual Meetup Group. In addition, in lieu of in-person birthday meetups, we recently celebrated Docker’s 7th birthday with our community via a live show on YouTube (check out the recording here).
And finally, we have seen a number of examples springing up on Docker Hub of how developers are using Docker to create applications, data analysis tools, and dashboards for public health research. It is very inspiring to see how global teams of developers are using Docker in the fight against this global pandemic.
Though this is a challenging time in human history, we believe that by coming together as a community and taking care of one another, we will persevere and come out of this stronger and more united. Please stay well!