Written by Cerbos engineer Sam Lock (connect on LinkedIn or GitHub)
Thursday
06:50
My alarm shouts in my ear that it’s time to wake up. I sit up and am momentarily confused, but then remember that I’m in Berlin, in a hotel room, and I’m staffing our company booth at a conference today. My body is aching; I wonder why, but then I remember the 50km I scooter’d across the city the day before. The scooters are electric but the Berlin streets are cobbled and unforgiving. The botanical gardens are nice, though.
I fall out of bed, stand up, glance at the coffee machine. It looks confusing to my sleep-addled brain. I glance at the time, it’s 6:52; “oh, I have loads of time”. I sit down again to catch my breath. A few seconds later, I glance at the time again: 7:10, “but how?”. I pick myself up and hurl myself into the bathroom.
The shower is angry and powerful; I desperately swing for the shower curtain as the torrent pushes me backwards with the force of a thousand rivers. Any residual sleepiness is washed away by adrenaline and the desire to live.
I’m clean and awake now. My bag is packed, I have my ticket ready to go. I glance at the coffee machine again; it looks less intimidating. I fill the reservoir, stab in a capsule, and press the button. It rumbles to life and spits coffee downwards in the general direction of the mug. The table is given a healthy dose, too. I stop briefly to admire the Jackson Pollock-esque artwork adorning the wooden top.
07:28
I feel more alert now. The coffee that made it into the mug has further lifted me from my haze and I head downstairs to meet my colleagues. I realise at this point that I forgot to have breakfast. I reason that I could probably do with skipping a meal and push it to the back of my mind. Not today, hunger.
Our team of four piles into a taxi. I’m kindly offered the front seat. The driver scrambles to clear the newspaper and pastry wrappers before I fold myself in. I’ve been on holiday for a little while, so open up Slack to peruse through the backlog of missed messages from the week prior as we head through the busy roads of rush-hour Berlin.
07:51
We arrive at Messe Berlin. Although I’ve been here the year prior, I’m once again impressed by the sheer size of the place. It’s early, but already there are eager crowds forming. We climb out the car and retrieve the various sacks of merch from the boot. We walk down the grand steps towards the entrance to pick up our passes and wristbands. I’m overcome by a feeling of power and belonging.
I follow my colleagues through the various exhibitor spaces towards our own. My fight-or-flight response kicks in as we pass a booth with a carnival hammer game. The attendee scores well; a couple of our team pledge to better the score later on. We discuss optimal swinging techniques but before we can come to a conclusion, we reach our own booth. Game time.
08:04
We pounce into action. One team member volunteers for a hunter-gatherer mission to find coffee. The remaining members start distributing merch around our allotted square of exhibitor space. There are four of us and two chairs. Thankfully, an unused booth behind us presents us with an additional chair. Only one weary stander. Thank you, conference.
We disappear off to have a swing of the hammer. Our CEO tops the leaderboard early on. Myself and another colleague are less pleased with our results. Probably rigged, I think to myself. Back to the booth.
With the distant thuds of the hammer ringing out, we settle in and get ready for the day as the first attendees start to appear.
“Hello! How are you? What’s Cerbos?”
“Well, tell me what you do, and I’ll see how it could apply…”
10:17
The conversations are rich and varied. Some have felt the pain of authorization and eagerly listen as we share the wonders of Cerbos. Others don’t understand authorization, but have seen our Cerbie plushies from afar. “How can I get one of those”, they ask. “You must care about Cerbos, first.” The denials are awkward, but necessary. Cerbies are finite and surprisingly expensive to produce. Some people come up and shout their desire for a Cerbie to my face. I weather the storm and stand my ground. “No”, I say, bravely.
Talking about authorization is thirsty work. I scour the halls for a water fountain, but alas, no water to be found. I ask a volunteer who offers me no clues but wishes me luck on my search. “Surely, it’s somewhere”. I eventually give up, find a coffee stand, and reluctantly pass over the €4.10 for a small bottle. I get a couple extra for my equally dehydrated colleagues. As I walk back to the stand, I debate with myself whether or not I should tell my boss how much I just spent on water.
13:08
Lunch beckons. I step outside and wait for my eyes to adjust to the light. It’s warm in Berlin; almost too warm. I spy my prize, the fabled “hotdog wrap” van from the year prior. Glorious, gravy and mashed potato filled things. I make haste, buy my food, and refuel. Back to the booth.
15:22
I’ve been tasked with a mission for doughnut retrieval. I’m briefed by a colleague; the doughnut deliverer has set off to the famous “Brammibal’s” (the best doughnut makers in Berlin?). I make a mental note, then return to authorization conversations and Cerbie denials.
16:02
The doughnuts are en route.
My hips start to get sore because I’m a delicate desk-sitter by profession. I do some ad-hoc yoga to limber up.
17:09
Call from the driver. Even closer. I suggest a location and set off across Messe, passing the hammer booth. The exhibitors' faces suggest that they regret their noisy choice of attraction. I continue for about 10 minutes in one direction, find a spot, share my location on Whatsapp, then set up camp.
17:27
Call from the driver. They’re nearby. “Did you see my location?”, I ask. “Yes, I’ll see you there soon”, they reply. Excellent.
17:31
Call from the driver: “I can’t see you”, they say. “Share your location?”, I suggest. 500 yards away. “Damn you”, I think to myself, before setting off in the opposite direction to meet with the confused driver.
I eventually find them, state my name, and claim my prize. “Can I go to the toilet?”, they ask. I’m puzzled. I’m not the toilet gatekeeper. “Probably”, I reply.
18:00
We officially transition to the “booth crawl” section of the day. A colleague procures some beers. They’re slightly warm but taste like liquid wheaty gold. The doughnuts are revealed. I eat one. They’re light and fluffy and delicious. More conversations are had. More people ask for Cerbies. We give out a few. I eat another doughnut. Then another.
19:30'ish
I feel some regret for the quantity of doughnuts I’ve consumed. I feel a bit poorly as we pack up the booth and head out to find a taxi to get back to the hotel, then each disappear off for a short, much needed rest in our rooms before dinner.
21:00'ish
I’m tasked with finding a restaurant so I scour Google maps and find the perfect one nearby. Traditional German food, classic wood furnishings; lovely. I brief my boss that they may be cash-only and he heads off to find some cash. We set off and eventually find the restaurant, but they’ve stopped serving food. I feel ashamed, but thankfully we find a burger joint nearby. They accept card payments.
The burgers were very good; we finish them off then return to the hotel. No hotel beers for this tired lot – straight off to bed.
Friday
06:50
My alarm shouts at me again. I’m bleary-eyed, but today I’m better prepared for the hell-shower and the over-excited coffee machine. I go about my morning routine and prepare for the day.
07:28am
I head downstairs for breakfast. Straight to the cereal bar. I add a spoonful from every jar to my bowl to form a single “super-cereal”. No hungry start for me today. I join my colleague and polish it off before getting some fruit to counteract my thus far beige breakfast.
08:00
Into a taxi and off to the conference. We know the drill – a colleague finds us some coffees and we settle down ready for day 2.
Rumours start to circulate of a little software bug that might be impacting some computers somewhere in the world. Meh – don’t think we need to worry about that.
08:07
We definitely do need to worry about that. We all struggle to check in via our airline apps for our various flights home later in the day, and passively watch on different news outlets as a simple (highly privileged) update brings the world to its knees. Oh well, we’ll talk about authorization until then.
10:42
It’s been a hectic couple of days and our t-shirt supplies are nearly depleted. Only a handful of size “S” remain.
I have an in-depth conversation with someone about their authorization needs. We’re both satisfied with the eventual outcome – they will go away and try to implement Cerbos and we will be happy to answer any questions that they might have. Great!
They ask for a t-shirt. “Sure!”, I say. “Are you [a] small?” I ask. “Yes, I am quite small”, they reply. I curse myself for an unfortunate choice of wording.
12:00
It’s raffle time. A crowd gathers around our booth for the chance to win our grand prize: a Super Nintendo System Lego set! My boss throws some Cerbies into the crowd to warm them up, much like a bouquet-toss at a wedding, and people scrap for them with a surprising level of urgency. People really do love our plushies. Thankfully no-one was hurt.
All the entries were placed into a virtual hat, and a name pulled. A delighted looking recipient came forward on the first draw and we handed it over.
14:23
More yoga. I’m no good at standing up it seems.
The exhibition halls have started to quieten down. People are running out of steam. Not us, though – we’ve depleted our merch-reserves, but the conversations are still flowing.
15:48
Time to go. I share a similar timed flight with our CEO, so we pack up together and head off. As we leave, he points out the water fountain just a stone’s throw from our booth. Whoops. We get in our Uber and anxiously make our way to Berlin Brandenburg to see what havoc CrowdStrike has unleashed upon the airport.
PM
None, it seems. Security and passport control is seamless. I and other travellers play a small game of plane Hokey Cokey as they struggle to find us one with working air conditioning. But we eventually lift off, and bid farewell to Berlin and to We Are Developers for another year.
See you all again next time ✌️
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Cerbos is an open-source, scalable authorization layer for software applications. It simplifies access control by separating authorization logic from business logic, allowing developers to define and enforce complex policies with ease. Cerbos integrates seamlessly with existing applications and supports various environments, ensuring secure and efficient permission management.
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