Updated on November 25, 2025 in #docker, #travel

Docker Captain's Summit in Istanbul

Docker held their second summit in Istanbul, Türkiye and it was glorious, here's a recap.

Last year Docker held their first summit in Lisbon, Portugal. This time around it was in Istanbul, Türkiye. Like last year’s post this one will focus mostly on the personal experience, both to reflect and share some of the things we get to see and do as Docker Captains!

First up, I can’t express enough gratitude towards Eva, Kenan, Per and all of Docker for putting this event together. Istanbul was such an amazing city and the event flowed very nicely. This event had quite a lot more captains than last time so there was even more to coordinate and be responsible for and Docker really pulled it off.

Then of course there’s all of the captains, everyone is amazing and it was a pleasure to meet all of you. Some old friends and now new friends!

The whole experience around both the event and personal travel certainly made the highlight reel of my life. I still get goosebumps thinking how all of this materialized from writing a blog post about Docker in 2015. The butterfly effect is strong.

Here’s a group shot we all took on the final day:

Here’s a video Docker put together of the event:

# Invitation Notification

After getting word there was going to be another summit this year in Istanbul, I immediately accepted the invitation without hesitation. This time around we received about 7 week’s notice which was ample time to get things in order.

I was excited to hear it was being held in Istanbul. The location makes a lot of sense. We have captains from all over the world and Türkiye is a pretty big hub for Europe and Asia.

Thankfully since last year I already have a US passport which allows up to 90 days of visa-free travel into Türkiye. All I had to do was show up and make sure an eSIM was ready to go.

There’s something to be said about having something grand to look forward to. As a remote worker living in the suburbs sometimes it feels like my days blend together. My excitement levels were as high as they can get leading up to the event.

Work Situation

The timing of this event was interesting. Around the middle of this year I left a place I was working at and decided that if I can find another role that I like in a short period of time I will take it but if not, I’m going to put work on pause and travel the world for 1 year.

What that really meant was short of reasons I can’t control, I was certainly going to Istanbul for this event for at least the days of the event.

Turns out I ended up finding a new role a few days before the summit’s announcement and the company was ok with me taking time off only 6-7 weeks after I started. Sometimes things just work out, it’s nice when that happens!

The Longest Vacation of My Life

The place I currently work at has a very generous PTO (personal time off) policy. They really appreciate work / life balance and not grinding workers into dust. I was thinking about taking 3 weeks off total. 4 for the event days and the rest to solo travel around Türkiye.

First I got clearance from Docker that it was ok to book plane tickets through them for that duration which was Saturday, Oct 25th to Sunday, Nov 16th. That’s 3 business weeks with wrapping weekends. Once they gave the OK on that I put in notice to take 3 weeks off which was enthusiastically granted without any problems.

It’s really refreshing working for a company who values employee happiness. It goes a long ways. I’ve never worked somewhere where a few weeks after joining they were ok with me taking 3 weeks off. Before I left the CEO and I even joked about how many kebabs I’m going to eat (spoiler alert: it was a lot).

# Event Days / Itinerary

I’ll spare you the details of my personal trip but here’s a rough time line. I’ve bolded the event days which I’ll reference as 4 days total including the travel days:

• Saturday, Oct 25th: Fly from NY to IST at 1pm EST
  • 8.5 hour direct flight on an Airbus A350-900 (randomly assigned window seat)
• Sunday, Oct 26th: Arrive in IST at 5:30am
• Monday, Oct 27th: Official event travel day in
• Tuesday, Oct 28th: Official event day 1
• Wednesday, Oct 29th: Official event day 2
• Thursday, Oct 30th: Official event travel day out
• […]
• Sunday, Nov 16th: Fly from IST to NY
  • 10 hour direct flight on a Boeing 777-300 (randomly assigned aisle seat)

Both flights were not bad honestly. Economy had just enough leg room and Turkish Air was very friendly with a nice atmosphere. They served 2 real meals each flight. These were the longest flights I’ve ever taken but it was manageable and now I know I can do it. I listened to a lot of music, thought about life and watched 1 movie.

Like last year I took (2) backpacks with no checked luggage. I packed 8 pairs of clothes and a new laptop I got before the trip (I use Arch btw). It worked perfectly in the end.

Basically I landed 1 full day before the event started and then I took a bunch of time to explore Türkiye afterwards. After the event I spent 5 days in Cappadocia, 3 near Selçuk and 9 days in Istanbul with a day trip to Bursa.

I walked ~25 km a day for 3 weeks, stepped foot into the Aegean sea, saw Greek islands on the horizon, rode a hot air balloon, hiked trails in an area of the world that doesn’t look like this planet, went to underground cities, climbed a mountain, saw castles, visited multiple ancient ruins from up to 8,000 years ago, explored multiple museums / palaces and experienced an amazing city that spans Europe and Asia split by the Bosphorus strait.

That’s enough details about my personal trip but I wanted to include a few sprinkles in case you ever visit Türkiye. There’s a reason a lot of people visit there, it was incredible.

I have no regrets, not even when I got attacked by a pack of Turkish beach dogs on the Aegean Sea where I defended myself by dual wielding my sneakers as weapons:

I thought they wanted to say hi, they were not good boys haha. 😅

Adrenaline is crazy by the way. I was extremely calm and it was like time slowed down to 10% where I was evaluating things with a sense of clarity I’ve never experienced. It was like an out of body experience where I saw things both in the first and third person.

They didn’t successfully bite me but 3 of them tried very hard. I used to sea to prevent them from surrounding me and stood my ground.

Anyways, from this point on, I’ll reference day 1 as the first official travel day in and wrap things up to day 4 as the official travel day out.

# Day 1: Hello Captains

Since I was here 1 day before the first official travel day I arranged my own hotel for 1 night which was an hour away by foot from the hotel Docker booked for us for 3 nights which was in the Beyoğlu area.

I grabbed breakfast at my hotel and checked out early, then I began the walk. It was amazing. I walked over the Galata bridge and it was my first real taste of seeing a city split by a decent sized body of water (NYC is not quite the same!).

I can’t believe how impressive Istanbul is. It felt a little like Lisbon with the hills and architecture but so much bigger with its own unique look and feel too. I’m writing this post a few days after getting back and I already miss it. It was bustling with life.

After making my way to the hotel’s lobby I very quickly saw a few familiar faces. Rachid was there along with Jorge. I also got a chance to meet Thiago and Sagar. Jorge and Thiago flew together all the way from Australia.

Check-in wasn’t until 2pm but at this point it was around 10am, they let me drop my bags off which was convenient but also quite standard at most hotels.

Çiğdem messaged me mentioning she just landed and was about an hour away from the airport. She had about an hour flight from Türkiye’s capital Ankara.

While chatting in the lobby some of us decided to take a quick walk around Taksim for about 45min where we got a chance to walk down Istiklal Avenue along with seeing Galata tower. We saw a few Turkish lamp stores and many other things.

That’s Jorge, Thiago, Sagar and myself for reference.

It was a nice introduction to this area of Istanbul which was very different from where I stayed the night before. I had stayed in the Sultanahmet area on the southern coast.

They wanted to explore further and take a ferry or metro somewhere but as Çiğdem was getting close to the hotel we had planned to meet up before going on a full day adventure.

Sagar and I had a nice little walk back to the hotel, the other 2 split off.

While getting back to the lobby I ran into Eva (community manager and event coordinator for this trip) which was a pleasant surprise. She is great and was the one who gave me a Korean face mask that I thought was instant noodles last year in Lisbon.

Shortly after that Çiğdem arrived, we met last year in Lisbon and since then have made quite a few videos and other Docker content together.

Exploring

A couple of other captains were in the lobby now and most of us couldn’t check-in so we decided to walk together as a small group. Çiğdem, Esteban, Max, Sagar, Raeveen and I all decided to leave the hotel and walk around.

We all walked for quite a few hours exploring around the Taksim Square area while our local Turkish tour guide showed us around haha. All Çiğdem was missing was one of those tour guide flags for us to follow her.

She visits Istanbul once in a while so she has a general idea of where things are.

We visited a few churches, mosks and architecturally impressive buildings along the way:

After maybe 2 hours or so we were all getting pretty hungry. Somehow there weren’t too many restaurants near us so we reluctantly went to the Saat Kule Cafe which was close to the water.

I got to experience my first chicken döner kebab and I thought it was quite good. It had spices that I wasn’t familiar with.

At the hotel lobby I remember Eva suggested we try Mantı. That’s what Çiğdem got and she offered me a piece to try. I really liked it. Here’s what it looks like:

I ended up getting it again later on during my personal travels.

The others got assorted things. Max tried a burger. He got up to use the restroom and left a little bit of food on his plate. A cat jumped on the table to start eating it and we all thought if Max doesn’t see it, then we don’t need to tell him haha. He had ordered dessert before he got up so we knew he likely wasn’t going to continue eating after the cat got a taste of his food. There were so many cats and Çiğdem didn’t like how they were going near her sneakers, she was allergic. I didn’t help because I fed one a little bit!

Once we ate, Çiğdem suggested we visit Dolmabahçe palace since we had quite a few hours before the summit’s dinner. Unfortunately it was Monday and it was closed.

At this point it was maybe 3:30pm and most folks wanted to go back to the hotel by taxi, but Çiğdem and I wanted to continue exploring on foot so we split off as a group.

We found the Kabataş ferry docks which had a nice view:

We were thinking about taking a ferry but didn’t because the weather started to look like it was going to rain.

Instead we walked around a place called the Galata port which was a pretty big indoor and outdoor mall.

We stumbled upon a coffee shop. Anyone who knows me knows I don’t drink coffee, technically the first time I tried only a few drops was with her last year in Lisbon.

This time around, we each got a cup of legit Turkish coffee which came with a nice view:

Honestly it was really good, I didn’t put sugar or anything in it. I don’t know if it was the caffeine or what but I didn’t fall asleep until about 2am that night. After drinking it, I just remember thinking all I wanted to do was swim laps in the Bosphorus.

I also learned there’s such a thing called Turkish coffee fortune telling where you take your empty cup of coffee and flip it upside down on the plate and then evaluate the design. We had fun coming up with our fortunes. It was a great day all around seeing both old and new friends and the evening hasn’t even started yet!

Captain’s Dinner

Like last year in Lisbon our opening dinner was in the hotel where we had all sorts of things to eat. There were a huge variety of appetizers to try.

This photo doesn’t do it justice but it was the only one I took. There were like 5 tables worth of assorted food with a chef preparing meats and other dishes in another area.

I drank a lot of orange juice while trying everything that looked good.

It was a nice opportunity to meet and greet with a number of folks. It was a stand up style dinner where you can roam around with a small plate of food.

The view was nice from the enclosed room, and it was thundering and lightning outside so you can see crackles of lightning light up the sky.

Karaoke

After dinner Rachid suggested karaoke and at least 25 of us showed up.

It was funny because the place had 2 people and now it was packed. I don’t want to mention the venue’s name because they tried to over bill us by a lot when leaving. They tried to get everyone to pay individually as we left at different times and then also roll everyone up into 1 payment at the end.

I want to respect everyone’s privacy here so I won’t be posting photos or videos with the rule that what happens in karaoke stays in karaoke haha.

It was my first experience, it was interesting to hear folks signing in many different languages. Some of them were even pretty easy to sing from the side lines, despite being in a different language (Marco, Çiğdem and IIIIIIIIIIIIIIII know!).

Everything from pop songs to metal was sung. I didn’t grab the mic this time but I did learn a new Turkish dance. Çiğdem showed a bunch of us how to do it. You basically snap your fingers and also turn your hands upside down and snap.

It was a great time and am thankful Rachid coordinated this, he is a bad influence but in the best way possible. Next time I will sing. Let’s see what symphonic deathcore song I will go for, maybe Shadow of Intent - Flying the Black Flag, a crowd favorite I’m sure.

We all left at different times in small groups. I believe we left a little before midnight. It’s not easy to sleep after a full day of activities like that. I fell asleep around 2am.

# Day 2: The Real Event Day 1

Somehow I woke up around 6am and breakfast was 6:30am to 9am. I really appreciate how Docker gives us a lot of time for breakfasts, they did this last year too. They know we’re going to be up late most nights. Knowing we have 2+ hours to get awake and eat goes a long ways for eliminating “better get up and be ready in 15 minutes!” stress.

There was a breakfast buffet with a lot of food to choose from. Çiğdem and I met up and grabbed a bunch of tasty foods:

As you can see SOMEONE likes olives and someone else does not haha.

After breakfast it was time for the event day to begin.

Speed Networking

Like last year, we had an opportunity to spend a few minutes with a bunch of different people. Folks rotated around the room. It was funny because you could tell who was at karaoke the previous night because their voice was a little worn out.

I got a chance to meet a bunch of new captains. It was cool to see such a big turn out for the event. As someone who doesn’t goto conferences a lot it’s easy to visualize 60+ people in a Slack channel but that size is a lot different in real life.

Presentations

After that warm up there were a few hours of presentations where Docker let us know what they are up to and will be focusing their energy on.

Most of it is coming in the future so I can’t post too many details here. Stay tuned for announcements through Docker! Sorry for being vague on details here but I don’t want to violate any NDAs. I’ll certainly be making videos and blog posts about some of it.

I will just say, Docker is confident in their current and upcoming offerings. There’s a lot of very interesting and impactful things coming in the not so distant future.

Lunch

After that it was lunch time where all sorts of nice things were presented. I didn’t take a photo of it but here are a few desserts:

Somehow I never tried baklava before but it was delicious. I had 2 pieces which was enough since it is very sweet.

Çiğdem taught us that you are supposed to eat it upside down with your hands. Informally I labeled it as the Inverted Baklava Consumption Method or IBCM for short.

Swag

All of us received a very nice shirt, bag, stickers, pen, a snack and a personalized hand written card from Eva directly. That was a real surprise, her kindness has no limit and really demonstrates how much of a community we are, not just a random group of people who make content about Docker:

Yes, that’s a Docked themed baklava sticker mixed in there and it’s great! A bunch of the stickers were Türkiye themed which was a really nice touch.

I’d estimate about 33% of the shirts I wear are from Docker. The bag will get used too, it’s good for going to the beach or even picking up light groceries since in NY they stopped providing plastic bags years ago. I’ll have the highest tech grocery bag in town.

Break-out Rooms

This summit was a bit more structured than last time. There were 4 different breakout rooms to goto with a different time slot. Each one had about 8 to 12 people depending on which handout you got.

For this day, I had:

• 1pm: Developer Day 0 with Eric
• 2pm: Content Creation with Jen
• 3pm: Agents with Oleg
• 4pm: Workflow Discovery with Colin

Çiğdem and I were paired up with the same handout so we went to them.

Developer Day 0

Here we had an opportunity to discuss improving the experience for new folks learning about and using Docker.

This helped identity different types of people who use Docker. For example, maybe you’re a developer who is using Docker to run an app but someone else set everything up for you.

On the flip side, you might be the type of developer who is setting everything up or helping a business get their app into Docker.

In any case, we all went around the table explaining our use cases and how we see folks using Docker out in the wild. In the end this can help Docker target certain types of learning material to the right category of users.

Content Creation

This was a fun opportunity to record videos with Docker’s social media and video team. They had a number of different prompts for us, including “this or that”. Last year Çiğdem and I did our own version of this or that which was fun.

Docker already posted one of them from this event, more to come later:

Are you team dark mode or light mode?

See which side our Docker Captains chose.#Docker #DockerCaptains #DevCommunity #ThisOrThat #DevLife pic.twitter.com/coYFsf5kvG

— Docker (@Docker) November 22, 2025

Agents

This was all about setting up and configuring MCP servers to perform certain tasks. This isn’t an area where I have much experience with but I like how it was set up. Basically we had a self-paced lab to follow and Oleg popped around the table to help get anyone unstuck.

Last year I didn’t have a laptop so I shared Çiğdem’s for a different lab. This time around she didn’t have a laptop but I did, so we did the same.

We got things partially working in the end! Docker Desktop worked great even on Arch Linux using Niri which is a scrolling window manager.

Workflow Discovery

Here we all had little sticky cards to talk about a pain point or new feature we’d like to see in Docker. Then we went around the table discussing them.

I ended up talking about image sub-layer caching to help make installing dependencies faster when they change without needing to resort to mounted volumes. It spawned a pretty big discussion about caching in general.

The main takeaway was if you have let’s say a web app in Python or Ruby and you have 40 package dependencies, if you change your dependency file by default Docker needs to re-install all of your dependencies which takes a long time.

It’s a little inconvenient that you have to set up a mount cache to speed things up, but in the end that’s the only real solution we have at the time being.

I liked this session since it gave a chance for all of us to talk about specific things we feel passionately about with Docker’s feature set.

Bosphorus Boat Tour

After the first day’s event agenda was completed, Docker surprised us with an activity. It was marked on the calendar only to be in the hotel lobby by around 7pm or so.

Turns out we took a bus to a ferry terminal and then went on a very nice 3.5 hour night time boat tour, here’s a photo from mid-way:

It had wonderful views of the city at night with live entertainment, food and drinks. We saw all sorts of Turkish dances and some people witnessed a very “interbreasting” type of dance that may or may not have taken place.

Here’s a shot Michael (front left) took of the dinner area, I was in a different part of the table where I ended up sitting near Eva, Ying, Marco, Çiğdem, Jorge and others:

It was cool. You could also get up and walk around the roof of the boat.

I ended up going up to the roof with Ying for a bit, I never met her prior to this event. She was from Taiwan which I quickly learned is a much different place than China for a number of different reasons haha.

We had a very engaging conversation about tech, different cultures but most importantly how different languages make different sounds for different animals. I have no idea how that topic came up but it makes me laugh to think about how life is filled with these fun random encounters. Plus, now I can speak bird in Taiwanese.

By the time we got back to the dinner area, our food already arrived. It was a little cold but honestly I was hungry and it was ok.

As the boat got closer to the end of the tour a bunch of us went outside to enjoy the views and company until we reached the end. Overall it was enjoyable and no one fell overboard which I’m sure Eva appreciated from a logistics point of view.

By this point it was after midnight so most of us called it a night, but a few brave souls ventured out into the night for a few more hours.

# Day 3: The Real Event Day 2

Like the first day we we all grabbed breakfast. I didn’t experience jet lag the whole trip (there or back) but I kept waking up around 6am no matter when I fell asleep for 3 weeks straight.

In any case, it was too early for breakfast so I lounged around until more people were awake then we ate similar but slightly different things for breakfast.

Powerpoint Karaoke

This was a really fun way to start the day. Docker prepared a number of joke slides and folks volunteered to go up to give an unplanned presentation.

We learned a lot of important things like how PHP doesn’t suck:

Also we learned how stable us-east-1 is and how it never has any issues. Most importantly all of us now understand and know the answer to “Baklava vs Cloud Computing: Layers of Sweet Complexity”. Thank you to everyone who participated, good times!

Speaking of baklava and layers, I feel like I’ve been reprogrammed at this summit to think of baklava every time Docker image layers is mentioned. “Big baklava” must be happy that I’m basically a sleeper agent ready to advertise it at any mention of layers in a technical context.

Presentations and Lightning Talks

Docker provided us even more insight on upcoming things but shortly after that a number of folks went up for a few minutes each to give lightning talks.

There were a whole bunch of talks around AI, model runners, adopting Docker, ephemeral environments, Kamal, hardware and more.

It was cool seeing what other captains are up to and I like how Docker gave us an opportunity to give a mini presentation.

Beyblade Tournament

Edith organized a fun event. A battle royale tournament with 4 teams, each having 3 people. I saw her message on Slack and got a chance to sign up as one of the last people.

Basically 1 person from each team picks a type of plastic robot looking thing and pulls a cord very fast and then it spins. The last robot spinning in the circle wins.

I had never played this before.

I like how I ended up being the strategist on team 4. My strategy was asking Shivay how to play because he was very experienced. He did really well for our team but ultimately we didn’t come close to winning, next time!

Lunch

Like yesterday’s lunch, this was also similar but different. Not a whole lot to say other than I tried different things and it was all enjoyable. I don’t go to hotels a lot so buffet style breakfasts and lunches are a treat for me with so much variety.

It’s kind of interesting because I am writing this post after I had already traveled 3 weeks afterwards. I walked literally 10-12 hours a day every day and was barely hungry and only ate lunch once but for some reason at events like this where your brain is engaged that led to being more than happy to eat lunch. I guess your brain uses a lot of energy.

Break-out Rooms

The concept was similar as the previous day, here was the schedule:

• 1pm: Docs contributions with Michael
• 2pm: Content creation with Jen
• 3pm: Agents with Oleg
• 4pm: AI coding sandboxes with Eric

Like the previous day, Çiğdem and I were paired up with the same handout so we went to them.

One thing I didn’t mention before was it was ok to skip any one of the rooms if we had an idea that we wanted to explore, we ended up skipping the last one.

Docs contribution

This one was cool. Michael led a small group of us in using tools Docker started to develop to make it easier to create tutorials and mini-labs.

It was a browser based UI mixing in VS Code and Markdown to easily create interactive labs. I remember this being a focus in one of our monthly Docker captain’s meetings a while back so it was nice to see it materialize.

I’ve seen Michael a million times on Slack and Zoom but I never met him before in person. I’m happy I did, he’s really kind and informative. He used to be a Docker captain before becoming an employee at Docker.

Content creation

Çiğdem and I had an idea to do a couple of custom videos involving a number of captains so we approached the video team and they said no problem.

We did a food themed “this or that” video during this time slot that was a lot of fun. There is now an active war between Greece and Türkiye over some of that content haha.

We also wanted to do another video around which tools developers use to take their applications from development to production. For this one, we ended up using the other time slot because it required a bit of coordination with 11+ other captains and the videographer.

I’ll post both videos here when they are available.

In addition to that, Mohammad organized another video on the spot while all of us were there. It combined dance with Docker and after enough peer pressure I joined in. I hope this video gets locked in the deepest darkest vault that Docker has and never escapes haha.

Agents

We continued with the labs where we left over and made more progress. Shout-out to Oleg for putting all of this together and helping us get through a few tasks.

Most Active Captains Awards

There was a surprise announcement where Docker ended up giving out awards to captains who were the most active over the last year or so:

Pradumna, Timo and Nigel were awarded. They continuously put out a lot of good content!

Wrapping Things Up

In a Q / A panel we had a chance to chat with a few folks from Docker about an assortment of topics. Again, keeping this vague since it was an internal chat.

After that we took a group photo. I had already worn the Docker Istanbul shirt the day before so I scrambled very quickly to do a quick shirt change before the photo.

Ironically you can’t even see which shirt I’m wearing haha. I’m tucked away in the back row on the far right. I got there maybe 30 seconds before they took the photo.

At this point the event was officially over and it was around 5pm local time. Some folks were leaving that night, others were leaving the next day. We all socialized and took as many photos as we could.

Here’s a bunch of us in front of the Docker sign. Michael (left) has a wingspan that rivaled the A350-900 that I flew here on so he was a natural fit for the one to take this selfie:

This is Sagar and Max, we walked around a bit on the first travel day in. There was a minor yogurt incident which tarnished my Docker shirt, oh well, laundry solved that problem!

Huge shout-out to Eva, Kenan, Per and others from Docker for organizing this event, I can’t imagine how many things must have been coordinated to pull everything off, and this isn’t just “pulling it off”. It was an epic event from beginning to end. I never once felt bored or not at ease. I learned a ton too! The only problem is the event is over and I’m back home haha.

I’m really glad Eva works for Docker in this role. The captain’s program has been thriving with her at the helm and overall it feels like everything is getting better and better over time.

I’m looking forward to next time!

The event is officially over but that doesn’t mean the fun ends. Most of us still had 1 more night together and at this point it was maybe 5:30pm.

Our Last Night

Çiğdem’s cousin is a professional stage dancer and she had already purchased tickets to see her perform at a show. It was a very busy day because it was Oct 29th which is Republic Day and the show was themed around that.

No tickets were available so she went off to do that with Rachid who might have literally gotten the last ticket available. He said it was an amazing show.

I found Marco and we decided to walk around for an hour or so. We ended up crossing the bridge to the historic side of Istanbul and dodged hundreds of fishing lures from all of the fisherman.

I met him last year in Lisbon and we talk a lot of nonsense on Twitter sometimes. He doesn’t enjoy pineapple on pizza like Çiğdem and I do but it’s ok, we forgive him.

He’s into hiking too and lives near the Dolomites in northern Italy with some of the best views in the world.

We had a nice conversation while walking around. Eventually we saw a message that a bunch of folks were meeting for dinner at about 7pm at a specific restaurant.

Dinner

Somehow Marco and I ended up being the first ones there and we weren’t sure how many people were coming so we asked if they have room between 8 and 25 people. They were more than happy to find room for all of us.

After 30 minutes or so a lot of people arrived:

That’s Marco in the front left. Ying was in the middle with the grey sweatshirt, Hasnae was behind her and Edith was behind her sitting across from me at the end of the table.

Hasnae and I were the only 2 people who ordered lemonade. It was pretty good!

Edith and I met last year, she’s really nice and also creates videos and enjoys hiking. She gave me a tip to visit Machu Picchu while I still can because it’s an amazing place that’s currently facing challenges due to major tourism and disruptions. Thanks for the chat!

About half of us ordered Turkish meatballs because Igor (he took the photo) went to this place once in the past and suggested it. We were laughing thinking what the cook must be thinking when an order comes in for like 10 orders of meatballs. We like to think we caused a temporary nation level meatball shortage.

Don is in the green hat near the back right. We met last year and his wife wasn’t here this time since she was on a boat trip. It got stuck in a hurricane but she was ok. Don had a nice idea for all of us to say hi to her over video.

The non-Docker people at the restaurant must have thought we were crazy because we made a few videos for her and also some other captains who couldn’t make it.

Overall it was a really good time and I now trust Igor’s food recommendations because I did like that dish. Well done (not literally)!

As we were there I was laughing internally because people passing by must have thought this was the busiest restaurant in the world. When I solo travel I usually look for spots that look busy as a sign it might be ok.

The funny thing is, what you see in the above picture wasn’t even everyone. There was another table out of frame and other folks rolled in a bit later too. I know Estefania was there too who I met last year, sorry we didn’t grab any photos together this time!

Drinks

It was maybe only 9pm and a lot of us had flights later the next day. Some left back to the hotel since they had to be up at 4am but a few of us went to a pub not too far away, it was within walking distance.

Forgive me but I don’t remember everyone who went with us initially. I believe it was Marco, Julian, Kristiyan and Nigel.

I don’t drink a ton but in Türkiye, beer comes in many different sizes. A standard bottle was 50cl which was a decent size bigger than a normal bottle in the US.

Most of us had 1 of those but Julian is from Germany and he wasn’t having any of that. He and a few others each got 1 liter which came in a massive glass. I don’t think any of us took photos but you can use your imagination.

It was cool, the place was partially inside and outside and came with popcorn.

Over time more people joined us. Çiğdem and Rachid popped by after their show, then Don and a few others did too. Don brought his world famous 3D printed cutouts, this time in multiple colors (blue and white), if you were there you know which ones I mean!

We had people from all over the world. Türkiye, Kristiyan was from Bulgaria which was like a 30 minute flight, Italy, Germany, UK, etc.. We thought it would be fun for us to try and pronounce words from other languages.

Kristiyan is well traveled and has an understanding of a few languages. He and Marco asked me to say “prego ragazzi” which is Italian and requires a tongue roll. It can mean “please, guys” or “you’re welcome, guys” depending on the context.

At the time I had no idea what they were saying. I just know it was impossible for my mouth to say it correctly. Marco was talking serious shit saying it was so easy and I need to relax my face.

At some point I naturally made an italian hand gesture while saying it, and I swear it helped. After literally 10 minutes I might have said it mostly correct maybe once but the jury is still out on that one.

I know at some point Kristiyan was dying and recorded me failing at saying it, I hope that video never sees the light of day. Really, it was a good time.

Julian then stepped up and asked us all to say some German word. I don’t remember what it was, but it had something to do with snails with a lisp. He said it easily but he might be 1 of maybe 6 people on the planet who can pronounce it correctly. No one else came close.

It was a bit after midnight and some of us decided to head back to the hotel.

# Day 4: Good Bye Captains

Like the other days, a lot of us had breakfast together. After we all ate we took one last opportunity to chat and take group photos:

That’s Julian on the left and Rachid on the right. Ying and I were in the middle. Rachid is a professional at taking selfies and it was great seeing him again, looking forward to more adventures next time. The same goes to all of you!

Here’s one last group photo that I remember:

Khushboo is on the left, Saloni is in the middle, Çiğdem is on the right with Jorge and myself in the back. Khushboo taught me the importance of camera angles when taking photos (thanks for the tips haha).

People started leaving in waves, Marco, Kristiyan and a bunch of others.

Docker helped coordinate shuttles back to the airport for people leaving that day. Technically I was flying to a different region of Türkiye so I wasn’t included in those groups. I’m sure if I asked Eva she would have accommodated but Docker was already so generous, it was no problem taking the metro back to the airport.

I also headed out around 10:30am since I had to catch a flight to the Cappadocia region.

Çiğdem was leaving around then too, we all said good bye and that was that. Funny enough I ended up running into Çiğdem at the metro station but we went in opposite directions, she was off to meet someone since her flight home wasn’t until later that night.

At this point, officially the event was done. I had the best time but little did I know this event was a gift that kept on giving.

But Wait, There’s More

As it turns out a couple of captains were also going to Cappadocia but at different times.

I noticed Rafael posted a photo since he arrived there 5-6 hours before me. He asked if I wanted to meet up so we ended up grabbing dinner that night and then watched the balloons go up the next morning. It was really amazing, his wife came with him who was really nice and he had a drone too:

I ended up going up in a balloon a few days later, but they didn’t. It was safe (in theory) but you do go up about 1,000 meters for over an hour, I’m happy I went:

A couple of days later I saw Sagar posted about his trip there and I reached out to him. We ended up getting dinner one night. As you can see he was decked out in Docker gear:

It still amazes me at how many great experiences in my life are related to Docker. Eva and the rest of the Docker team are so good at what they do and I am happy to be friends with them.

It’s hard to believe I have been part of the captain’s program for about 10 years but I hope it never ends. It’s the best community I have been a part of with so many like minded folks available to collaborate or help with just about anything.

On the last day of the trip, I flew home with our new Docker Istanbul shirt:

Until next time!

Do you have any questions about the event? Let us know below!