Adam Jacob, CEO of System Initiative and original author of Chef, discusses the evolution of infrastructure automation and his career-long passion for infrastructure. Jacob reflects on the history and context of Chef, its emergence alongside EC2, and its role in configuration management. He shares insights into the competitive landscape of configuration management tools like Chef, Puppet, and Ansible, and touches upon the transition of Chef to Progress. Jacob also introduces System Initiative, explaining its ambitious goal to revolutionize infrastructure automation by building digital twins of digital things, moving away from treating infrastructure as code. He also predicts more attempts to rethink infrastructure automation and encourages "wild swings" to improve upon the status quo.

• Follow Adam on Linkedin (https://www.linkedin.com/in/adamjacob/) , X (https://x.com/adamhjk) , and BlueSky. (https://bsky.app/profile/adamhjk.me)
• Check out System Initiative: https://www.systeminit.com/