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Since Sunday afternoon, I’ve been in a whirlwind of meetings, discussions, and calls about IBM’s plan to acquire Red Hat for $34 billion. My mind has been racing but, after some consideration, I’ve decided to share my thoughts as a narrative timeline. Trust me when say that I have given this format considerable thought. It is likely the safest way (regulatory-wise) to deliver my thoughts on the topic. I would like to point out that I have updated my disclaimer and this site’s terms. My views do not reflect those of my employer or entities I’m affiliated with. Names are withheld for obvious reasons. ...

I have mentioned this a few times in various talks, on social media, and in my newsletter; the importance of psychological safety in creating effective teams is often overlooked. Google did an enormous amount of research to determine, “the secrets of effective teams at Google.” Code-named Project Aristotle, Google wanted to nail down, once and for all, what factors contributed to team effectiveness. The number one contributor to team effectiveness at Google was surprising at the time; psychological safety. “Psychological safety refers to an individual’s perception of the consequences of taking an interpersonal risk.” This is a mind bending idea but, it has real impact on a team’s ability to perform and innovate. Let’s analyze an example in my own work life of creating this psychological safety. ...

An edited version of this article was originally written for opensource.com: 5 military phrases for DevOps practitioners The U.S. military is known for quite a few things, including its excessive and fascinating use of acronyms, euphemisms, and colorful phrases to describe certain situations. But many of these terms are applicable to other areas of life, including many non-military jobs. These are a few phrases I think crossover between both DevOps and the armed forces. ...

tl;dr “It is with great pleasure that I announce I am joining the Ansible team at Red Hat as Principal Product Marketing Manager.” In The Beginning… In 1998, I was working at a dial-up ISP in Hickory, NC. We were heavily invested in Windows and needed to reduce costs and increase speed. My CEO at the time had the foresight to know that Linux was the future. She hired two engineers to transform the business into a Red Hat Linux based ISP. These engineers had the challenge of swapping platforms and teaching those of us that didn’t abandon ship Linux. My first Linux distro was Red Hat Linux 5 (not RHEL, Red Hat Linux). From that point on, I knew Red Hat was a platform to watch and utilize. ...

I was in the DC metro area when I received an e-mail about the Baltimore Go Meetup happening on June 5th. Since I was nearby, I decided to go ahead and RSVP to the event. I mentioned this on Twitter and shortly thereafter Johnny Boursiquot wondered if I could speak. Of course I said yes. I was already doing a talk that morning at DevNationFederal. What’s another talk in the evening? I’d move heaven and earth for Johnny. His diversity and inclusion efforts are th enormous cherry on top of his substantial contributions to the Go community. ...