I went to KubeCon + CloudNativeCon North America 2018 in Seattle, Washington this week. My trip was cut short due to a work meeting in Raleigh, NC. But, I definitely pushed myself to my limits in Seattle. Make no mistake, had I been staying the entire week as planned I would not have done the time on site the way I did. I wore quite a few hats on this trip: ...
It’s the most wonderful time of year! When everyone gets together with family or friends they haven’t seen in who knows how long. Of course, the topic of Trump, social media, and burnt gravy stories will come up. But, my personal favorite topic is, “I have this issue with PIECE OF TECHNOLOGY XYZ. Please help me!” Luckily, despite having not worked on anything other than Mac and Linux the past seven years, I don’t get too many wild questions from family. I’ll sit down with Grandma and help her with an iPhone issue from time to time. My mother-in-law has some legacy e-mail stuff all filtered in her Gmail. Sometimes AT&T changes something and it breaks. These things happen. Complex systems are hard enough. No sense in me being an asshole about it (although I will get frustrated from time to time). ...
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. ...
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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. ...