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I helped organize and spoke at DevOpsDays Raleigh 2017 back in September. From an organizers perspective the team was fantastic! If you ever have the opportunity to organize an event with any of the fine organizers in Raleigh you will be learning from true professionals. From a speaker’s perspective it was a blast. I had the opportunity to convert my article The Dark Side of DevOps into a talk. While it went very well I wish I could have elaborated more on it in the future. There is so much story to tell! But, I held back a little because in the audience there were former co-workers who had been on these journeys with me. ...

UPDATE: According to Kara Swisher at Recode, Google has fired James Damore, the author of the memo that is the topic of this article. On Friday, August 4, 2017, several Google employees took to Twitter to discuss a ten-page document that was circulating internally at an alarming rate. The manifesto focused on the topic of “ideological diversity” replacing Google’s current diversity policies. The author states, “Women on average show a higher interest in people and men in things.” Needless to say, the manifesto (screed) was not well received but had a fair number of supporters inside Google that bolstered the author’s position. Google’s response was tepid at best, “Part of building an open, inclusive environment means fostering a culture in which those with alternative views, including different political views, feel safe sharing their opinions. But that discourse needs to work alongside the principles of equal employment found in our Code of Conduct, policies, and anti-discrimination laws.” Not exactly what you want to see when this manifesto has you questioning why you’re at a company not denouncing the opinions expressed in this screed. I’m all for free speech (I pay for my defense of it every day). But, the First Amendment is a construct to prevent government silencing of dissent. The First Amendment does not apply within the confines of a company. Free ideas are great so long as they do not cause harm to those around you. ...

This talk was derived from an opensource.com article I wrote in April 2017, Golang to the rescue: Saving DevOps from TLS turmoil. Presented at GopherCon 2017 as a Lightning Talk. Source for the talk is available on GitHub. Introduction Notes: Hi! I’m Chris! I manage do X at Y (we’re hiring) I work in the DevOps space I contribute content a few places I run a DevOps Newsletter called DevOps’ish if you’re into those please check it out This talk was derived from an opensource.com article I wrote in April 2017 But Most Importantly ...

The open organization community at Opensource.com (of which I’m a member) is pleased to announce the immediate release of its newest book, The Open Organization Guide to IT Culture Change. As IT teams around the world rise to these new challenges, they’re realizing that radical change isn’t a matter of tools alone. It’s also a matter of culture—the values that underpin behaviors, influence problem-solving capability, and facilitate truly revolutionary potential. Those values are open values. ...

The British government wants to build backdoors into standard encryption libraries. This means the technology that protects your financial transactions could have a backdoor. These same backdoors were just exploited in the WannaCry outbreak that just took down the NHS. Who created that backdoor? The NSA, whose incompetence allowed this “tool” to fall into the hands of a Russian government-affiliated hacking group. You don’t do anything illegal? Great! You do have a bank account, right? You do have private conversations with your significant other, right? Would you want either to be open for potentially anyone to see? Probably not. Resist government’s demands to force Internet companies to open backdoors for them. Nothing good will come of it. ...