Life

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....

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....

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....

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....

I am very happy to announce that I have a new job. I am now a Senior DevOps Advocate with the esteemed SJ Technologies, Inc. The great job search of 2017 actually ended in 2017. The good folks at SJ Technologies put together my offer letter in the last week of 2017. This allowed me to take a deep breath over the New Year’s weekend and decompress. I am truly thankful to everyone for getting the offer together in what was likely your down time....