This Monday (2019-08-19) will be my first day as Principal Technical Marketing Manager on the Cloud Platforms team at Red Hat. What does that mean? OpenShift (a lot of OpenShift), Kubernetes, containers, Operators, and all the associated bits will be my day job. Helping folks help themselves with technology is still and always will be the name of my game. But, working full time in the Kubernetes or cloud native ecosystem was a 2020 goal....
The last week of November 2018, I made a trip to the Red Hat office in Westford, MA. I was enrolled in Automation with Ansible I (DO407) with exam (EX407) class. One of my co-workers scoffed when I told him I was going. He didn’t seem to quite understand why I wanted a certification I don’t need (I do work for Ansible now after all). I hope to address that and why Product and Marketing people should get certified (not only Ops)....
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....
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....
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Red Hat invited me to speak at DevNationFederal. The organizers requested I present my DevOps is Not War talk to technologists in the Washington DC area. This crowd is a group of folks that are at varying points in their DevOps journeys. Many folks from government agencies and systems integrators were present. I was able to sync up with one of my Airmen from my time at Pope Air Force Base....