I'll be giving a talk "Fail Better: Radical Ideas from the Practice of Cloud Computing" as part of the ACM Learning Series at at 2pm EST on Friday, February 26, 2016. The webcast is free. Pre-registration is required.
In this talk I explain 3 of the most important points from our newest book, The Practice of Cloud System Administration. The talk applies to everyone, whether or not you are "in the cloud".
"See" you there!
We've made some changes to the website. If you read this blog via an RSS reader (or any "feed reader") posts should appear better now. In particular, the author of the post should show up better.
Our next conversation will be with Kris Buytaert, who presented "DevOps: The past and future are here. It's just not evenly distributed (yet)" at LISA '11. Watch his talk beforehand, and then join us at 11:30 am PST/2:30 pm EST on Tuesday, February 23, 2016, at the Google Hangout On Air.
You won't want to miss this!
I'll be giving a talk "Fail Better: Radical Ideas from the Practice of Cloud Computing" as part of the ACM Learning Series at at 2pm EST on Friday, February 26, 2016. Pre-registration is required.
In this talk I explain 3 of the most important points from our newest book, The Practice of Cloud System Administration. The talk applies to everyone, whether or not you are "in the cloud".
"See" you there!
I write a 3-times-a-year column in ACM Queue Magazine. This issue I cover 2 unrelated topics. "How Sysadmins Devalue Themselves" and "And how to track on-call coverage". Enjoy!
Q: Dear Tom, How can I devalue my work? Lately I've felt like everyone appreciates me, and, in fact, I'm overpaid and underutilized. Could you help me devalue myself at work?
A: Dear Reader, Absolutely! I know what a pain it is to lug home those big paychecks. It's so distracting to have people constantly patting you on the back. Ouch! Plus, popularity leads to dates with famous musicians and movie stars. (Just ask someone like Taylor Swift or Leonardo DiCaprio.) Who wants that kind of distraction when there's a perfectly good video game to be played?
Here are some time-tested techniques that everyone should know.
Click here to read the entire article...
Note: This article can be viewed for free, however I encourage you to subscribe to ACM Queue Magazine. ACM members can access it online for fee, or a small fee gets you access to it online or via an app.
A few years ago a coworker noticed that all my analogies seemed to involve food. He asked if this was intentional.
I explained to him that my analogies contain many unique layers, but if you pay attention you'll see a lot of repetition... like a lasagna.
By the way...
I've scheduled this blog post to appear on the morning of Wednesday, Feb 10. At that time I'll be getting gum surgery. As part of recovery I won't be able to bite into any food for 4-6 months. I'll have to chew with my back teeth only.
Remember, folks, brushing and flossing is important. Don't ignore your teeth. You'll regret it later.
I'm excited to announce that I've been interviewed as part of the ACM Interviews series. Listen to the 1-hour interview or read the summary via this link
ACM Interviews are part of the ACM Learning Center (click on Podcasts).
Over the last 20+ years Stephen Ibaraki's interviews have included famous computer scientists and innovators like Vint Cerf, Eric Schmidt, Leslie Lamport, and more. (Complete list here.) Stephen is involved in many professional organizations, he frequently addresses the United Nations, and has received numerous honors including being the first and only recipient of the Computing Canada IT Leadership Lifetime Achievement Award.
I was quite honored to be asked. (Actually I was confused... when approached at an ACM event last year I assumed Stephen was asking me to nominate people worth interviewing, not asking me to be interviewed!)
I consider this a major career milestone. I am grateful to all those that have helped me get to where I am today.
Background on the ACM:
The Association of Computing Machinery (the US representative to the United-Nations(UNESCO)-founded IFIP, International Federation for Information Processing):
The ACM reach is 3.4 million, with 1.5 million users of the digital library and is the largest and most prestigious international professional organization in computing science, education, research, innovation, professional practice (200 events and conferences, 78 newsletters/publications, 37 special interest groups such as SIGGRAPH, the top awards in computing science such as the ACM Turing Award -- the Turing is considered the Nobel Prize of Computing with a 1 Million USD prize.
In this episode we talked with Alice Goldfuss about the changes you need to make when growing a DevOps or sysadmin team. Alice also talked about dealing with remote workers, her experience at film school, plus she shares insights about giving your first presentation at a conference.
You don't want to miss this!
For the complete list of LISA Conversations, visit our homepage.
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