February 8, 2010
Completely out of the blue last week, I got an email from Stephen Foskett discussing something called a “Tech Field Day” put on by his company, Gestalt IT. I was really busy and didn’t get a chance to really look into anything until that night.
As it turns out, the email was talking about a novel idea in the blogosphere that had been put on last year and ended up being such an amazing success that it’s being repeated now. This idea is the Tech Field Day.
There are companies out there making very cool things that people should know about. At the same time, there are some really great bloggers out there writing great pieces about cool things. Stephen Foskett and Tech Field Day is devoted to connecting those two groups in a very personal way.
The idea is impressively simple. A group of bloggers, 15 or so, gather together, crowd onto a bus, and go visit companies. Sort of like a tech version of the Partridge Family, except the singing has been replaced by deep dive presentations from engineers and chief officers from companies trying to expand the state of the art in IT. Cool, huh?
The benefit that the companies derive is that news of their new technologies and products gets spread via word of mouth and through trusted channels. If the technology and products are actually good, that is. The blogger delegates attending the event aren’t paid shills. Every one of us has the understanding that what we write will be an honest representation of what we see, experience, and think. If I don’t like a product, I’m not going to write nice things about it because our bus pulled up to their building. The bus will take me to the next place, regardless of what I write.
The benefit to the bloggers is, first and foremost, building a community amongst ourselves. In this electronic world, we think we know someone pretty well if we IM with them, rather than just shoot emails and the occasional twitter mention. And it is possible to know someone well over the internet. But it’s something entirely different to know them in person. We are still humans, and we still relate to each other, and so much of the rudeness, bravado, and opinionated difference on the internet melts away when you shake hands with someone and look them in the eyes.
There are a lot of other benefits to the writers, as well. Seeing what companies are offering first hand, learning from the engineers who implemented the products themselves, and a mental break from the ruts that we all find ourselves in from time to time. The combination of these should make for some really nice writing.
The community that spawned from the first Tech Field Day sounds like it was special. The individual bloggers created a tribe of incredibly intelligent people brought together to be with each other, to experience new technology, and to take home experiences different than they’d had previously. According to all of the mentions that I’ve seen, it was incredibly successful.
And so last week, I got my email. I’m honored to have been considered, and after talking to Stephen for a while on Friday, I really saw the vision, and i was sold.
The next Tech Field Day is in Boston, MA, and is scheduled for Spring of 2010.
The last time that I talked to Stephen, not all of the vendors had been scheduled, so if you’re in the Boston area and think that your company has something cool and exciting to talk to an array of industry bloggers about, drop me a line and I’ll get it to Stephen (or just email him, at the address on the delegate list, below).
The full delegate list isn’t finished, either, but will be updated as it’s filled out here. If you read a lot of blogs, several of those names should be familiar. If they aren’t now, I’m sure they will be, because every one of them is a great blog to read and learn from.
If anyone has any questions at all, drop them below, and I’ll do my best to answer everything. Thanks, and I hope that you’re as excited about this as I am!
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February 8, 2010
Michael Francis, the gentleman who brought us the SysAdmin Network, has created another sysadmin related endeavor called SysAdmin Talk, a group blog from five admins about what looks like a variety of topics.
Michael’s got a history of successful online efforts, so I have no reason to think this will be any different. Go on over and take a look. I suspect that we’ll be seeing good things from them in the future.
In the interest of full disclosure, Michael is my editor at Simple Talk: Sysadmin, the magazine that I (infrequently) contribute to.
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February 5, 2010
I’m in the middle of an upgrade to the networking and telephone infrastructure of the company’s user sites. Our New Jersey office has this completed, and we’re now running a 13Mb/s symmetrical fiber line there, and at the same time, I’ve upgraded the phone system there to be capable of VoIP.
The idea is that we upgrade the bandwidth there, upgrade the bandwidth in our New York City office, and then migrate the NYC users onto the corporate phone system, so they can have all of the PBX features we’ve got in NJ. All of this is contingent on the bandwidth upgrade in New York, of course.
And so I scheduled Atlantic Metro to come install a 5Mb/s metro ethernet line, which was scheduled for Thursday the 4th. I thought, “cool, I’ll head into the NYC office and make sure things go smoothly”. A few days ago, I got a notice from Atlantic that Verizon would actually be doing the installation. That makes sense, I figured, since Verizon is the ILEC here. Attached to the email was a dire warning:
Please note that Verizon’s dispatch window is 8AM-5PM. A more specific time cannot be requested. Missed appointments will result in a Missed Appointment charge of $195.00.
Awesome. 9 hour window with punishment for not answering the door. Alright, so I let the NYC office know to be on alert, and that someone had to be there early (the office in NYC usually gets active a little later than that), and of course we had to let the building’s facilities people know.
I got here at 9 or so, since I wanted to be on hand when they were installing it. And so I waited. And waited. And waited. The building’s lobby people left, so I waited in the lobby for Verizon. And nothing. 5pm rolled past, and I called Atlantic Metro, and they said they’d check in on them. So I sat there and played some iphone games. And waited. And then I called back, and finally got an answer.
Apparently, Verizon’s tech was overbooked, or otherwise too busy yesterday, and so the Atlantic Metro guys worked hard to get it rescheduled for today. And so it was. Of course, it still has the same window, which is why I found myself at the train station at 6:45 waiting to head into the city. Again. To wait.
Of course, there’s always something to do while I’m waiting, and I don’t see the people in New York enough, and I love the city, but it’s just a pain in the butt!
For the record, I don’t think it’s Atlantic Metro at all. From all of my experiences with Verizon, I believe that they keep their techs overworked and overstressed. I know from my friends who are in the telco business that it’s never fun, and there is always a ton of work, but I really do believe in customer service, and that if you can’t extend any courtesy to your customers, you’re going to get no respect in return.
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February 1, 2010
Securitymonkey posted an interesting piece on CompTIA’s supposedly “lifetime” certifications. The short of it is that people who have their CompTIA certification prior to January, 2011 will be grandfathered in with a lifetime certification. Anyone who gets their certification after that will be required to renew every three years.
While I’m not going to argue about the usefulness of a 3+ year old certification, particularly for something like Network+ or Security+, if you’ve been looking to get certified from CompTIA and have been putting it off, make sure this is the year you go out and do it.
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February 1, 2010
Just a reminder to everyone who is either in New Jersey and the surrounding areas or knows someone who is. In May, there’s a sysadmin conference being held in New Brunswick, NJ at the Hyatt Regency. We’re still looking for volunteers, if you’re interested, and if you’d rather come give a presentation, we’ve got a call for participation on the website so you can propose your favorite topic.
This is a small conference with a limited number of slots, but we expect them to all be filled. Giving a presentation here would be a great way to get your name out in the community. If you’re even a little bit tempted, go for it.
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January 29, 2010
I remember back when I was first learning Linux, and I encountered shell scripts. I wasn’t a programmer, and I didn’t “get” it. I distinctly remember thinking, “well, THAT’S something I won’t have to learn”. Ha!
As it turns out, I was incorrect. Writing scripts is an essential skill for a system administrator. In Linux/Unix, we’re blessed to have an amazing development environment, where as administrators running on Windows had to make due with batch files until the dot net revolution came along to introduce ASP and VB script. Now, with powershell, they’ve actually got a great environment to write systems scripts in. Between that and things like Windows Server Core, I’m beginning to wonder about the Redmond camp. But I’m digressing…
Writing scripts isn’t an optional tool in an effective administrator’s tool belt. It’s absolutely vital to efficiently performing many, many tasks. Personally, I use the bash shell, because it’s the default, and it’s what I started on. You should use whatever you feel comfortable with, whether it’s a shell script or perl. Heck, I’ve been desperate enough to even do a couple of things in CLI-mode PHP, just because I’m more fluent in it than I am perl (which is a shame, and something I’m going to be working on rectifying).
My last “fun” bit of shell programming was probably a cron job that checked for a new tsunami warning and emailed me the text of the alert. Before that, I wrote an entire RSS reader in bash. With bookmark support. Yeah, I’m a sick man.
What kind of fun things have you done with scripts lately?
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