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I spent this week in Las Vegas, working at IBM’s FastStart 2020 event. The event is for IBM sellers, partners, and technical folks to come to learn the new bits of knowledge about the products they’re selling and enabling at their clients’ sites. I went in my usual technical capacity and learned very quickly IBM and Red Hat speak two different languages. This is expected but, I wanted to look a little further into the why behind that. As a surprise to no one, I found a DevOps parallel here. In DevOps, change starts one of two ways based on the type of change happening. The more natural way (for me) is to start with the teams with their hands on the keyboard doing the work. Talk to them about their problems in their language. Tell them how your tool’s features help to solve their problems. Pull out a laptop and prove to them you’re not full of shit. This is the bottom-up approach to DevOps. It’s an engineer built and run transformation. Leadership stakeholders are updated about results. Leadership buys-in because the results prove themselves. ...

I got up this morning and was quickly exhausted from pain. I had noticed this exhausted feeling earlier in the week. It was the day of a doctor’s appointment to get injections to fix the mentally distracting nature of constant, chronic pain. I discovered burnoutindex.org, which is a nine-question test to give you an idea of your main risk factors of burnout. My two key elements are self-inefficacy and exhaustion (see my burnout report). I’ve proven that this exhausted feeling is a real thing; what do I do about it? According to this, I need to figure out what my sources of energy are and bulk up on them while working to figure out what work-related urgencies are overwhelming. I think my problem is that I feel like I’m often trying to move a celestial body into or out of an orbit. The force, effort, time, and energy this requires is enormous. Of course, if you feel like the weight of the world is on you, exhaustion is a natural outcome. I have to remember that I’m sitting behind a keyboard and that I am only human. Hopefully, this too shall pass. ...

Events February 2020 Michigan Tech Events — If you’re in Michigan this month, check out one of these awesome tech events while you’re here. Also, the Orchestructure meetup is the last Wednesday of the month and is always filled with Kubernetes nerds. SCALE 18x March 5-8, 2020 SCaLE 18x – the 18th annual Southern California Linux Expo – will take place in March 5-8, 2020, at the Pasadena Convention Center. SCaLE is the largest community-run open-source and free software conference in North America. It is held annually in the greater Los Angeles area. SCaLE 18X expects to host 120 exhibitors this year, along with over 200 sessions, tutorials and special events. From kernels to containers, beginner installs to advanced security, HAMs to clouds, there is something for you at SCALE 18X. DevOpsDay LA March 6, 2020 DevOpsDay LA is a technical conference covering topics of software development, IT infrastructure operations, and the intersection between them. Kubernetes Contributor Summit Europe — Come learn some Kubernetes with me from some of the best people on earth to teach it. Also, get real work done in the community with folks right there in the room with you! ...

A change at the helms of IBM and Red Hat are occurring in April (IBM press release). Ginni Rometty is retiring (after a short period as Executive Chairman). Ginny is the only woman to have ever led IBM which is a feat all by itself. She had the unenviable job of leading IBM out of its funk too. IBM had really good numbers this quarter. Whether that continues remains to be seen but, it’s noteworthy that it happened under Ginny’s watch. It happened after she made her big move too; one of the largest acquisitions ever. It’s a little sad but we definitely knew it was going to happen at some point, Jim Whitehurst is leaving Red Hat to take on the role of President of IBM. It will be interesting to see what Jim can do in IBM’s leadership. It will be interesting to see what happens in the Red Hat leadership too. It’s going to be a fun, change filled year! Events February 2020 Michigan Tech Events — If you’re in Michigan this month, check out one of these awesome tech events while you’re here. Also, the Orchestructure meetup is the last Wednesday of the month and is always filled with Kubernetes nerds. ...

On my last trip of 2019, I took a very important walk with a friend. We talked extensively about burnout and recognizing ways to recover and mitigate the stress of our lives. I left the conversation in a much more peaceful place having just talked about. But, I’m not sure my friend did. The other day they sent me a Shonda Rhimes TED Talk that reminded them about my pledge a couple of years ago to say yes to everything I could. This pledge elevated me in some ways but, it had a very high cost in others. Clearly, this wasn’t an exercise in achieving balance. But, the video really drove home the importance of the “Why?” behind what we’re saying, “Yes” to. If we’re constantly working (on the weekend like usual), what good is the time we have on this earth? You created value but, did you value what you created? Figure out your why and strive to achieve balance. ...