You Can Find Me in the Cloud with HubStor

It’s funny. The last thing I posted here was on January 1st. In it, I mentioned that 2019 had been a hard year. How foolish I was before 2020 came into its own…

In the midst of whatever all of 2020 will continue to bring, I’m pleased to be able to report some good news. I’m employed again — much faster than I was during my either of my last two rounds of job searching. In all, one month passed from the day I was informed that my position had been re-organized out of existence to my first day at the new job. Continue reading

Most-Read GeekFluent Posts in 2019

What a year 2019 was. But now it’s past and good riddance.

Not all of 2019 was bad, but — for me at least — it was a hard year as can be evidenced by the frighteningly low number of new posts I made during the year. Everything is starting into an upswing now, so this post is part of just putting the year behind me and moving on into 2020.

So, with that in mind, I give you a list of my ten most-read posts during 2019. Continue reading

Time to Retire the #HireDaveNow Hashtag

You read that right. After what felt like a very long job search (to be fair it only felt that way because it was, in fact, very long), I no longer need to use the #HireDaveNow hashtag. This frees me up to focus on other Dave-related hashtags, like the very timely #WriteInDave2020, the crowd favorite #ThanksDave (which I’ve only learned just now some people are using in a very serious fashion), and the one that started the Dave-related hashtag phenomenon, #LetDaveDrive.

Acronis logo

By the time you’re reading this, I will have already started my new job as a Senior Product Marketing Manager at Acronis. I’ll be way over at the technical end of the marketing spectrum, helping folks understand how Acronis solutions work and helping people understand the business value of technical features. Continue reading

Cisco Names Champions for 2018

At the end of last last week, Cisco sent out the official “Welcome” emails to the folks they’ve named as Cisco Champions for 2018.

What are Cisco Champions exactly? you might ask.

It’s a fair question, I’ll admit. Started in 2014, the Cisco Champion program is a way for Cisco to recognize those members of the IT community — who are not Cisco employees — who are going above and beyond their job descriptions to find ways to contribute to and share knowledge with that IT community.

To quote from Cisco’s website:

Cisco Champions are passionate experts who share their perspectives with the community.

In my experience, that’s exactly who they are. Sometimes I feel like there are people out there who are only interested in joining community programs like this one in order to grab some free swag, but I’ve never gotten that vibe from any of the Cisco Champions I’ve met in person or interacted with online. In general, I find them to be very enthusiastic about the technology we all use and very eager to learn — and help others learn, too. I find that I get energized when I spend time with this community.

Cisco recognizes Champions in the following interest areas:

  • Data Center
  • Collaboration
  • Enterprise Networks
  • Internet of Things
  • Security

With that said, I’m both proud, humbled, and a little nervous to have been named a Cisco Champion for Data Center for my 5th year. Proud because, well, it’s a honor to be selected. Humbled because when I look at the other folks who’ve been selected, I see several folks who I’ve looked up to for a while, and someone has decided that I belong in the same grouping as them. And a little nervous because someone has decided that I belong in the same grouping as these folks — a little concerned about not living up to expectations.

Anyway, thank you Cisco, and congratulations to all the other Cisco Champions, both new and returning!

VMware Names First vExpert Cloud Recipients

On Friday, VMware announced the recipients of their first-ever vExpert Cloud designation. This will be called “vExpert Cloud 2017”.

This is the third specialization added to the long-running vExpert program, after vExpert VSAN and vExpert NSX. Already holding a current vExpert designation is a prerequisite for any of the specialty vExpert programs.

What is a vExpert? Well, in VMware’s own words, they are people who have:

demonstrated significant contributions to the community and a willingness to share their expertise with others. Contributing is not always blogging or Twitter as there are many public speakers, book authors, scriptwriters, VMUG leaders, VMTN community moderators and internal champions

I am very proud to have my name included on this first-ever list of vExpert Cloud recipients. I am humbled and a bit nervous to have my name included on this first-ever list of vExpert Cloud recipients… I feel like I’ve been given something that I now have to earn and live up to.

You can see the full list of 134 VMware vExpert Cloud 2017 designees here.

 

Job Search Successful — I’m Headed to the Cloud

First things first: I want to thank everyone who has followed along and supported me during the recent job search. It’s meant a lot to me to know that I was never really alone during it.

A special thank you to all of you who contacted me and acted as “connectors”, connecting me to people, companies, and job opportunities.

During the search, a few people asked me why I kept mentioning my job search on social media. My answer was always the same — every time I mention the job search, someone new contacts me with ideas, suggestions, or to help connect me to a job opportunity I was previously unaware of. In fact, a tweet about my job search is directly responsible for connecting me to my new job. I’ll do a future blog post with more details about how social media helped my job search.

But, none of that is what you came here to read at the moment. You came here to hear about:

My New Job

I’m very happy to announce that, starting today, I’m joining the team at Virtustream.

For those who aren’t familiar with it, Virtustream is a cloud provider. (And one of the Dell Technologies companies.) Their offerings are designed for enterprises and global IT organizations. While they’re not a “household name” like the “Big Three” in cloud (AWS, Azure, and Google) are, I think Virtustream’s in a great place to get there because of the things that make them different than the Big Three.

The main difference I see is that using any of the Big Three is essentially a do-it-yourself experience. While you can do it all yourself with Virtustream, they also offer a full suite of managed services to choose from. Additionally, they also have offerings specifically built for Enterprises, for Federal, and for Healthcare.

What Will I Be Doing?

In the job posting, the official job title was listed as:

Senior Consultant: Technical Product Marketing

But, yeah, that doesn’t really tell you much about what I’ll actually be doing.

I’ll be in an individual contributor role, working with almost every team within Virtustream to create technical content, both for internal and external use. This will include articles, presentations, white papers, trainings, videos, whiteboards, demos, blog posts, and, well, pretty much any other format that folks would find as an effective way to consume information.

The job looks to be the perfect mix of “everybody already has a good idea of what they need from me” and “go forth to create and define this role for yourself”.

As a big plus, I’ll be getting to work with several folks I’ve known for years now who have not only earned my professional respect, but who I also actually like a lot.

So I’ll still be working with storage and virtualization, but I’ll also be moving that work deeper into the Cloud than I have in the past. Definitely looking forward to it.

Look Who’s Coming to Dell EMC World 2017

It’s official. I’ll be attending Dell EMC World 2017. I’ve been invited to attend on a Media/Analyst pass.

Naturally, I’m excited and looking forward to it. This conference seems to be causing a small amount of confusion for folks who’ve attended past events. Folks who came from the EMC side (I include myself in this group) have to keep correcting themselves when they call it “EMC World”, and folks who came from the Dell side have to keep correcting themselves when they call it “Dell world”.

But “Dell EMC World” it is. I’m looking forward to seeing the joint solutions and how the two technology portfolios are coming together.

A Brief Personal History

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How I’m Using a Mind Map to Keep Track of My Job Search

Folks who’ve known me a while will know I’m a big fan of mind maps. A mind map is a diagram that helps to organize information visually. I know a lot of folks like outlines, and I’ll grant that they have their place, but I’ve always found outlines too structured and too limiting.

Outlines force straight-line, linear, hierarchical thinking. That’s exactly what you want for some things. I know a lot of people who think in a straight line most of the time — I’m just not one of them.

My thinking tends to try to go in multiple directions at once, and I like to figure out how things connect together. Sometimes those connections aren’t straight lines and don’t fit into simple hierarchies. This is where mind maps come in handy.

Plus, with a mind map, I feel like I can get an overview of the “big picture” with a single glance.

Several people have seen me using mind maps as a note-taking tool during brainstorming sessions. I wanted to demonstrate their usefulness as a tracking tool, too, so I figured, why not use my job search as an example (since I’m actually using a mind map to track my search).

If you weren’t aware that I’m currently looking for my next job, please take a moment to read about my job search before continuing with this post.

OK, with that out of the way, let’s dive in. Continue reading

My Interview with Geek Whisperers on Being a Technical Generalist

I had the honor (and fun) of being the guest on the most recent episode of the Geek Whisperers podcast (Episode 129).

I know this will cause my long-time readers to immediately ask two questions:

  1. How is it, exactly, that these folks have managed to do 128 episodes without having you as a guest before now?
  2. Isn’t this episode incredibly timely given your current job search?

I’ll attempt to answer these questions as best I can. Continue reading

Job Search Mode: Engaged!

After five very happy years, I find myself back on the job market. Instead of attempting to take on a new job search entirely on my own (which is exactly what I would have done in the past), I’m looking to grow my “ask for help” muscles by, well, asking for help.

Besides, other folks have a different perspective on both me and the job market than I do — if only because they’re standing somewhere different than I am. Having additional viewpoints might help me find an fantastic opportunity that I might not have otherwise heard of, or might not have considered.

What Happened

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