Agnostic Computing is brand new as tech blogs go, rolled out on a whim in August 2013 just to vent some angst, to wax philosophical on some high technology magic (would you believe my first post was about Sharepoint 2013? Uhhh yeah).
My thinking in starting the site was simple: I wanted to write a blog that was as fun and as passionate as the tech debates my friends & colleagues and I enjoyed at work for years. These are debates that start innocently enough (“Check out my new 1080p Android phone”….or “Do you really buy music from the iTunes store?”) but soon escalate into a 45 minute verbal fisticuffs, where low blows & sucker punches are not only permitted, but encouraged.
The geekier the reference, the harder the punch: “That’s a user interface only the mother of Microsoft bob could love,” “You’re just a sad and broken man because both BeOS & WebOS died and you were the only one who noticed,” or “We can’t trust someone who buys music off iTunes to be able to program a switch.” “You’re acting pretty confident for a guy who broke Exchange just last month.”
Good times. I love those debates, and not just cause the normals don’t get them. They’re genuinely fun, so I set to out to capture a bit of that spirit on this blog, and, I hoped, post some genuinely interesting stuff, like a storage bakeoff between bitter rivals, a sincere, screenshot or gifcam heavy how-to sent from my virtualized stack to your’s, and more.
And so it goes for bloggers, who, like chefs, try a little of this, test a little of that, mix it all up and then taste what’s in the pot. And most of the time, it’s forgettable at best, shame-inducing at worst.
Which makes it all the more surprising for me because apparently I’m doing something right.
You see, I’ve been invited as a delegate to Virtualization Field Day #3. In the Disneyland of High Tech, Silcon Valley, where the combined brainpower is bound to rub off on me, I mean, how can it not?
That’s right. Me. Agnostic Comptuing guy. Going to Enterprise Tech’s Woodstock.
If you don’t know what #VFD is, then you haven’t been paying close enough attention. From all the interviews I’ve heard of delegates from past #Tech Field Days (Storage, Network, Wireless Network…it’s spreading into all our sacred sub-disciplines and dark arts, surely the ERP & SQL guys will be next) going to a TFD as a delegate puts you face to face with the companies, and more importantly, the engineers who designed the stuff you deploy, support, break, fix, and depend on to keep your enterprise running.
Notice I said engineers. Not sales people. Or not just sales people at any rate.
Deep dives, white papers, new horizons opened, the potential to leave behind painful memories of broken processes and old ways of doing things by meeting the other delegates, some of whom I’ve been reading for years…..these are the things I’m looking forward to as a #VFD delegate.
Oh and challenging vendors and discerning which product is the right one for the business, which is among the most important jobs we as IT pros have.
As a former boss of mine put it memorably: “We’re only as good as our vendors.” And he was right: whether the device in your rack is amazing and incredible, or prone to failure, or the service you’ve contracted is game-changing or more trouble than its worth, managing “the stack” and interfacing with the stack builders and stack sellers is important to your success, and the business’ success.
Two of the sponsor firms at this year’s #VFD already have me excited. I just finished buying a Nimble array at work (gamechanger! no regrets!), but I won’t lie: I’m Coho-Curious. And Atlantis Computing: sharp guys, A++++ on the blogs, would read again, eager to hear about the products.
Thanks to the GestaltIT group (Add them to your RSS feed stat!) for the invite and be sure to check back here -as well as the other delegates’ blogs- for some #VFD thoughts in the weeks ahead.
Wilson.tech 
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