My last trip took me to the VCE Boston office for a customer meeting and EBC.

Since taking a global role I’ve been spending a lot of time meeting with customers around the world. Sometimes that involves travel and using Cisco TelePresence. The use of Cisco TelePresence is a lot less wear and tear on your life and I’ve been fortunate enough to enjoy such global sessions with Singapore, Tokyo, Sydney, etc… and back in the US it makes it easy to be everywhere and anywhere at just about anytime people are awake.

I’m very fortunate to be working for VCE at a crucial time in the growth of the company. It’s good to take a step back and look at where you’ve been and look ahead to where you will be.

Here are few of the photos I’ve snapped while visiting Singapore, Tokyo, London, and Sydney.

In between these trips I’ve been all over the US too and it’s only May.

I hope to visit with customers in Brazil and Israel later this year. It’s been 10 years since I’ve been back to both but I’m looking forward to seeing Rio and Tel Aviv again soon.

After providing over a dozen regular VCE updates every 30 days (or so… oops!) I’ve noted the difficulty of pointing to materials or opining on materials without breaking embargoes or stealing thunder going into major VCE and/or VCE parent company announcements.

But hey… that’s cool. This place is awesome. I’ll just blog about other stuff or I’ll just keep tweeting and posting YouTube videos ;-)

Looking Back. Looking Forward.

When I joined VCE in 2010, for a brief moment in time, I had met or interacted with just about everyone in the company by early 2011. That was easy when you had a few hundred folks more or less located in a few places, regular WebEx/TelePresence cadences, and a goal to grow like mad. Good times!

Of course, today we are a much larger group of folks and span the entire globe. I’m not new to hyper growth but still… what a ride. When I would tell folks about this little startup company called VCE they would ask who the investors were and if we were growing. I’d mention Cisco, EMC, VMware, and Intel and that we were growing.

(This is usually when they just stare at me and say) ”Startup, eh? Sounds like an already running!”

Now, one of the common questions I get is “Who are you hiring and where are you hiring?”

My response is also common: “People that want to ride the rocket! Everywhere!“

Selfishly, I want everyone to find their inner Unicorn Jockey but presently the listings are being filled and/or created faster than the import processes published online. For example, if you’ve ever looked around for VCE on Linkedin in the jobs section you’ll notice that many of the listings are “red hot” now. What do I mean?

A recent VCE jobs posting in Research Triangle Park, NC on Linkedin looks like this:

Again, that’s just one example though. So, let’s take a look at who we are looking for and where we are looking.

Generally speaking, the following roles come up often when I think of the team and where we are growing:

• Software Engineers
• Implementation Architects
• Client Solutions Directors
• Customer Advocates
• Account Managers
• vArchitects

For example, in the Americas you’ll see roles where we have our larger offices

• Dallas (HQ)
• Boston
• Research Triangle Park, NC
• Santa Clara
• London
• Cork

As you might expect, VCE is also growing teams globally so there are listings at various locations around the world

• Singapore
• Bangalore
• Sydney
• Tokyo
• Sao Paulo
• Phoenix
• San Francisco
• Washington DC
• New York
• Los Angeles
• Hamburg
• Munich
• Frankfurt
• Stockholm
• Paris
• Switzerland

Here’s a snippet similar to my last post over at Hacker News on the topic:

VCE is always looking for developers with a passion for accelerating the adoption of converged infrastructure that is simple, effective, and always available. We have developers shipping stuff that is already making huge impact in datacenters around the world and we are growing those teams aggressively. The keyword soup is spec docs, object models, class diagrams, state flows, Subversion, Jenkins, Agile/Scrum, ESB, Hadoop, Pig, Puppet, Chef, Java, C, C++, Perl, Python, RESTful, XML, GWT, iPhone, iPad, etc… etc… So, if you want to get an inside leg or if you have any questions drop me a note and your CV at jay.cuthrell@vce.com Subject: HN
(if you get an OOO response don’t worry I’ll reply)

Better late than never: My SxSW 20212 Report lnkd.in/-UewhZ

— Jay Cuthrell (@qthrul) April 7, 2012

I actually placed this in Google+ (link at the end) but figured I should get around to putting it here at some point. That point in time is now.

SxSW 2012

I was on the fence about going to SxSW again if I’m being completely honest with myself. Why was I on the fence? Partly it is due to the cost. When I say cost is not really about the money — I saved up for this. Rather, it’s the cost of drifting away of the dreamy experience I had in 2008.

That it is SxSW. That cost is the cost of fond memories. The last thing I wanted to be is the guy that says “oh, it was so much better back when” and I’m not saying that at all. I’m just saying it is drifting away from what I expected or anticipated it might be.

Does it matter? No.

SxSW, like anything in life, can be exactly what you make of it. The SxSW experience need not have a badge, hotel, etc… it can be entirely couch surfing or entirely corporate funded Spring Break with hookers, blow, and the whole shooting match. Where you fit on the end points is a determination worthy of pause and careful consideration.

I’ve already run into the people I was expecting to see. I’ve already had a chance to see other brand new people coming in with wide eyed enthusiasm. I’ve had free drinks. I’ve had free food. I’ve slept well. I’ve enjoyed my vacation.

The 6 or maybe 7 sessions I attended in their entirety were ones I wanted to attend out the hundreds offered by the schedule that only SxSW can put together. The sheer depth of the catalog is dizzying… until you look closely. Closer examination would should that there is simply more heft per category. Curious about those? Here: schedule.sxsw.com/2012/user_events/user_39361

I’ve worn a suit this week to offset how I’ve dressed at prior SxSW — see also: sloppy. A suit? Yes. That’s right. I’ve dressed like this was a professional conference. Oh, the looks you’ll get in a suit. Did I anticipate that? Of course.

I’ve already seen Bruce Sterling — in a futurist and historian solo talk respectively. This is considered to be an omen of being part of the right tracks for me. You see, the latest UX/UI machinations of a startup that won’t survive (reality folks) to see the next SxSW isn’t exactly my cup of tea. And going to anything like this is about finding your cup of tea. By the way, I don’t drink cups of tea.

Parties are truthfully the one thing I’ve avoided this year and I’ve been nice and sober my entire stay. I’ve been able to observe. I’ve been able to articulate my thoughts. I’ve also been able to avoid standing in lines for an hour in hopes that something cool is inside once I get there. From experience, the cool is where you are standing. You can be your own party no matter where you go… just add people. The booze is entirely within the YMMV arena.

As an aside, Hilton Hotels & Resorts just dropped off a fruit bowl and water for me as a gesture of the key card issues I’ve had this week. Class act all the way. Hand signed note. NOT A TWEET. Hand signed note. Seriously.

I’ve been asked what parties I’m most excited to go to. I’m really not excited about any parties. I’ve been there. I’ve done that. Has a new form of booze been invented? No? Okay, I’m good then.

I’m turning 40 this year. I’m not saying I’m starting to act my age but perhaps, just perhaps, I’m starting to act like myself (again).

(side note: The fact that I’m able to reference both Bruce Sterling Hilton Hotels & Resorts in a Google Plus posting is glorious present / future dissonance) plus.google.com/110357001884194145645/posts/PcZzdzs12tq

See how VCE builds and delivers the market-leading Vblock Infrastructure Platform. Watch how VCE takes many components and builds the Vblock platform into a fully integrated piece of converged infrastructure ready for delivery to the customer’s doorstep. by VCEcomputing

If you are attending SxSW and use the SxSocial service my profile is at this lovely URL: sxsocial.sxsw.com/users/39361

@Percival #prediction a changing of the guards for SxSW, new folks outweigh regulars, 50% less binge drinking, 50% more badgeless options

— Jay Cuthrell (@qthrul) February 25, 2012

For those of you doing math at home, SxSW 2012 is my fifth SxSW. It all started with tacos.

For those of you following me, my tweets from March 8-14 will 100% SxSW vacation powered. plancast.com/qthrul You. Have. Been. Warned.

— Jay Cuthrell (@qthrul) March 5, 2012

I’ll be adding notes here or in another post as they come to me. I’m really excited to see folks speaking from Cisco, EMC, and VMware this year at SxSW.

In addition, there are some selections I’ve already made just based on the buzz and synopsis portions of the fancy new SxSW schedule builder. For an idea of what I’m going to attempt to attend here’s a small preview from my personal SxSW schedule builder:

My SXSW schedule so far… schedule.sxsw.com/2012/user_even… What is yours?

— Jay Cuthrell (@qthrul) March 3, 2012

This year I’m only going to be attending SxSW Interactive from March 8-14. Again, I will be out of office and soaking up the knowledge and connections that only SxSW can provide. So, wait… why do I do this each year?

First, I try to make myself scarce and truly disconnect from work during this pilgrimage — and this is a relative function of business of course. When I was a consultant prior to joining VCE, SxSW was where I closed deals. I expect this trend can continue as VCE focuses on PaaS and SaaS markets. SPs today are already dipping their toes into innovation centers and SxSW is where a lot of those ideas are spawned. You get to talk with these folks at SxSW — often over beers, tacos, or people that have fallen over from too many beers and tacos.

Second, I hope to visit the SP and SaaS companies as I did in 2011, 2010, 2009, and 2008. Many of these companies invited me to their panels at various trade events (great times for an all things Vblock chat eh?). In a nutshell, you’ll see various SP’s attending and an update on the latest SaaS and technology envelope plays. SxSW is about the absolute edge of the envelope for cloudy type stuff. Getting to hang out with folks that are the applications leadership/development teams and letting solid connections form is rewarding, fun, and why I’m here.

Third, this is about visibility. This year there are SxSW speakers from EMC, VMware and Cisco. While I won’t be speaking, I’ll be attending interactive panels, discussions, and be skating along with others where the puck will be. That’s my plan. I’m sticking to it. At least until I get a DM about breakfast tacos.

UPDATE March 12, 2012: plus.google.com/110357001884194145645/posts/PcZzdzs12tq

Since my last update there have been a number of developments on personal and professional fronts. Most of this post was done tapping away on my laptop somewhere over the Atlantic Ocean. Or maybe it was the Pacific Ocean. Either way, it occurred to me that if I don’t put this down in writing I’ll wonder what I was thinking when I look back on this time.

First, I am now Uncle Jay. When I typed up this post I had not met my niece since I’ve been traveling non-stop for work. I knew almost immediately when she was born. I’ve seen her in photos. The way I found out was through the wonder of globally compatible mobile telecommunications networks supporting the SMS, MMS, and IP stacks that allowed my iPhone to allow me to be party to the event — albeit virtually. Thanks Cloud! Now that we’ve met it is safe to say that I’m looking forward to even greater duties as Uncle Jay.

Second, since my last update I’ve been hopping around the world in my new global role at VCE. This includes hops to Sydney Australia and London England with stateside visits in the middle Boston and Atlanta. My brain is holding up well considering the potential for jet lag. Partly, this is due to planning ahead so that 24-48 hours before these trips I’ve adjusted my own hours to map to the destination.

Third, while I feel healthy, I’m still concerned about my weight and realize that I have to change up my patterns and work tendencies. Seating on domestic flights is a reminder that I’m taking up far more than my required share of what this world has to offer. Knowing many folks around me in my age bracket having health issues is a wake up call as well. I need to pay myself first and get past this.

And so a pattern emerges

My travel has been draining but it is required for what VCE and VCE customers demand — excellence. It’s fair to say that all the naysayers, haters, and pundits are a bit shocked by just what VCE has accomplished in such a short time.

Being on the inside there is a certain amount of reflection I can make going back to 2010. Fast forward to the present and there are still a great many more things to refine, hone, and fashion into the precision operation this global transformation requires.

Within the industry, there are alignments taking place. You can see this when you see a strategic pairing of companies to address a perceived market demand. By definition, technology is the response to a perceived need whereas science is that which explains and predicts with periodic refinement through the vetting and promotion of paradigms.

Within this model of delivering readily consumable services, platforms, and infrastructure that most folks call cloud there is a clear pattern emerging. This pattern is increasingly regular and repeatable.

Rugs and Carpets

If you’ve ever marveled at the elegance and unique qualities of a oriental rug you know they are complex and beautiful. They are highly prized hand crafted works of art to many and they are associated with a sense of style — perhaps a style that is timeless in nature.

On the other hand, the modern technology that has brought about a wide world of carpeting means that anyone can cover the largest imaginable plate in a seemingly endless footprint. The difference here being the look is an emphasis on uniformity and consistency that can be replicated and applied in a variety of situations. Unique traffic resilience adds to the longevity of the solution but with an understanding that newer carpets can always be easily put into service as whims and budgets allow.

And still… there are carpet remnants that can cover just enough of a floor. What an amazing set of choices one has available in these modern times.

The Installers Have Arrived

There is a jingle I recall from my childhood diet of cable television: Five Eight Eight… Two. Three Hundred… Empiiiiiiiire. With all apologies to Queensryche fans, the Empire jingle is one I can hear in my mind even now as I type the word.

What I like to think about when it comes to Vblock is the realization of ubiquitous workload substrate. Just roll them in like carpet. Then arrange whatever workload on the Vblock you want. Mix and match those workloads. Shift them around like so much furniture to find your Feng Shui arrangement of applications and changing demands.

Here’s the thing…

I love Plancast.

I have used Plancast hundreds if not thousands of times. Even for my own personal Plancast I use it a lot (over 200 Plancast events so far) because I travel a lot. In fact, I presently have 14 events on my Plancast for 2012. plancast.com/qthrul

To put it simply, Plancast is a serendipity service. Serendipity is my top use case.

For example…

When I go out to the West coast there is always something plancasted (verb?) that I can isolate and refine as evening events to consider. So many people put up event content there that I am bound to find something to occupy my evenings.

SxSW is an annual pilgrimage for me. This year I am doing another pre-SxSW 2012 meal in Austin and posted this: plancast.com/p/7p87/lunch-50-pre-sxsw-meetup where I invited a few people I knew might be interested. Now there are more than a dozen that are showing up organically. How cool is that?

You see… I’ve tried upcoming, meetup, eventbrite, facebook, random startups doing similar things, etc… Unfortunately, each one tends to be a silo that makes event discovery a bit of a chore or simply a closed environment to itself.

Plancast makes it easy for me to just select a city and see what has been created or imported from these other services. I allow Plancast to consume all these other services so that I can have one easy to share stream of planned events and activities. And yet…

Wisdom of the (M)asses

I scrolled down to the comments (never scroll down to the comments) on the primary TechCrunch article and noted a listing of critiques. In no specific order or weighting:

Lacking:

• Personal brand account or Event Series account to share events
• Integration with Facebook
• Calendar separation and sharing
• Mobile support
• Business model
• No Maybe or Share options
• Vertical integration to shorten event registrations

General:

• Didn’t listen to users (no idea what this means)
• Difficult to search for and add events
• Competes with Facebook
• Should suggest who to follow (SUL)
• You should be more like [insert spamvertized other startup URL]

Here’s the thing… even if you were to digest all of this with an insightful eye there would still be the elephant in the room: Facebook. If you pull back and look at the summaries, most of the comments digest down to saying a consumer web startup service should be more like Facebook. Yet, if that was the case — if we all had Facebook — would there be any consumer web startups? Fascinating.

So, I’ll repeat again: Never scroll down to the comments.

Hello 2012. Let’s rip the cover off this one!

Today begins my two week experiment of life without public social media.

Say what!??

No Twitter. No Foursquare. No Google Plus. No Instagram. No Path. No Linkedin. No Tumblr. No Flipboard. No Flickr. No YouTube. No TinyReview. No LiveJournal. No Diaspora. No… you get the picture.

(I’m not leaving Facebook out… I just don’t use it.)

Okay. Now what?

Instead of using public social media resources, I’ll be focused on 100% behind the corporate firewall(s), CIDR restricted, Shib/PL/RSA/etc. protected and otherwise Enterprise only class forms of private and hybrid social media.

What I’ve noticed now that I get to interact daily with a decidedly non-public facing non-publically consumable stream of raw sensitive information is this:

Tightly aligned, low friction, reasonably secured sharing is key.

Requiring a dozen or more places to consume/share/interact is tantamount to making busy people just move on without you.

What does private and hybrid social media look like?

• Cisco
  • Cisco Quad
  • Cisco WebEx
  • Cisco Jabber
• VMware
  • VMware Socialcast
  • VMware SlideRocket
• EMC
  • EMC Blogs
  • EMC Documentum

(and some other VCE specific fun stuff that I cannot link to for what are hopefully obvious reasons…)

Tune in again after January 14th, 2012 and I’ll share my findings.

I’m on vacation today. Yes, it’s awesome. I even got to play Beer Santa!

After dropping off some holiday cheer, I scrolled through my Twitter stream and I came across a tweet from Kevin Kelling aka @BlueShiftBlog regarding a cloud article. Interestingly, the article was from… Wired. Yes. Wired. Yes. That Wired.

Over the River and Through the Woods to Cloud Computing We Go

In the Wired article by @jonst0kes (with a 0) there are references to Moore’s Law, workloads, bursty things, and that demmed elusive Pimpernel… the public cloud. You should check it out too.

We’re going to be seeing cloud taken apart in a lot more consumer web blogs and non-traditional IT coverage blogs now. What is yet to be determined in all things cloud is the level of dismantling and elemental economic review associated with the latest consumer device being dissected with a running tally of part costs via kit alone.

SPOILER: It’s not always about just the kit.

Having read through this article a few times (it has paragraphs and stuff) I have determined I need to write a blog post. Yes. Friday Fudge style.

The Dude

Something has been bothering me about cloud computing for two years now

Me too man. It’s like a new shirt that you forgot to wash and it is really scratchy. Annoying, am I right? It’s also like when people try to compare the credit card pay as you go bring your own chaos monkey (BYOCM) service to one where you enter into a workload tuned SLA backed contract with performance penalty clauses.

The Villain

Cloud services don’t drop drastically in price the way that transistors do

If only we can keep people thinking the cloud is synonymous with INCREASINGLY FREE BEER! Then our trap will have been successful! Yes, please assume that everyone and everything fits into the generic public cloud! Let’s be sure to make it seem that statements made on a stage regarding software applications younger than 1 year old adequately represent what 99.9% of all companies on the planet do today across all their lines of business ARE COMPLETELY LOGICAL AND WITHOUT FLAW. It is perfectly reasonable to just speak in absolutes and subscribe to hyperbole!

The Biker

The problem arises when the overlap between what the public cloud supplies and what a customer needs is fairly narrow.

Look man… this cloud stuff is going to be about a lot of things over the next 3-4 years but what it won’t be about is a specific reference to any single infrastructure company or player. We’re in the early days. Just like this consumer web thing that spawned 10429 ways to share photos and post it to Twitter, Facebook, and a zillion other places — saying we don’t need another photo sharing app doesn’t mean we need don’t need another cloud company. We just need to know which ride is our ride right now and which ride is our ride tomorrow… and how much it would cost to add some bichin’ spider lights.

The Barber

The downside to the “outsourced heavy lifting” aspect of cloud comes when you don’t have a whole lot of heavy lifting to do, at which point you’re subsidizing someone else’s heavy lifting.

The weather is a funny thing you know? Just looking back a year ago it seemed like nobody was going to contain what cloud was and wasn’t. Now, it seems we are all bent on sticking cloud into a box. Hah! No pun intended! I tell ya… one thing is for sure — there is going to be clouds. Big. Small. Tall. Short. Fat. Skinny. Decaf. All of it is good. All of it is disruptive. It’s not so much about the horse race but where the primary race venues are to be found: locally, regionally, nationally, and internationally… and the entry fees.

The Bland

companies are much more excited by private and hybrid cloud models than they are about the public cloud

Pundits will continue to isolate and refine specific definitions and attempt to draw on historical trends as a basis for extrapolation — often in a contrived zero sum game. This is not new. What is new is the creative destruction of what has previously been an accepted method of satisfying workload requirements — dedicated one off silos of physical infrastructure. So while the notion of a service provider might sound quaint or Orwellian depending on your point of view, the end goal of the enterprise team both large and small is to do more with less and increase satisfaction to the end user. That means moving towards internal service provider models and making things happen in ways end users often think of as being available only externally. In fact, it can be both and we’re on a road that takes us there.

holidaze © by qthrul

After sending out individual tweets for each and every job posting it occurred to me that a summary might make more sense when there are more than a couple of job postings. Today I was asking around and sure enough the latest bunch is live on Linkedin.

What you’ll notice in the list below are only from Linkedin. There are more on vce.com/careers but I’ve not yet figured out how to deep link to those (annoying!). Thankfully, the new HOT JOBS section is giving me hope ;-).

So here are the highlights for the Americas and EMEA teams:

Senior Performance Engineer – VCE Application Solutions Engineering
VCE – “Santa Clara, CA” – Dec 6, 2011

Senior Software Engineering Manager
VCE – San Francisco Bay Area – Dec 6, 2011

Principal Product Manager
VCE – San Francisco Bay Area – Dec 6, 2011

Senior Software Engineer (Web UI and Front-end Engineer)
VCE – Santa Clara, CA – Dec 6, 2011

Principal Solutions Engineer
VCE – “Santa Clara, CA” – Dec 6, 2011

Vblock Systems Architect
VCE – “San Jose, CA” – Dec 6, 2011

Business Operations Analyst
VCE – “Marlborough, MA” “Richardson, TX” – Dec 6, 2011

Senior EMC Storage Implementation Specialist
VCE – “Frankfurt or Munich Germany” – Dec 5, 2011

Senior Support Engineer – LEVEL 3 (Virtualization or Networking)
VCE – “Cork Ireland” – Dec 5, 2011

If any of these spots look interesting to you just drop me a note, leave a comment here, or ping me on Twitter.

QTHRUL.MUXTAPE.COM © by qthrul

I have heard folks from time to time talk about Evernote or reference It in passing in their social streams. Yet, I don’t recall using it or even kicking the tires. The horror.

What prompted this experiment? Oddly enough, it was ifttt.com and the listing of supported channels. One of the channels as you might have guessed is Evernote.

I also noticed my email style has looked more like Markdown since starting with VCE. That might be due to the need to reference things or the volume of information a particular email can contain.

So much for #noemail ;-)

On another front I am trying to pull together more content for fudge.org and bristled at using something that was WordPress specific — it all tends to suffer from myopic application goals IMHO. So, Evernote seems like it a might be what I am looking for. It is notes — everywhere!

My dream scenario is create Markdown as notes in Evernote in a blog notebook and then use a plugin or series of plugins to pull RSS into fudge.org and render the markdown. I might have that wrong in ordering but that is my plan for now until I reach a failure.

Right now my ifttt.com recipes are more around social sharing tools that are image oriented. I have been concerned that all these twitter tweeted pics on services like twitpic are lost to the sands of random downtime or worse… Unavailable for capture at all.

One of the cool things I use lately is ifttt so that I can automate things like posting more info about an Instagram (or Path!) post with a foursquare check-in that becomes a post on fudge.org almost immediately. Longer term I will want to make this an agent running on fudge.org but this is my lazy proof of concept. Sorry if my stream has been odd today. ;-)

Btw if you plan to try this just know that the caption is cut off after 140 chars since Twitter is the lowest common denominator.

Also, I posted this from my iPhone for maximum lulz.

Yeah, you need new business cards — A peer of mine 4 or 5 titles ago

You’ve perhaps seen me at events or seen my content in other places or on my public blog or Twitter, etc… and that’s been great. What I’ve lacked in frequency here on the old bloggity blog I hope to make up for soon… starting by purposely NOT doing a 2011 Recap/Top Stories/Year in Review.

So, here’s the double redacted pseudo-cryptic secret spilled finally about what I’m doing now… (Hint: It’s the title of this post)

I’m hoping to be around these parts a bit more now in my new (slightly more formalized) role as Evangelist for strategic sales in Global Service Providers (SP) and Systems Integrators (SI) at VCE. This is my sixth or seventh title within VCE but it’s always been a part of my day to day duties. I’m still as passionate as ever about helping companies realize the dream of ubiquitous workload substrates in their datacenters: Vblock Infrastructure Platforms.

So… What’s new?

For 2012 (and frankly right now!) the following areas are where I’ll focus for the Vblock ecosystem:

• VCE Strategic Accounts
• VCE Executive Briefing Center (EBC), Cisco EBC, EMC EBC, VMware EBC, and VCE Technology Alliance Partner EBC
• VCE Customer Advisory Board
• Speaking and representing VCE for SP/SI events with VCE Marketing
• Champion for SP/SI specific initiatives

Put another way… I get to put on hats of many shapes and sizes working with the most amazing teams one could ask for.

• Evangelist for strategic sales in SP/SI with VCE Strategic Accounts customer meetings
• Representative for strategic sales along side VCE Corporate Engineering (seriously… uber mega rockstars galore) at EBCs, CABs, etc.
• Speaking and representing VCE for SP/SI at public events through VCE Marketing at trade shows, road shows, etc.
• Embed with Cisco, EMC, VMware teams in SP/SI specific offerings such as VMDC, PMDC, HCS, UC, Puppet, NMS, SAP, Cloud Foundry, etc.
• Collaborate with VCE Technology Alliance Partners on SP/SI specific offerings from APPTIO, ASTARO, CA TECHNOLOGIES, COLLABNET, INFOBLOX, INFORMATICA, LIQUIDWARE LABS, NIMSOFT, SAS, SCIENCELOGIC, UNIDESK, VISUAL NETWORK SYSTEMS, XANGATI, etc.
• Create SP/SI specific social media content like this blog and other internal blogs, Twitter, YouTube, SlideRocket, Google+, Friendster, etc.

That sounds like a lot of stuff and overuse of etc. so what do you bring to the table?

Do you need someone from VCE that has been around a while and gets it? I’ve been with VCE for well over a year. That makes me 85 years old in VCE years. I get it. I know a bunch more like me…. WE get it.

Do you need the goto place for something that is VCE or Vblock specific? Ping me. I’ll get it for you or find someone smarter that will. One stop shopping. Fast and easy delivery. Hmm… that sounds FAMILIAR.

Yeah, but what we need is X, Y, Z, and… and… and…

Whatever it is… We’re going to figure this out and we’re going to make it happen.

GAMEON!!!

Oh yeah… new .sig file

Jay Cuthrell - Evangelist and Lead Principal vArchitect
Systems Integrators and Service Provider Sales
VCE vce.com
Mobile: +1-919-395-8747 Email: jay.cuthrell@vce.com
Twitter: @qthrul Blog: fudge.org

We’re in the stone age right now — but we can’t stop trying to reach the bronze age while dreaming of the iron age.

As I type up this blog entry I’m in Montana and it feels like home away from home. Next up is a visit to VCE HQ in Dallas for customer meetings. If all goes as planned, I’ll get home to North Carolina just in time for Thanksgiving.

Before Montana it was Las Vegas for CA World. Before Las Vegas it was Silicon Valley and the Bay Area for customer meetings and Cloud Expo. Before that it was Philadelphia for customer meetings and really really good bacon.

Thirty days ago I was typing up my My First Year at VCE where I highlighted all my travels before heading to Philadelphia. Do you sense a theme?

Round Round Get Around

Something occurred to me in those moments while I was on flights that don’t (yet) have WiFi on them. I’d like to share that but not in the sense of it being a grand epiphany but more in the way writing something down can free up space and time for more thoughts.

It is easy to confuse enhancement with innovation.

Let me explain…

For months, I had planned on being in Raleigh for Internet Summit. Once again, I found myself traveling in the other direction. Duty calls. Still, I couldn’t help but notice folks on Twitter putting together connections even as I was heading the other way.

When I reflected on this connectivity I felt the pang of missing something. If only I could have gone — then I would have found something… But wait. Why did I need to be at an event to find something?

Only then at 37k feet was it clearer to me: It’s not about the technology, the demos, the networking functions — it’s about the people you run across and the conversations. Your assumptions are challenged from time to time. You are forced outside your comfort zones on subject matter, depth, details, and most importantly…

Direction

Direction? Yes. It’s become more apparent over my time in this land of all things cloud that the direction of the wind is only interesting if you are fashioning a sail. Put another way, if you are in any place where networks, compute, and storage are where you hang your hat — it’s going to be harder and harder to explain why your particular brand of wind is better wind than another brand. Also, the cold wind is drastically different than what passes today in the hot air category.

In the past few weeks I’ve read tech website articles and blog entries that make me wonder if the people that wrote them, frankly, get it. I’ve known for years that general writing on the Internet is subject to all the things that make literature fans cringe — and I don’t consider myself immune to those critiques — but that ultimately translate to eyeballs, views, etc… yes, linkbait. But this isn’t about linkbait but a fundamental lack of understanding what is happening or the subject matter being discussed.

I mention this because there is a function in play where coverage of enhancement for the sake of ‘me too’ or to simply weigh in on the minutiae. You can call it reporting. You can also call it a repurposing of mostly formed content for the sake of attaining a cadence or quota in article creation. FEED THE MACHINE.

Setting aside the notion that the articles have to be written under a deadline, what else might explain this lack of truly meaty content?

TL;DR

Simple. Such a small word. We crave simple. We want simple. This post started with a desire to update folks on what I have been up to in VCE. If you made it this far then I can assure you that the time I spend in VCE is in seeking to make everything simple.

Making something truly simple is innovation. Making something simpler is enhancement.

This is why I love to talk with developers that have never built their own physical server (Hint: they are on the rise) because they are often shocked at the notion of anyone caring about infrastructure. BORING. But it is important to be clear that these developers are overwhelmingly found at consumer web oriented events and represent a sample set. One might argue the developers are creating things that are never seen publicly or that exist in areas far away from that of the consumer web.

If you read Hacker News and Techmeme then ask yourself how often you see articles about SSD, Ethernet, FCoE, virtualization, CPU speed, etc… etc… if you haven’t been reading those sites — maybe you should start.

Parents tell me about how their children will instinctively touch screens on TVs like they do with iPads. Wasn’t the iPhone just training wheels for the iPad which was training wheels for the whatever comes next? Now, ask yourself the last time you considered what was below the covers on an application you used. Remember those breathing/scrubbing machines in the Matrix — nobody remembered why or how it worked — it just worked.

So, in terms of where things are going — the direction — it is much more about what sits on top of the stack and what is afforded than the elements that make up the stack. As such, there is going to be a struggle for where the tools, techniques, and namespace of what is old hat or passe in the consumer web world being placed on a collision course for demand for innovation.

It was much better than Cats.

There are plenty of companies we use today that we are not aware of or cognizant of in any way. If you sat back and searched for the term it might come to you but I’ll go ahead and spell it out: Service Providers.  Moreover, we’re only aware of them when they expose themselves when what they provide isn’t there or disrupts an experience.

Dropped call/SMS/MMS?

Upload failed?

Browser timeout?

Fail Whale?

Stalled UI?

The only way that the Internet can have more cat photos more of the time is to ensure that everything is in working order all of the time. To accomplish this it will require everything to be simple.

My Other Datacenter is a Vblock

Right now there are teams of people within companies large and small that are toiling and stressing over how to stack up servers, what goes into servers, where the storage is connected, and how the network will wrap it all together. Why? They want to do something.

All of the infrastructure has to be there BEFORE you are able to do something. It has to be in the position where it fades away and leaves the possibilities. For developers at consumer web startup companies, this is why they both love and hate what passes today for public cloud services. They love getting up and running almost immediately. They hate the caveats and limitations that currently exist. It’s yes, but…

Now imagine that companies of all shapes and sizes will want to have startup like speed for the things they care to move beyond a culture of defaults. They want to find service providers that can provide the private cloud experience. They want to know they get premium service and that their service provider understands what matters to the company and the developers within the company. It’s yes, and…

Each time I see a Vblock go into service I am profoundly aware that this is where unleashing innovation begins and makes it a more yes, and… world.

“We eat change for breakfast, lunch, dinner, and snacks in between” – VCE team ethos

A year ago today was my first day at VCE.

I’m looking back briefly because it is already time to look ahead. The past year has been about immersion in a deep sea of change at a company forging a culture — and what I firmly believe is the way forward for an entire industry.

Without a doubt, my time so far at VCE has been marked by change. Change in names, titles, processes, methodologies… changing planes, changing rooms, changing cars… ;-)

But seriously, the majority of change fall into a category of continuous improvement. If you’ve ever read about or worked with minimum viable concepts or been around a startup you’ll appreciate what I mean by change.

There are a lot of ways to track just how far things have come in the year I’ve been here. Many of the teams I’ve worked with here are veterans of VCE and prior. So, I keep reminding myself I’ve only been here for a year. Someone called me an ‘old timer’ this morning. Perhaps it is time to invest in some ‘Just For Men’ for my goatee?

Also, this blog has been talking about VCE for over a year now. What I blog about is less about the speeds, feeds, or anything that is related to what goes into a Vblock — and more about what goes into VCE.

What goes into VCE is the best talent I’ve worked with in my career.

You know that saying about what it means if you are the smartest person in the room? (p.s. it means you are in the wrong room ) Well, in my estimation, I’m very much in the right room and at the right time.

As I write this post I’m in Dallas for a visit to VCE HQ. We’ve come a long way from the Pizza Hut where I showed up for my first day of training. You can’t make this stuff up… It writes itself.

By this time tomorrow I’ll be in Silicon Valley. I’m looking forward to attending the Cloud Mafia Meetup. Next week I’m really looking forward to seeing New Orleans when I get to speak at the Cloud Services Summit.

And now… a subject near and dear to my heart…

Wanted: Software Badasses

Locally, I’m happy to see the VCE team in Research Triangle Park, NC growing and changing to reflect “where the puck is headed” for you hockey fans. So, I’ll be signing off on this post by highlighting two local spots we’re hiring for aggressively in software engineering: Software Engineers and Software QA Test Engineers.  What will these folks be doing and working on exactly?

Orchestration. Orchestration. Orchestration. Orchestration.

Orchestration software builds on ITIL best practices and disciplines, which define consistent, repeatable processes (or just-enough-ITIL if you like moderation in unicorns, rainbows, and lone wolves). It’s nice to know what you did on Monday is something you can do again on Friday. It’s even nicer knowing what you did was done to a level of satisfaction beyond a field in a database being toggled. It gets really amazing when you can tap against an API and get down and dirty on a command line AND have the option of ripping through a good enough GUI (or efficiently rolling your own).

Want to get your OAM&P/OSS/BSS on? Holler!

Orchestration is far more than automating processes, adopting new management software, provisioning, configuration management, charge-back/billing, mediation, security, disaster recovery, operational support, and so on or making the transition to a lights out data center. You might say that orchestration is really what everything that you’d want to know is there and that most users assume already IS there. If your software developers and the stuff you use that comes from software developers is increasingly agile… it just makes sense to expect that the depth it sits upon should be just as agile.

So again… check out the Software Engineers and Software QA Test Engineers listings and ping me if you have any questions or want to send your CV/resume over to jay.cuthrell at vce.com

“Our goal is to become an internal service provider” — VMworld visitor to the VCE booth

Since my last update on all things VCE (has it really been 330 days?) there are few areas more visible than VMworld 2011 taking place in Las Vegas. More on that later…

Travel Updates

The travel these past 30 days was much less intense for me. I attribute this to the alignment changes within teams to help keep folks from heading West to go East. That is a very welcome change.

Working from RTP means being able to use WebEx and TelePresence vs. the wear and tear of travel. I’d specifically like to thank the other vArchitects (you know who you are!) that covered meetings local to their geo and helped keep folks like me from living out of hotels, rental cars, and airplanes. Truly. THANK YOU!

In fact, if you follow my Plancast you’ll note I only took two trips in this span of time which included VMworld 2011 in Las Vegas. Not too shabby considering my prior nomadic ways! Of course, this week I’ll be heading out on the road again for customer visits… always a good reason! :)

VMworld 2011: Bigger Than Ever

Of course what most folks want to know about when I get back from a trip like VMworld is… VMworld. Frankly, this might be boring to you if you are expecting what session I enjoyed the most of what lab I found to be totally amazing. But read on….

Why? Well, I spent most of my time with customers that have Vblocks and companies that want Vblocks. :)

I did booth duty and the VCE booth for VMworld 2011 was nothing short of a powerhouse offering. Demos. Demos. Demos. Demos. The stories around FastPath and AlwaysOn were not only popular but timely. When the visitor to your booth describes your solution as what they want it doesn’t get any better than that.

We’re going to need a bigger boat booth…

I also did customer advisory meetings in addition to one on one breakouts during VMworld. This gave me a chance to really listen closely to what is working, what could be better, and get feedback on where things are going. Being able to sit down and hear Vblock stories is always treat.

When I wasn’t in the quiet and calm of the customer meetings away from the show floor, the traffic on the VCE booth was, in a word, INSANE. I know that VMware as a whole was larger this year but still… amazing numbers.

I decided to look back at my blog post for VMworld 2010 and see how things were holding up there. What a great time that was. I’m looking forward to VMworld 2012 being in San Francisco again. Amazing location. You can actually go outside. ;-)

In terms of contrasts from VMworld 2010 to VMworld 2011 what you can see is that last year I was clearly experiencing VMworld vs. being the experience. It’s an interesting change in perspective to say the least. Both are rewarding and I’m fortunate to have seen it from both.

In the company of rock stars

Before VMworld started I was able to participate in and avoid serious bodily injury while raising money for a good cause playing v0dgeball. Good times indeed.

In between and after my customer meetings at VMworld I was fortunate enough to be included on some of the lighter fare and events with fellow bloggers and luminaries of the cloud and virtualization world — many of them are the prolific ones you’ve probably got loaded in your RSS reader. These are truly the giants.

RESPECT YO!

One such event found me sitting in for a quick update from Brian Gracely, Nicholas Weaver, and Steve Kaplan on all things VMworld 2011 US for the Cisco Daily Blogger Techminute.

Brian immediately sets the tone in this one ;-) I can’t wait to see what Nick pulls out of his hat next. Also, Steve really hits it on the head when he says “elevate the discussions and be more strategic”. That’s something I think we could all do more of in this space.

Brian Gracely (Cisco, Cloud Evangelist) leads a discussion with Jay Cuthrell, Principal Lead vArchitect at VCE; Steve Kaplan, VP Virtualization Practice at INX; Nick Weaver, Sr.vSpecialist at EMC

Next up, I was invited to stand in (thanks @edsai and @jdooley_clt ! ) for a VMware Professional Brownbag with @cody_bunch, @DemitasseNZ, @gminks, and @storageio to discuss kittens and the Internets! We also managed to work in several airplane references. Heh!

BTW — the visualization company is Real-Status and HyperGlance Plug-in for vCenter was being discussed — if you remember XMol from back in the day of SGI workstations this will probably give you serious deja vu… cool stuff!

Wait! You forgot the Vblock pr0n!

No, I didn’t ;-)

This time I got to see another of the road unit Vblock 300 FX in operation.

On a side note… but an important one… the VCE team of field engineers and marketing folks that stands the VCE booth, demos, and Vblock for shows is truly amazing. They really go above and beyond.

Having run trade show booths in the past I’m humbled by their attention to detail, their tenacity, and their constant iterative approach to improving the customer experience of visitors to the booth.

GAME ON!!!!

If this was easy, you wouldn’t be here. — VCE 101

Hi. It’s been a while. 300 days in fact since I joined VCE. 180 days since my last update on all things VCE.

Where to begin?!?

In the past 180 days I’ve….

• completed my team growth / development goals
• worked with service providers all over the world
• working shoulder to shoulder with EMEA and APJ teams
• awed and amazed by EMC vSpecialists, VMware, and Cisco teams
• humbled by the passion of VCE Partners
• added to my +38 cities and +132 days on the road
• renewed my VISA for Brazil
• did my first solo talk at SxSW 2010
• helping kids create our new robot overlords
• attended customer meetings at Interop as well as EMC World
• judged cloud based startup companies on Rackspace Cloud
• spent several weeks living in San Francisco and Silicon Valley
• worked on stuff I cannot blog about ;-)
• seen more stuff I cannot blog about ;-)
• managed to somehow… shrink… my suit…
• Or… perhaps I need to explore cardio options?
• Yeah.

While the Vblock wins have been awesome and getting Vblock in more places is incredibly satisfying to see happening… the hours have really been demanding. Lately, I’ve been having a lot of Twitter updates such as Good Morning EMEA and Goodnight APJ. My TripIt tells a tale from the point of view of the quest for making Vblock dreams come true. I get around.

New Title. Same Great Taste!

You might recall from my previous updates that I quickly went from vArchitect to Managing vArchitect and then added in media and entertainment to my service provider focus. It’s been a while. Yes. It is now time to change titles again.

My new title is Lead Principal vArchitect. I’m looking forward to this new role. Look for me at VMworld this month and stay tuned for updates. I cannot guarantee I won’t have a new title by then as well ;-)

I’m also appreciative of the PR and marketing efforts from VCE, VCE Parents, VCE Partners, and the Vblock ecosystem of ISVs and Alliances. We have come a very long way. We have much to do. If only there were 28 hours in a day.

Haters Be Hatin’

One of the wonderful things about this converged infrastructure market is the complete adoring love between competitors and the histrionics free reporting and coverage in the tech press. Oh wait. I just woke up from my dream. ;-)

The snark is alive and well out there. Link bait? Perhaps. Perhaps not. Perhaps just a fundamental lack of getting it or electing not to get it as a matter of snark for the sake of snark. Articles you say? It’s out there if you want to find it. I’m not sending traffic there though.

But more importantly, you’ll also see the clear and thoughtful retorts that follow in the wake of that big ole Snark Boat as it winds down Old Man Snarky River.

You… missed

The best part of seeing all this hatin’ out there? Knowing that the bile soaked mouths that bite at you are only catching the shadows.

Never. Stop. Moving. You cannot sit still. You cannot hesitate. You have to shift on the fly. Startup mode? I won’t invoke a pivot reference but any team in this space has to be as agile as the infrastructure you are creating.

But But But Jay! You can’t just change your title like that before the ink on your last set of business cards is dry. That’s insane! You are doing something different than what you did 30 days ago! Companies just cannot work that way! That’s crazy talk! Crazy!!!!!

I signed up for this. In fact, I chased after this, flagged down the rocket heading over the hill, and asked the person driving the rocket while working on the engine thrusters who I could talk to about changing the nose cone as the next orbital series approached.

This is the rocket. Try and keep up.

When I think of all the discussions around cloud lately and the inherent validation in the market for what VCE has been doing, I’m very proud of this team. This is hard stuff. And the best part is I get to help.

Challenges? Absolutely. Changes? Wouldn’t have it any other way.

Is this truly a competitive space? You bet. Enjoy the race.

The Road Ahead

As always, there are things I want to shout from the roof in blog terms but — there is a proper time and place for that. ;-) I’m also already drafting up a “My First Year at VCE” post on Tuesday October 18, 2011. I’m planning to chart just how far things have come. It should be pretty slick and something a wider audience can appreciate.

Oh yes, time. The time I would normally spend on creating content here these past 180 days has been expended on internally communicating behind the scenes, lighter than normal Twitter, and a short flirtation with Google+. If you were following that you probably saw some timely *ahem* updates fly by.

Obligatory Vblock pr0n

This 180 days of radio silence is ending. GA products are out and about and touching on things of interest don’t give away anything that is beyond the realms of embargo. So, there will be things to talk about soon enough.

My next update series will probably shift to “Friday Fudge” again if I can summarize my thoughts. Honestly, it’s pretty tough to discern what should be blogged about sometimes. I like posts that I can look back at a year from now and still see something that stands up well over time. Blogs tend to be thought of as time specific topical and weighted towards fast expiry. We shall see.

As always… Stay tuned and hand me that new nose cone prototype…

Wait? What? See the article linked below my own footnotes. This mini-ramble is about Hitwise making a graph or something showing something growing or not growing or winning or not winning. I’m not picking on the article or Hitwise per se but the general notion of tracking service utilization in the fast paced world of iterative development with anything but the very broadest and most fluffy of metrics.

Specifically, I question the ‘moving target’ element that Google+ and any such property tracked would exhibit. Consider that the way Hitwise tracks [1] today may not necessarily be the way tracking is done as properties evolve into new signatures, A/B testing, deep personalization, mobile or closed loop networks, leverage of partners or complementary partners, or shifts in the delivery infrastructure to favor SSL enabled experiences throughout [2].

How do such services really compare the signature of today to the signature of next year? How do such services account for the possibility of egregious errors or failure to adequately capture the intentionally or unintentionally obtuse / obfuscated traffic indicators?

Indeed, the quality of the time spent and the sharing gestures (text updates vs. photos vs. movies) may be harder and harder to glean as this data is considered part of the privacy contract and the salable asset of the property. Remember, you are the one feeding the machine as a user. As someone much more clever put it, “if the product is free that means you are what is for sale”.

That may mean third party services that seek to classify and quantify user patterns are forced to disclose methodology in greater detail (ultimately owning up to how little they do know), striking deals with destinations to truly map such trends with a firehouse of data, or they are simply relegated to selling more art than science.

Perhaps being the ‘outside view’ will come to be an even more literal condition.

[1] www.hitwise.com/us/about-us/how-hitwise-works
[2] relegating most characterization to blunted techniques i.e. packet and flow based accounting

source: venturebeat.com/2011/07/22/google-plus-ranking/

As luck would have it, I was fortunate enough to come across two amazing cloud based startup companies, Rarewire and Snap Appointments, that deserve to break the ‘What Happens in Vegas’ vow of silence.

Rarewire and Snap Appointments

How did I come across these two startup companies? Simple. I was invited by Rackspace [1] to participate as a judge in their King of the Apps event for the second round. The first round of King of the Apps included judges such as Robert Scoble, Eric Ries, Stacey Higginbotham, Dave McClure, and Bill Boebel.

For round two the King of the Apps judges included Ted Nitka, Dan Woods, Jonathan Bryce, Andy Schroepfer, and some guy named Jay Cuthrell. We all headed to House of Blues and got to enjoy the pitches while the crowd enjoyed Tex-Mex and taste beverages.

Okay… Here’s the tale of the tape:

Challenger: Rarewire

Rarewire attacks the barrier to entry for content oriented app creation. By focusing on content developers that don’t want to create one-off native apps for iPad the Rarewire team is targeting a much wider audience than iPad developers alone represent. Here’s the video the Rarewire team shared in their pitch:

It’s clear that Rarewire is taking the complex workflow of media intensive content creation and distilling it to a mechanism that liberates content developers — allowing then to move faster and with far less risk than traditional avenues to pad and mobile platforms.

In fact, the folks at CA Technologies use Rarewire for their Cloud Leaders iPad app. You should definitely check it out and get your cloud on!

1st Round Defending Champion: Snap Appointments

Snap Appointments is a 100% Rackspace cloud based SaaS startup. The Snap Appointments team won their spot during the Lean Startup track during SxSW this year. By fusing drop dead simple web based scheduling and just-enough-CRM, Snap Appointments caters to the tens of thousands of small businesses offering appointment oriented services: think salons, dentists, etc. Since SxSW, Snap Appointments has managed to land +450 businesses and see +5000 appointments booked through the service. Since the service is hosted entirely within the Rackspace cloud there is nothing for multi-site companies using Snap Appointments to install — just a web browser and an Internet connection.

Here’s a great video the Rackspace team put together:

Who won? What did they win? Find out now by heading over to read this writeup from the fine folks at Rackspace that made all of this possible and introduced me to these two amazing startups: Rarewire and Snap Appointments!

[1] Disclosure: The Rackspace team got me a very good room rate for my stay in Las Vegas. Thanks again folks!

I’m looking at a draft folder of blog posts I plan to publish but I decided one post needed to go up now — kids and robots.

One of the cool aspects of working at VCE is the ability to participate in various activities and outreach programs from Cisco, EMC, and VMware. One such EMC sponsored opportunity jumped out at me since it involved working with local middle school kids in Wake County here in North Carolina… and ROBOTS.

Guess what? They WON and are going on to the next level of NATIONAL competition… and they can use YOUR HELP.

Moore Square Museums Magnet Middle School and Panther Creek High School bring home the GOLD!

Moore Square Museums Magnet Middle School and Panther Creek HS joined forces to become the first ever VEX Robotics NC State Champions on April 4, 2011 in Greensboro NC.


The Moore Square VEX Robotics Team is an after school club. Club advisor, Mr. TJ Beatty, led a diverse group of 7th and 8th grade students through months of planning, building, testing and rebuilding to prepare for this robotics competition while being sure to stay within the specific parameters given to the team by TSA and VEX. Mr. Beatty boasts about the unrelenting desire shown by his students. “The team met every day before school, two days a week after school and frequently even ate their lunches while working in the lab.” he said.

This year’s competition was titled VEX Roundup. Students were challenged to build a robot that would place plastic donuts onto goal posts of varying heights within the timeframe allotted. The matches were run with 4 robots in the zone at one time operating in a 2 on 2 format. Students had to plan strategies for offense, defense and collaboration. The robots were operated through autonomous (automatic) and driver controlled modes.

The team now prepares to compete at TSA Nationals in Dallas, Texas. This incredible learning experience was made possible by EMC2 from Durham, NC. They sponsored our teams’ start up cost by donating two complete VEX Robotic kits. The Moore Square Museums Magnet Middle School Vex Robotics Team still needs to raise a large amount of money to fund their trip to TSA Nationals. The team is looking for sponsors and donations to help pay for hotel rooms, meals and entry fees. If you are able to help please contact Mr. Beatty at tbeatty@wcpss.net

Support your STATE CHAMPION VEX Robotics Team as they prepare to go to Dallas TX, and compete in the TSA / VEX National Championship — Make Checks payable to “M2M3 PTSA”

The team has done an extraordinary amount of work and added enhancements that go far beyond the first robot prototypes. Some of that work is super secret until they get to the competition floor. A few specific areas that were addressed relate to robot protection strategies and robot power alignment methods.

If you are working at a big company or a startup now, ask yourself how often you stay late to work on something… of how often you find yourself fitting in any spare time you have to work on a pet project or something that really captures your passion.

Guess what?

That’s precisely what these kids are doing right now. They are building sweat equity in their robot creations. And just in case you think this is lightweight engineering… Last week the team was putting together their C programs for autonomous operation.

Also, the team is composed of boys and girls. Women in engineering FTW!!!

Pretty cool eh? Did you get to do stuff like this when you were in middle school??? How can you not help but welcome our new robot overlords?

If you are interesting in adding your support to the team on their trip to nationals you can also reach me via email at work jay.cuthrell@vce.com or simply leave a comment.