Packet Pushers - Community Show

Welcome to the Next Level. On today’s show we talk about the ups and downs of consulting. If you are now or have been a consultant, we invite you to laugh, boo, chuckle and cheer along with us.

If you work with consultants or wonder what it would be like to work as a consultant, this is your chance to get the inside scoop.

We’re joined by two guests with consulting experience to talk about their experiences and share their insights about the pros and cons of the consulting life. Our guests are Rob Walker ([email protected]) and Jason Skala (@crumb4life).

Rob and Jason discuss the upsides of consulting, including the variety of work experiences you encounter and opportunities for education; and the downsides, such as being on call nights and weekends, long travel, and billing hours.

They also offer advice on getting into the consulting business, how to decide if it’s time to walk away, and more. It’s a forthright and and friendly conversation about the consulting life.

Sanity Check

Our Sanity Check segment tackles management questions from real engineers and IT pros. If you’d like to ask a question for an upcoming segment, send an email to [email protected] or check out our survey.

On today’s episode of The Next Level we talk about three essential ingredients for workplace performance, and a framework to measure that performance.

Joining us today is Dan Gold, an experienced thought leader in human resource management. Dan outlines three ingredients for maximizing performance:

* Knowledge, Skills, and Ability (owned by the employee)

* Desire to perform (0wned by the employee)

* Environment (owned by the employer)

Of course, performance is one thing. You also have to be able to measure that performance. Dan shares his tips for measurement, including:

* Setting expectations

* Seeing people doing the job the way they are expected to

* Giving feedback on what you’ve observed

If you’d like to reach Dan directly to get more insights, he’s at [email protected].

Sanity Check

Our Sanity Check segment tackles management questions from real engineers and IT pros. If you’d like to ask a question for an upcoming segment, send an email to [email protected] or check out our survey.

On today’s episode we talk about IT management, what makes someone an effective leader, and strategies for improving your management skills.

Being a manager isn’t just about setting strategy and giving orders. It’s about relationships and communication. We delve into how communication preferences affect managers and their reports, how management style can affect employee motivation, when to include subordinates in decision-making, and more.

Joining us to share their management experiences are David Kaiser, Service Delivery Manager at Akron General; and Tony Lupis, Network Engineering Manager at FactSet Research Systems.

Sanity Check

Our Sanity Check segment tackles management questions from real engineers and IT pros. If you’d like to ask a question for an upcoming segment, send an email to [email protected] or check out our survey.

Getting IT projects funded and justifying IT spending can be complex and frustrating. On today’s episode we talk about financial strategies for IT with real-world executives to give you ideas and insights you can bring to your organization.

Our guests are Allen Ingram, former CTO of Associated Estates Realty Corporation; and Jonathan Feldman, CIO of the City of Asheville, NC.

We talk about what kinds of cost justifications are useful when looking to get IT projects funded, the time value of money, how to communicate the value of IT projects and investments, how to build credibility with business peers, and other issues regarding budgets and funding.

Links:

Follow Jonathan Feldman on Twitter, check out his blog, and sign up for his IT Leadership Bootcamp.

Check out other episodes of The Next Level:

The Next Level: Building A Technical Team

The Next Level: IT As A Revenue Center

Have you seen sFlow options in your router configuration or flow collector? Are you looking for alternatives to SNMP or NetFlow? Have you been curious about the instrumentation of your new white box or virtual switch? Yes? Then you will probably enjoy learning more about sFlow!

In episode one of my data networking series I’m calling “Non-Blocking“, Brent Salisbury of networkstatic.net and I discuss the often overlooked protocol sFlow with Peter Phaal of InMon.

Imagine you’ve been given the opportunity to put together a technical team of your own for the first time. Your company has an established business model, but they’re looking for new technical leadership and ideas.

Executive management has confidence in you and has given you the authority to direct your team or department’s resources to provide the most value and benefit to the organization.

On today’s episode of “The Next Level,” we’ll walk through six steps to help you design and assemble your team members, set clear objectives, and manage this team for long-term success.

Joining us to discuss team building and management is Craig Campbell, an experienced leader and the IT security and compliance manager for a major law firm.

Six Steps For Building Technical Teams

* Identify the functional roles needed to fulfill your team’s operational duties and strategic goals

* Quantify the scale–for example, in Full Time Employees (FTEs)–for each functional role

* Sketch an org chart for your team design

* Gather the best people

* “Burn in” the team

* Optimize

Sanity Check

Our Sanity Check segment tackles management questions from real engineers and IT pros. If you’d like to ask a question for an upcoming segment, send an email to [email protected] or check out our survey.

All questions will be kept anonymous. We hope to hear from you!

Welcome to The Next Level, a new podcast in the Packet Pushers’ Community Channel that delves into IT management and leadership.

Engineers, architects, and operations pros live and breathe technology, but that technology comes tangled up with business requirements, management issues, and interpersonal relationships.

You can’t ignore the business and human elements of your job if you want to thrive at work and advance your career.

Hosts Damian Huising and Drew Conry-Murray will explore management, leadership, and professional development topics geared toward networking and IT pros.

The first episode, IT As A Revenue Center, looks at six ways IT pros can generate revenue for the organization. IT has a reputation as a cost center, and we talk about how to flip that perception on its head.

Jay Mellon, CEO of AtNetPlus, joins us to offer his insights on how IT can add value and help drive the business forward.

Six Ways To Create Revenue

Our discussion touches on six ways IT can drive the business. They include

* Get more out of existing data

* Work with marketing, sales, and other departments to enable new business

* Use technology to improve customer engagement

* Spin off IT projects into standalone businesses

* Add more value, charge more

* Find cost savings

Show Notes:

IT as revenue generator: McKinsey Global Survey results – McKinsey&Company

Rainmakers: Three CIOs who made revenue generation their business – TechTarget

Digital Revenue Generator – The Center For Sales Strategy

Three Revenue Generating Strategies You Don’t Want to Ignore – Executive Forums

CIO 100: Revenue Generation: Money (That’s What They Want) – CIO.com

Study: 78% Of Salespeople Using Social Media Outsell Their Peers – Forbes

Generating growth and revenue with IT – Interview with ING Direct CIO Andrew Henderson – PicNet Information Technology Services

Contact Us:

If you have comments about the show, suggestions for future episodes, or something to share for the Sanity Check segment, drop us a line at [email protected]. Thanks for listening!

The Data Center is changing as a result of challenges to traditional businesses. As a result, a new crop of IT vendor has arisen. Traditional solution providers need to adjust while maintaining their customer base. It’s the classic innovator’s dilemma.

In this extended CTO Advisor Podcast, Keith Townsend (@CTOAdvisor) sits down with TechField Day Founder Stephen Foskett (@SFoskett) and Justin Warren (@JPWarren) of PivotNine. The trio discusses the mix of presentations at the last Virtualization Field Day event.

Links

Keith’s Blog – TheCTOAdvisor.com

Justin’s Blog – Eigenmagic.com

TechfieldDay – TechFieldDay.com

Virtualization Field Day 6 Event Page – #VFD6

Looking for the Citizens of Tech podcast? We moved it to CitizensOfTech.com. Join me (Ethan Banks) and Eric Sutphen there as we discuss space, science, gaming, gadgets, energy, transportation, and whatever else strikes our nerdy fancy. We figure if we like the topic, you’ll like it to!

We have features like Deathwatch, Today I Learned, and Content I Like to keep you in touch with the interesting bits of the Internet and tech world at large that tickle your brain.

The show is free, and we’ve cut the format to a very digestible 30 minutes as of show 19 to be published later this week. So find us on iTunes or head on over and subscribe!

Field Engineering is an attempt to capture ad hoc conversations that occur in bars, lunch rooms, conferences and other industry events. Face-to-face, glass-to-glass and not much filtering. This first episode was recorded in a bar, for no particular reason other than to test out the idea.

This trial show was recorded with:

Matt Oswalt of KeepingItClassless.net @mierdin and well-known figure in the NetOps community.

Keith Townsend of TheCTOAdvisor.com @ctoadvisor – a reformed consultant and infrastructure architect.

We discuss a wide range of topics including:

The joys of bathrobes when working from home

Where “mierdin” comes from

The tribulations of travel when traveling from overseas

Finding a life/work balance at Packet Pushers

Matt turns the tables and starts to interview Greg about Packet Pushers and why we do some things

Why hardware matters in networking, Intel hardware for example

And the conversation starts to degrade about here as the beer takes effect

Complexity and Simplification

Much more

We would love to hear your feedback about this show. Depending on the response, we may record more of them in the future. Leave us comments so we can get back to you.