Thursday, January 31, 2019

Tech Field Day 18 is Feb 6-8, 2019 - Look out Austin!

With my current role at my new company, one of the fortunate benefits is that I can participate in more independent industry events. Some of my favorite in the industry are the Tech Field Day events. I'm luck enough to get to head out to Austin, TX to participate and engage with the folks from Datera, NetApp, SolarWinds and VMware for two days while hanging out with some amazing people.

One of the aspects I have always enjoyed about the Tech Field Day events is how they are set up. Direct community engagement with vendors to learn about their products, provide feedback and occasional insight. Plus the raw and direct nature of the presentations and interaction makes it so much more real for those of us in the room but also for those watching remotely. I have meet so many wonderful people through my participation and I feel very fortunate to be invited back on a regular basis.

My first event was the Software Defined Data Center Symposium back on Sept 10, 2013. A day after was Network Field Day 6, my first real full blown Tech Field Day event. At that single event I meet for the first time Anthony Burke, Bob McCouch, Brent Salisbury, Carole Warner Reese, Chris Marget, Ethan Banks, Greg Ferro, Ivan Pepelnjak, Jason Edelman and Matt Oswalt. I was lucky enough to already know Brandon Carroll, Stephen Foskett and Tom Hollingsworth prior to the event. If you are in the networking community that the names in that list are likely familiar to you.

I am fortunate to be the co-host of the IPv6 Buzz Podcast on the Packet Pushers (which Greg and Ethan run). I have participated with Ivan in his excellent training platform IPSpace.net, and kept in touch with Anthony, Jason, Matt and Brandon through the years. Without the Tech Field Day events some of these wonderful opportunities and relationships would have never have happened and for that alone I am grateful.

So, with any luck I will get to meet some other fantastic folks and hear about some really interesting technology too.

- Ed