We all need support, accountability and encouragement in the work that we do. There has been no shortage of any of these within the #vDM30in30 community since the beginning of November as the blog posts keep rolling in. What a great group of people.
Since Day #1 I have been pretty transparent, or have at least tried to be, in my intention to focus the majority of my posts on the DataGravity Discovery Series. As a Systems Engineer in the field I get to experience and see first hand what IT professionals, particularly my customers are dealing with. This is not foreign to me at all since my entire career has been as an IT professional for some of the top healthcare, manufacturing and retail companies out there. I can relate to and have an appreciation for the everyday pressures and challenges faced by these IT Professionals and it is for this reason that I feel a responsibility to engage, share, and maybe help make things a little easier for them if I can.
To do this on a 1-1 basis is one of my favorite things about the systems engineer role, as there is nothing like having personal conversations with people. One of the benefits of meeting with many people, across many different industries and companies, is that I have the opportunity to step back and recognize patterns throughout the course of these 1-1 conversations. Having this perspective allows me to be able to often share experiences from one conversation to the next about how different people tackle similar challenges. I believe that it is important for somebody in my role not to only recognize these patterns, but if there are common themes or pain points, share them with the community at large. This allows me to reach and share an idea with somebody who I haven't or never will be able to engage with on a 1-1 basis, but who could benefit from the learnings of others. One of the beauties of modern day technology is that it is extremely easy to share ideas and gain reach. In fact this blog provides me with just that type of platform.
My posts here are of course my personal opinion. It is after all my personal blog, and these posts in no way necessarily reflect the position of my employer. With that said, the majority of my customer conversations lately are centered on patterns specifically related to problems that DataGravity seeks to help solve. Problems like dealing with the unprecedented amounts of data growth, complexity in managing data effectively, understanding and finding value within the mounds of files and virtual machines, along with the struggle to be able to simply find information and answers quickly. That is in part why I have had a specific product focus in many of my recent posts.
I of course would be naive to think that what I say here on my small little blog, doesn't in many ways reflect on me and on my company. So it is extremely encouraging and empowering for me to know that the DataGravity team and leadership has my back. For that I am grateful.
Now that we are one week in, I am taking a small turn in the 30 for 30 challenge, and will not only be posting content to my personal blog, but also to my company blog as well. I am not sure if any of the other contributors are already doing this or something similar, but I think it will a fun and serve as yet another way to learn and share. I do already contribute semi-regularly on my company blog so it shouldn't prove to be too heavy a lift, but let's see. So this simply serves as a heads up that if you don't see a daily post sometime from me on this site during the month, go over and check for some posts on blog.datagravity.com. Stay tuned.