Mike Manos provide background on his Call to Action to stop being Donkeys

I blogged about Mike Manos’s talk at Uptime last week.

Mike Manos keynote question are you Donkey or a Chaos Monkey?

FRIDAY, MAY 13, 2011 AT 5:42AM

Mike Manos gave a keynote at Uptime Institute in his new role at AOL as VP of Technology, and was back with his entertaining presentation style.  Mike's talk was on "Preparing for the Cloud: A Data Center Survival Guide", but Mike wisely changed his presentation to challenge the attendees to stop being Donkeys.

And, Mike just posted his own summary of his observations at Uptime.

Chaos Monkeys, Donkeys and the Innovation of Action

May 19, 2011 by mmanos

Last week I once again had the pleasure of speaking at the Uptime Institute’s Symposium.  As one of the premiere events in the Data Center industry it is definitely one of those conferences that is a must attend to get a view into what’s new, what’s changing, and where we are going as an industry.  Having attended the event numerous times in the past, this year I set out on my adventure with a slightly different agenda.

One of the best parts Mike posts is his observation of the patterns he saw.

By listening the audiences, the hallway conversations, and the multitude of networking opportunities throughout the event a pattern started to emerge,  a pattern that reinforced the belief that I was already coming to in my mind.   Despite a myriad of talk on very cool technology, application, and evolving thought leadership innovations – the most popular and most impactful sessions seemed to center on those folks who actually did something, not with the new bleeding edge technologies, but utilizing those recurring themes that have carried from Symposium to Symposium over the years.   Air Side economization?  Not new.   Someone (outside Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, etc) doing it?  Very New-Very Exciting.  It was what I am calling the Innovation of ACTION.  Actually doing those things we have talked about for so long.

As Mike says.

As you contemplate your own job – whether IT or Data Center professional….Are you a Donkey or Chaos Monkey?

Wine Tasting in Healdsburg - Nalle, Unti, Deux Ami, Collier Falls, and Wattle Creek

Frequently in data center discussions good wine helps gather a group of people.  After Uptime Institute in Santa Clara, a group of us from Seattle got together for a 40th Birthday party at the Birthday girl's parent's house in Healdsburg.

Many of the people flew from Seattle to Sonoma/Santa Rosa airport and our first stop was Wattle Creek winery for a dinner party with one of the owners Kristine Williams as the host.

Christopher and Kristine Williams were living in Arizona when they found the Sonoma County property would change their lives. A rare opportunity to purchase an Alexander Valley vineyard and winery presented itself and the Williams flew to California in 1994 to view the property.

They were captivated with the beauty of the area and the special nature of the hillside property which is bordered by the famed Russian River. Within a day they made the decision to purchase the magical 51 acres that is Wattle Creek Winery. Family and dogs in tow, they relocated permanently to California in 2001 and dedicated themselves to making wine that they would enjoy and share with friends.

Before the Birthday party we wandered around downtown Healdsburg, CA, and visiting some wineries in Dry Creek area, but we were saving our taste buds for the evening.

I visit Healdsburg 2-3 times a year to work on a well water system and look at the IT system for the host of the party.  One of the things I learned is the wine flows more freely and the conversations are much more interesting when I bring up water issues when visiting wine tasting rooms.  Water is critical for winery operations, and any winery operator knows a lot about the local water issues.  If I instead talking about technology - Windows, Mac, or web, the conversations rarely are lengthy or increase the consumption of wine.

At the Birthday party, there were 4 winery tasting tables with most staffed with the owners of the wineries.  It was interesting talking to some of the people who visited Healdsburg for the first time and were a bit overwhelmed with the amount of wine.  I on the other hand sampled every winery, met each of the people pouring, and many times moved to the other side of serving table to have better conversations.

Many wine snobs talk about the wines they own, I much prefer meeting the people who have a passion to make great wine.  All of these wineries have owners who I thoroughly enjoyed meeting, and I'll remember the people much longer than the wine I tasted this past weekend.  Don't get me wrong the wine was awesome.  Meeting the people who made the wine made it more special

Happy 40th Birthday Megan!

Thanks Bob and Marcia for hosting an amazing two days of wine tasting.

Barbara thanks for sharing your home and letting us stay with you for two great days.

http://www.nallewinery.com/

Doug Nalle

http://www.deuxamiswines.com/

Phyllis Zouzounis

http://www.untivineyards.com/

http://www.collierfalls.com/

Can't make it to Google Zurich event on May 24, extremely busy and distracted moving into new house

Unfortunately, my long house construction project is conflicting with the date with for the Google Zurich Energy Efficiency summit, and we are in the midst of moving in.  I just couldn't spare the time as my family needs me to do things around the house.  I'll try to blog about the Google event remotely as the Google team shares information from their event.

Many of my data center friends ask about  how my house project is going, I'll share an update.  The move was not far as we move from our Beach House which is 200 steps below our house where we have lived for the past 20 months.

10 years ago, I wanted to build my staycation space, and this month in Aug '08 Sunset Print Magazine our "Backyard Beach House" is featured. The article is not online yet, but here are some images from the article.

Here are some pictures of the house rebuild we did.  Local friends from APC, Microsoft, and Lee Tech have able to drop by, but we have made a lot of progress in the last 2 months.

Here is the front of the house.

A garage bay long enough for a boat trailer with tankless water heaters to the left.

The front door entry.

With a kids organizing area.  Above right you can see the Mitsubishi heat pumps that are scattered around the house for heating.  There are 14 separate units the house to heat/cool specific rooms.

From the open attic you overlook the entry.

When you come down the stairs to the main living area you pass the study and enter the kitchen. Note the ladder in the picture below is a 10 foot ladder.  The ceilings are 12 1/2 feet tall.

Here is a current picture of the 4 french doors to the deck.

And the before picture we used for our Xmas Card.

Looking from the French doors is the entertainment area.

And my Woodstone Pizza oven with handy pizza tools.

From the pizza oven, there is great view of the Lake Sammamish.

Next to the pizza oven is the pantry which we call the "bunker."

Why the bunker?  The room is 12 x 12 x 12 surrounded by concrete and sheer walls.

I have lots of work to do in the wiring closet.  POE intercom, Security Camera PVR, Slingbox configuration, Cable TV, Wireless, VOIP.  I am so glad I have an APC J35 backup solution.

My kid's rooms are in the best shape as they were done a month ago.

Give us another couple of weeks and the master bedroom will get there too.

Which brings me to ultimately one of the reasons why I decided not to go to Zurich.  When I told my kids I might not go to Europe, they both cheered that I wouldn't be gone for another week.  If I am lucky, I'll not get on a plane for a month.

But starting June 12, I'll be at 7x24Exchange in Orlando, then GigaOm Structure, and Data Center Dynamics in less than 2 weeks of travel.

Attending DatacenterDynamics Seattle, May 17, 2011, you can find me in Hall 2

I’ll be at DatacenterDynamics Seattle all day today.

DatacenterDynamics returns to Seattle on 17th May to discuss important issues facing today's data center professionals in the Northwest region.  Our annual conference brings together hundreds of industry professionals for a full day of networking and industry seminars and case study presentations.

This year’s conference programme covers 3 tracks Design, Build and Operate, IT Optimisation, and Decisions Strategy, that focuses in particular on the world of data centre outsourcing. So no matter what their role in the data centre attendees will be able to benefit from the insight of the world’s industry-leading practitioners presenting case studies or technical papers on how to optimise internal and external IT requirements from a facility, IT, and business perspective.

I don’t know if I’ll have much time to live blog as I’ll be staffing Hall 2.  You can’t miss me as I’ll be the one wearing a green shirt.

I am looking forward to catch up with the local Seattle data center scene.

Think about People in the Data Center, A book on people skills in IT

ZDNET has a post on people skill in IT.

If you work in IT, you're in the people and influence business

By John Hazard | May 16, 2011, 2:30am PDT

Summary

The prevailing view is that IT is a business where abilities matter more than presentation skills or personal interactions. Wrong.

Wrong

Your aptitude should speak for itself. You shouldn’t have to dress a certain part or act a certain way to get a job done or advance your career. Your performance should speak for itself and people should trust you to do the job.

That is a prevalent thought in information technology, a business where the promise was that nerds could excel and science geeks could thrive on their abilities not their presentation skills or personal interactions.

Wrong, says Don Crawley. IT is very much a people business and successful IT pros rely on their ability to present themselves and influence those around them as much as any technical skill.

Don Crawley has a book on this subject.  I don’t know anything about the book, but I like there are more people understanding the people issues in IT.