Emotionally Invested

So recently, I've been hearing from a lot of different sources that "We need to keep emotion out of it", whilst talking about business. And for the most part I was agreeing with this, and then I really started to think about it.

Can you keep emotion out of it? Really think about this for a while, then come back. I *love* what I do, love is an emotion right? I *hate* when I fail, again isn't hate an emotion? I get *scared* when I think I've missed something, especially when there is a deal hinging on if I missed this or not. I think you see my point.

You absolutely can NOT keep emotion out of it. With out emotion you don't have *passion*. With out *passion*, you should be looking for another job. I can't ever see myself just going about my day to day, being ambivalent as to whether or not I win, lose, fail, succeed, get a raise, get fired, get a promotion etc. etc. And I sincerely *hope* that if I ever do feel that way, I'll have already found a new job.

Cisco Live 2013 aka Geeks in the Swamp

So being my first blog post, cause you know I heard somewhere this was the thing to do between tweets..thanks Amy (@CommsNinja) decided I'd revisit why I didn't blog in the past, and why I'm going to be doing it in the future. So why is this titled "Cisco Live 2013 aka Geeks in the Swamp"? Well the picture above has a lot of tweeps and bloggers that finally made me rethink, and it's where I was last week.

The Why I Didn't

Basically, I could call it laziness and that would be a part of it, but not the whole truth. The biggest reason I didn't blog was I couldn't really find anything that "I" found interesting enough to blog about.

Let's be honest, I work with wireless and oh yes it is definitely an interesting technology. But after ~5 years in TAC there wasn't a whole lot I haven't seen, broken, fixed, played with or snarked about. It was multiple conversation at Cisco Live this year, Tom (@networkingnerd) Andrew (@revolutionwifi) Colin (@colinmcnamara) Amy A.(@amyengineer), and way too many others to realistically list here, that made me realize it's not what "I" find interesting, it's what I can share to help others grow!! *facepalm* It really is that simple

The Why I Will

There are two main reasons why I decided I should kick off a blog, one is to share knowledge around wireless/BYOD which is kind of a passion of mine, and to help me document my learning of scripting (Python, Puppet etc).

Cisco Live 2013

Let's call it what it is, Geek-vana! A bunch of really really smart people all getting together to share knowledge, see old and new friends, and let our Geek flags fly.

In years past (2006/2007/2008) I was stuck in TSC (Technical Solutions Center), and last year sitting in session after session. wHile I did learn a good bit during the sessions, this year I took a different tact. This year, it was all about the social aspects of the conference. I spent a vast majority of my time in the Social Media Hub. Chatting with new friends I met on twitter over the year, old friends I met at other events, and listening. Yes, I listened, amazing right!? Funny thing is when I did I heard the same thing. Blog, Bacon, Blog, Cloud, SDN, Blog, Unicorn and Bacon.

But being in the Hub also allowed me to be agile of calendar. I could go to the side meetings and briefings, there were a few where I thought I'd just listen and not have anything to share...turns out that I was incorrect about that.

To sum up, I learned a lot during the breakouts, where the network is going, why Engineers need to learn some scripting, what cloud can do for me, how many others enjoy bacon (really who doesn't!), and that I should blog.

I call it a net win for the week.

So the long and short..pay attention kiddies.