To celebrate the occasion, this is my fifth and final of five posts to remember my career, so far, seven years at a time. This post covers my memories from 2015 to 2021.
- IBM Edge conference
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In an effort to consolidate a bunch of smaller, focused, conferences into larger, more general conferences. IBM merged IBM Systems conferences that handled technical training, seller marketing, and IBM Business Partner Enablement into "IBM Edge 2015" conference.
I was scheduled to present IBM FlashSystem and the FlashCore technology. When I got to the room, I realized it could only hold about 200 people. I asked the coordinator, Mo McCullough, for a bigger room, and he said none were available. If the room fills up, we will schedule a second session. The room was packed, standing room only, and so we scheduled a second time slot, and filled that room again!
- IBM Interconnect
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My success at Edge resulted in getting invited to speak at IBM InterConnect, and even larger, less focused conference. At least IBM Edge was focused on "IBM Systems" (storage, servers, and related software), but InterConnect was even broader, also covering IBM Security, IBM Watson, IBM Cloud, and other divisions of IBM.
My then manager, Bill Terry, coughed at the $4,000 tuition he had to pay the event coordinators just so that I could present. I was scheduled for 25 minutes on the main show room floor, amongst the exhibitor booths, in the pathway that everyone took to get to the lunch area.
Despite this, I had 24 people willing to stand for the entire 25 minutes to hear me speak. Ironically, it would be the largest attendance of all the storage-related sessions at this event.
- IBM Redbooks
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IBM Redbooks are probably the most useful documents that IBM produces. Rather than just providing the raw information in a boring format, the authors are actual users of the product, that get together during a "residency" and write the IT equivalent of a "cook book" by trying the recipes and tasting the food. This collaboration often involves six to eight people who volunteer to take time off from their day jobs to meet at a central location for a few weeks.
A small drawback is that the authors are not experts, so often what they write has to be reviewed and revised by the actual experts. In my career, I have reviewed and revised dozens of such efforts.
One of the coordinators, Larry Coyne, came up with a crazy idea. To get two books out quickly, invite all the experts themselves to the central location, eliminating the need to review and revise outside the "circle". I was one of the eight people involved in this pilot, and in one week, we pumped out two books, [IBM Software-Defined Storage Guide] and [IBM Private, Public, and Hybrid Cloud Storage Solutions].
- IBM TechU training events
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In the summer of 2018, I flew to Johannesburg, South Africa to present nine topics at the IBM TechU event. I was a last minute replacement for another speaker. During one day at lunch, one of the TechU Content Managers, Glenn Anderson, mentioned to me that he was planning to retire at the end of the year, and asked if I knew anyone that might want to do the job. I jumped at the opportunity, went through several rounds of interviews, and finally the manager, Mario Franzone, offered me the job!
Glenn retired, and I worked with Alex Abderrazag, Mo McCullough, Heather Allen, and the rest of the team to manage TechU events worldwide.
Sadly, the job would only last 17 months. The last TechU event I managed was Istanbul in February 2020. After that, COVID-19 pandemic put a damper on in-person training events. This was the perfect excuse to get rid of me, just seven month's short of me earning 100 percent of my retirement benefits! Heather Allen and I were given 30 days to find another job within IBM, during one of the worst pandemics and financial crisis of our time.
- The demise of IBM developerWorks
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Shortly before the end of 2019, IBM announced they were sunsetting the IBM developerWorks blogging platform. All of the bloggers that used this platform had to find a new home, or just accept the loss. Since TechU had a dedicated server, I installed WordPress and was able to launch a new blog "Tony @ TechU" but carry forward about half of my 1,100 blog posts over to the new system.
- Call for Code for Racial Justice
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Before I knew I was losing my job, I had signed up to contribute to the open source code project "Call for Code for Racial Justice". I was able to learn Python, Django, and Bootstrap technologies to build a website application that analyzes legislation to help evaluate its impact, using IBM Watson Natural Language Understanding services. There were 55 projects submitted, and mine was among the top 5 finalists.
- IBM Spectrum Protect Technical Advisor
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This week also marks my one-year anniversary as a Spectrum Protect Technical Advisor, or SPTA for short. I have been assigned specifically to about two dozen customers to help them with their on-going Spectrum Protect and Spectrum Protect Plus deployments. It is a fun job, and I get to work with great people on my team!
- Where are they now?
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Alex Abderrazag and Mo McCullough continue to organize IBM TechU events, but now as virtual events instead of in-person. Bill Terry no longer works at IBM. Glenn Anderson is working as "The Performance Catalyst Speaker", coaching his clients to become better leaders, meeting facilitators, and public speakers. Heather Allen is now Growth Marketing Manager at Storj labs. Mario Franzone is a "Transformation and Strategy Leader" for IBM Systems.
Many people have asked me, now that I am 100% vested in IBM retirement benefits, do I plan to retire any time soon? Nope. I am enjoying my job, and look forward to continue to work for many more years to come!
This week, I am celebrating by taking the week off for much needed vacation. If you enter comments below, I may not get to them until I return.