Posts
Circles of Care in the workplace
I first learned about Circles of Care from my brother, I think, when he was going through his chaplaincy training. It goes like this: The patient is in the center of the circle. Surrounding them in a ring are their parents, partners, or closest loved ones. The next ring out is more extended family, less-intimate-but-still-close…
Lady Conference Speaker: What to Wear to a Webinar
Well, folks, it looks like it’s going to be a while before we need to think about packing strategies, standing on physical stages, or managing afterparty politics. That doesn’t mean that we don’t have some things to consider! I’m currently attending an online conference, and I have several more scheduled, and this is just how…
Tea, Not Coffee: DevRel During a Pandemic
I go to conferences on both sides of the Atlantic, and there’s a slightly hilarious thing that happens at morning caffeine break. Someone from the UK will walk up to the hot drink station and register bafflement, because there’s not hot water to make tea. Also our tea bags are pretty substandard, and there might…
A Day in the Life of DevRel
This picture was taken on April 11, 2019, in Linz, Austria, at DevOne. I had left the first LaunchDarkly Trajectory conference in the last hour and flown to Austria overnight to speak here. That was The Before Times. This is a capture of my events calendar for last September. There’s a lattice of different-colored event…
That’s not funny
This is me and my sister with our half-yearly shipment of goods from South Africa. Until I was kindergarten-age, we lived in Zaire, now DR Congo. As you can see, stockpiling is nothing new to me. What you need to know about DR Congo is that it’s not an accident I’m afraid of snakes. There…
Conference Organizing: It’s your party
I have a couple blog posts on conferences, including one on hosting a booth, one on diversity and inclusion, and one on Think Globally, Sponsor Locally I haven’t put together one about what I hope for from conference organizers, though. Disclaimers Every conference, even the massively well-funded ones, is the result of a lot of meetings…
Word of the Year: Equipoise
When I started thinking about my word of the year, the image I kept returning to was an object at a Lagrange point. That’s one of the five places in the orbits of two celestial bodies where a smaller object is effectively balanced between the competing gravitational forces of the larger objects. It’s related to…
10 reps, 3x a day: Burnout recovery and PT
I don’t know why I thought burnout recovery was a single event. Nothing is like that. When I went on leave, one of the things I did was go to my doctor and get signed up for physical therapy to rehabilitate my elbow, because I have tendinitis, possibly from yanking a 30-pound suitcase off a…
2020 Technology Forecast: Stickers
I’m leaving for my first conference of the year tomorrow! It’s going to be awesome. I’ll have my notorious sticker bag with me for all the lucky attendees at DeliveryConf. I don’t remember when I started this, but by now I’ve done 2 talks (Write the Docs and DevOpsDays PDX), and I have a whole…
Upcoming appearances
Velocity Berlin
Minneapolis DevOps Meetup
DeliveryConf