Why blog in 2024 ? | A Reflection on Diversity of thought and the Power of anecdotes

TLDR — Some insights to what’s on my mind professionally and some anecdotes on the why & what I am going to deal with in 2024, + reachout for collaboration.

Everyone ***thinks differently, ***Everyone is wired differently

This fundamental diversity in thought, processes and perspectives is precisely why I embarked on the journey of writing. It’s not out of vanity or an overinflated sense of my own opinions, but from a belief that understanding different ways of thinking provides us a solid foundation for better communication and collaboration.

DALL-E | “communication and collaboration”

Almost a decade ago, in my 2nd position as DevOps and Tech Lead — at the time working as a ***cloud onboarding engineer ***at a 3 letter enterprise 🤫 … Over-night I became a “frequent flyer” to Germany, running configuration management workshops to engineering teams.

Sidenote: it took me time to understand how/where I got the nerve or courage to do all that …

At some point I became a team, 7 engineers, onboarding more and more projects & services … each team had a large number of Virtual Machine’s managed by a configuration management framework named “Chef”, when ad-hock configuration was still an option …, not long after that kubernetes and docker started to gain popularity ;) and those too became part of the curriculum 🎓 if I recall they called it “converged cloud” it had everything from VM’s to containers and pod’s some had “containerized — monoliths” there was much to teach and much to learn from … ❗

DALL-E | not sure — how It escalated 🤷‍♂

I have had my share of teaching in tech collages, but when I was doing the same as a consultant, meeting engineers on the job. Many were much more experienced in the industry and “higher ranked” software engineers, some with famous university degrees.

The fact these guys needed my help … made me very curious. It made me ask myself — “isn’t there a lecturer in all Germany that can teach Chef” 🤔?! setting a side my self-doubt, that experience alone had kept me going on sharing my knowledge within my team, and with the community — a training on chef was what got me started with this assignment to begin with 👏🏻

One my 1st followers and main influencers — answered the question “as you can see, there isn’t”

Daily Life and Projects

The content I plan to talk about this year will reflect into my day-to-day activities and showcase some of the projects I’ve undertaken, particularly during my 15+ years at Tikal. These experiences offer insights into the practical aspects of working in the DevOps field, sharing both successes and lessons learned alongside best-practices & tools.

My goal is to connect more deeply with the DevOps community, offering content that resonates on a personal & professional level. It’s about contributing & giving-back to a community of like-minded individuals, who appreciate the nuances of technology and the stories behind the people who make it work.

DALL-E | “picture describing building a technological community”

Speaking of community — I will be attending Reversim 2024 — stop by our booth (#8) to say hi & 🍵/☕ or schedule a short 1on1 in advance -> here

So what can one expect in upcoming posts ?

Below is a list of technology + soft-skill related topics I am talking about in various conferences which, these will also find their way into our publication Israeli Tech Radar by Tikal — sometime in 2024.

Our publication is an invitation to explore the intersections of technology, personal growth, and the myriad ways in which we can all contribute to a richer, more understanding tech community.

Ready to discuss any of these topics ? Feel free to contact me via LinkdIn.

• Kubernetes Control Loop | various aspects of operation and application lifecycle management.

• Common Controllers for 80% of the Tasks | a set of controllers which cover +-80% of application delivery best practices

• **Platform Engineering | **Why Are They Still Needed/Relevant …

• Choosing Your Git Provide Old Topic, New Insights | where today the git provider is sort of a platform!

• Is There a Platform which qualifies as “One Size Fits All” ?

• Which CI-Pipeline Do You / Want / Have / Need | Focus how we use gitlab-ci templates at Tikal

• Infra As Code — Options for 2024 ( terraform, open-tofu, crossplane, cdk etc)

• **GitOps, A summary of +-3 years … **— The Methodology, The Options

• Cloud Native Application(s) | What does that mean ?

• Building containerized (micro) services | highlights of application packaging best practices

• Versioning | Make it count

• Infra & App Monitoring | From monitoring and logging to tracing

Soft skills / Leadership

• Influencers & leadership | soft-skills that scale others

• Can Anyone Be an Influencer ? | did you know you have what it takes to be one ?

• Experts & Domain expert | The art of becoming an expert

• **Who Needs Experts Now We Have A.I **? | expert and expert-services in the A.I era

• A.I. as a tool for Experts | how can “the expert” use A.I

• Flywheel | A professionals flywheel

• DoBeing & Ikigai | Building your self-improvement / self-reservation

Stay tuned for more posts to come, yours Sincerely, Haggai Philip