Bonus Episode 5
# Bonus Episode 5
Welcome to Bonus Episode #05 of the Nerd Journey Podcast [ @NerdJourney]! We’re John White ( @vJourneyman) and Nick Korte ( @NetworkNerd_), two VMware Solution Engineers who are hoping to bring you the IT career advice that we wish we’d been given earlier in our careers. In today’s episode we briefly discuss our plans for VMworld 2019 in San Francisco, then focus on the more general case of attending IT conferences.
Original Recording Date: 08-11-2019
Topics – VMworld 2019 Plans and Attending IT Conferences
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# 1:03 Attending VMworld 2019 in San Francisco
John and Nick both first attended VMworld before becoming employees
John and Nick both have short sessions. Come check them out!
John’s - Save the IT Department: Add the Development Platform to Your Portfolio [CODE3333U]
Nick’s - Pi in the Sky: Using Wavefront to Analyze Pi-Hole Data [VMTN5013U]
We’ll have Nerd Journey Stickers!
Tweet @ us for a chat or a meal!
We’ll bring recording gear if you’re interested in recording a brief discussion about your VMworld show or career journey
# 5:17 Choosing the Right IT Conference to Attend
Types of Conference
Vendor Specific
Sponsored and dominated by one vendor
VMware VMworld
Microsoft Ignite
Oracle Openworld
Kubecon
Dockercon
AWS Re:Invent
Apple WWDC
Google Next
Salesforce
etc
Vendor tech sphere and adjacencies
conference, but now it’s a general security conference
Vendor announcements
Review Bonus Ep #1’s discussion of career implications on paying attention to announcements
Industry Specific
Spiceworld
BlackHat
Human Resources
Modern Arts
Manufacturing
John points out that RSA used to be a vendor show, but is now a general technology security industry show
Topic / Thought Area Specific
Leadership
Monitorama
DevOps Days
9:42 Things to consider when making a decision
What interests you?
Specific technology area
Branching out into coding, containers, cloud, etc
Specific vendor’s brand / product
Who do you love?
Cross-show exposure - vendors showcase at each other’s show -
Industry exposure
Trends and hot topics
12:38 What are the reasons to attend?
Nerd vacation
Party
Professional Networking
Industry peers
Job seeking
Vendor face time
Friends and associates who you only get to see at conferences
Shout out to Al Rasheed’s list of people to meet!
Learn new skills / exposure to a new area or technology
Become more specialized
Become more generalized
Reward for team members if you have influence over that
Past, Present, Future
Fill holes or address problems that have occurred on the job in the past
Present on lessons learned
Address current projects or those in the immediate future
Meet subject matter experts on your notional architecture
Meet peers who might have done similar projects before
Fill gaps for your future
Change career direction
Personal growth
Peer Networking
21:47 Who’s going to pay for the conference
You pay
Travel, possibly pay attention to costs
Proximity to home may be more important to keep costs low
Conference Pass
Ways to save money
Blogger pass
Speaking / Presenting
Usually get a free pass
But not travel/lodging
Free or inexpensive one-day conference
DevOps Days
VMUG UserCon
Local vendor-sponsored workshops
- John’s anecdotes
Speaking at SpiceWorld
Wife playing at the National Flute Association
Virtual Conferences
Food
Does you conf pass include all the food and beverage or just breakfast and lunch?
Healthy food vs. conference food
Entertainment
Included with some conferences
if traveling to a different area, entertainment costs outside the conference are on your tab
31:42 Your employer pays
Part of an annual training budget?
Are you limited by a dollar amount or specific number of conferences?
Potential interview ask
Sell the conference
Benefits to the company? How will you become more valuable?
Expedite research for a project
Proximity to product teams
Training for a skillset missing on the team
Exposure to industry peers
Direction for department / company from outside sources
How did others handle it?
Attendance of past virtual events
Manager vision match
Commit to briefing the team / manager on your experience after returning
Document you get from conferences so t
Will the employer foot the bill for the entire conference?
If no, how about just the pass?
No travel costs, but expense driving?
37:39 The Best Match…
Valuable to you AND your employer
Actionable takeaways for you and the company
John’s example of an ERP vendor search
Show excitement
Supports your career goals
Consider exploring a new area to widen your range and exposure
Within budget
Minimal travel
Take advantage of connections made
40:23 Revisiting Survival Tips
Sleep
Comfort
Clothing
Comfortable but professional
What if you run into someone who’s critical to your career growth?
What if you run into someone who’s interested in your organization?
Sunglasses
Personal Grooming
Lip Balm
Technology
Do you really need to lug your laptop around?
Can you get by with just your phone?
Hydrate!
Schedule Building
Sessions
Expo
Professional and personal networking
Food
46:26 Our current dream conferences
John
5 years ago, it was VMworld!
Full Stack web-app conference
NG-Conf or something like it
Relevant to current side-project
Docker
Angular
JavaScript
Nick
Grok patterns side project
ElasticOn
Microsoft Ignite
Learn about Azure
Monitorama
# 49:22 Closing Thought
- See if your management will support you not doing regular work or be on-call while you’re at the conference