Achievement unlocked: I’ve been named to the EMC Elect 2016

Posted by Gina Rosenthal in community building | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment
1February2016

I started my technical community building journey when I worked at EMC. I wElect2016-weborked in the Ed Services organization building training courses and certification tests, and then I started running the Proven Professional community (and helped start the social media movement at EMC). The biggest thrill I had was interacting with a group of smart, opinionated techies from around the world. I even ran a social contest at EMC World for all the people who couldn’t be there in person.

Then I went to Dell, to build a storage community out of the Compellent and EqualLogic communities plus the PowerEdge customers. That was amazing, and one of my proudest career accomplishments. But the thing I loved the most: I stayed connected to people from the Proven community. After all, we are all a big guild, even if we change our jerseys every so often.

Then the EMC Elect was started. I have to admit, I was more than a little jealous. I still was (am) part of the Proven community because of my certifications, and by that time I was a Tech Center Rock Star, but there was no way I could be an EMC Elect working for Dell.

My how times have changed. 🙂

I came to work for Spanning, an Austin company that has a SaaS backup and recovery service to protect SaaS apps, and they had been acquired by EMC. And then the Dell – EMC news broke. We certainly are living in times of immense change.

So this means: I FINALLY I get to be an EMC Elect member! The entire list is here, I’m honored to be included in this company! I’m stoked to be able to bring my SaaS evangelism to all of y’all, and help you remember that cloud is more than PaaS and IaaS. And I know (from experience) that I can count on y’all to help me keep it real. I’m working on something big for EMC World too, so hopefully I’ll see lots of you there!

Big thanks to Mark Browne for doing the hard work to pull all of this together, and especially for getting me involved. I know from experience you are the unsung hero, please know it’s very appreciated!

 

Don’t Panic: the admin’s guide to the rapidly changing IT landscape

Posted by Gina Rosenthal in cloud | Tagged , | 1 Comment
24January2016

The world of IT has changed, the evidence is all around us. For example, this Barron’s article (EMC, VMware, IBM, etc.: Here Come 333,000 Layoffs in Tech, Opines Global Equities) was making the rounds on twitter this week. Even though the article’s title is alarming (and since my current employer is mentioned, please visit my about me page for disclaimers), the content proves something else: the roles for traditional IT have changed. Jobs supporting on-premises infrastructure are going to disappear rapidly. The earthquake of change has happened, we’re just waiting on the tsunami to come and reshape the landscape.

towelThis is no time to panic. Those of us who have experience in traditional IT roles have a place in the new landscape, even if we need to refocus and retool our skills a bit. These skills, knowledge, and experience are going to be needed. Desperately required.  So grab your towel, and check out my suggestions to help you make it through the coming tsunami:

  1. Know your business. What is their core mission? How do they make money? How do they plan to make money? What do they need to meet those goals faster?
  2. Don’t forget the basics. Software still runs on servers through networks and onto storage, and you already know how to do that. It’s just all virtualized – and you know that. The big shift is that now other people manage that infrastructure, and maybe even the software. But trust me, you can work with that.
  3. Look beyond the tech. It’s important to know what the tech is, and what it does, but it’s more important to understand (and be able to articulate) what the tech will mean for your business.
  4. Don’t fall under an evangelist’s spell, no matter how popular he/she may be. Don’t lock on to tech just because it’s cool (see #1 and #2).
  5. Remember that cool new tech will change. If a technology is good for the business, it will be automated. See this post from Brian Gracely on how costs drive that change.
  6. Understand what is involved in moving workloads to different cloud platforms (PaaS, IaaS, SaaS).
  7. Understand what a workload is.
  8. Be able to explain the differences between PaaS, IaaS, and SaaS.
  9. Expand your understanding of compliance to cloud infrastructures. Regulatory requirements don’t disappear just because someone else is managing your hardware (and maybe software). Be the one who helps your org navigate this, and keep them compliant.
  10. Don’t be perceived as a blocker to progress. Support your business once the decision is made to transition to the cloud. This change is inevitable, apply your experience and understanding of the business to guide your organization through the upheaval.
  11. No really, the change is inevitable. Companies like Microsoft and Oracle don’t want to sell their software to you anymore, they want host their software for you.  I’m surprised at the number of very large companies that we talk to who are moving to Office 365. This Current Status episode talked about how real Office 365 is – right now.
  12. Everything does not belong in GitHub. But find out what it is, then analyze if using GitHub as a code versioning repository fits your business model. If you’ve used CVS or Subversion, you already know the basic principals, the rest is just terminology. Do some research, and freshen up that skill set.
    As an aside, there is growing concern that the cry to put everything in GitHub is more about recruiters being lazy and devs grandstanding than it is about the tech (or than the businesses we all support). See #4.
  13. Get used to giving up control. You can’t control the infrastructure setup, and with SaaS you have virtually no control over the software either. That means you can’t control the software (or hardware) version your business is running on, you can’t control when (or which) features are rolled out for your users. The cost savings are worth it, but you still have lots of responsibilities when you move to a cloud model.
  14. Get used to constant, rapid change. Especially if any of your organization’s software moves to a SaaS model. Those changes (see #13) that roll out are continuous…the SaaS provider will push them when they complete them, and you may not get a notification. The push may do something that breaks expectations your users have, or break business processes that are in place.
    I don’t have an answer for this one, I’m learning that launch processes I’m used to as a PMM are completely broken in this model. In a true lean model, everyone will be working to reduce the friction the business feels from a continuous release model. Maybe I’ll have a good lessons learned article to post soon.
  15. Up your data protection game. One critical thing to remember is that you are still responsible for your organization’s data, even if it is on infrastructure (and possibly software) that someone else is running and managing. You’ll still have to worry about having a way to restore data rapidly, having an archive schema that continues the data retention plans you already have in place. You may also need to worry about security. Basically, all the things you were thinking about when the data was on premises. You just don’t have to manage the infrastructure any more.

This is my short list of how to survive the change that has already happened in IT. Do you have more advice? Leave a comment 🙂

Dr King spoke about technology

Posted by Gina Rosenthal in personal | Tagged , | Leave a comment
19January2016

Today is Martin Luther King Jr. day here in the US. I can’t find the speech I listened to this morning, but I was fascinated with hearing Dr. King talk about technology, and the responsibility we have to treat each other with kindness and dignity is even more important than what we can accomplish with technologies.

Funny how some things don’t change….y’all we need to do better.


 

Update: Leaving Facebook, 1 week in

Posted by Gina Rosenthal in privacy | Tagged , | Leave a comment
18January2016

I’ve been off Facebook about 10 days. 4 more days and my account will be permanently deleted. Unfortunately, they will keep my data. The SaaS applications we support at Spanning will tell you: you own your data. When you leave, you get to take your data. When you issue a delete command, they will delete it (even if you really didn’t mean to delete it). This is why you need backup software for your SaaS apps.

That’s not how Facebook works. Once your data is in their platform, it’s theirs. This is one of the core reasons I left Facebook.

So there have been a couple of questions people have asked me:

Q. Do you miss it? Are you itching to get back?

A. The answer is – no. There are a things I would have gone to Facebook for in the past that I’ve just had to figure out different ways to share. I got a huge sweet potato with my Greenling delivery, but I just texted a pic to my best buddy Polly and we got a good laugh over it. My son and his girlfriend went to Boston for a wedding, and I wanted to see pics. So I asked him to send me one and he did. Today is Martin Luther King day here in the US, and I usually post a speech. I’ll use my blog for that. It will take longer, but the resulting post will probably be more thoughtful.

So sorry @ciscoservergeek, your over/under is going to be way off, because I’m not coming back 🙂

Q. How have you dealt with the apps that you used Facebook to sign up for/log into?

A. So far, I can log in with my email and Facebook password, instead of Facebook, and it works. The outlier is Spotify so far. I think I may have changed the password at some time, and I haven’t played with resetting it because I have to contend with 3 devices. So, that’s probably just me being lazy, I need to bite the bullet and change the password on all the devices.

To wrap up: I don’t miss Facebook, I can still log into my other apps.

The world of IT has already changed

Posted by Gina Rosenthal in cloud | Tagged , , , , , , | Leave a comment
17January2016

I wrote this 7 years ago:

the world is changing right in front of our lives

I wrote this post about corporate communications. The original post was about how the tech we use to communicate was changing our world. I wrote it about a year after Facebook opened up to the public. Now, everyone uses all of sorts of “social media tools” to broadcast their message. This medium now has more rules and regulations about how you are supposed to talk than you can shake a stick at. In my opinion, the promise of connecting people by just connecting with them on a personal level has been ruined by corporate marketing and PR trying to retain their stake in that game. I’m not the only one who feels this way.

I guess this is probably a great time to remind everyone that this is my personal blog, and my remarks here are my personal thoughts, not those of my employer. For more details/disclosures please visit my about me page. A girl’s gotta eat after all. 🙂

Let’s be honest, since I was one of the first technical people to move to marketing using social tools to connect quicker to our customers to share technical details about our products, I have lots to say on the topic of how this social tools have been poisoned by corporate marketers looking for leads via “content marketing”, infographics, and making sure techies have appropriately branded socks, but that’s not what this post is about. All of that mess is noise, and we have important work to do.

Our world – the world of IT –  has already changed.

The world started changing about the time I wrote the above-mentioned post. I started blogging because I couldn’t work on virtualization. It was too new…and I was told by the leaders in my organization that EMC would NEVER go to the cloud.

Things change. And fast. Virtualization was the first fissure in the massive change we’re seeing now. Look at this post from 2008, when people where still trying to make sense of what the virtualization tremor really meant. Looking back, it’s clear to see the impact of those first tremors. Servers, storage, even networks are now virtualized. Virtualization has enabled us to build clouds, whether we do it on an IaaS, PaaS, or SaaS platform. Since all the things are becoming virtualized, we saw the need to bring dev and ops very close together, so whatever dev builds can actually get deployed, and changes that will make our platforms better server the business can be pushed out continously, into production without downtime!

We can do all that right now. People are already doing it. If you aren’t doing that already, you will be soon.

Here’s the gap I see in getting from traditional IT to cloud (any platform): vocabulary. It may be the trainer in me, but if people have already gone full cloud, they don’t know how to talk to traditional IT people who are trying to make sense of this seismic shift that has happened. Traditional IT people don’t have the words yet to ask for what they need to get to cloud without disrupting the business. And the new cloud people don’t understand the implications of not being fluent in the processes IT has had to build to support and protect the business.

Here’s an example I hear all the time: traditional IT people understand they need a SaaS backup tool like the one I work with. But they don’t understand that traditional measurements — like RPO and RTO — may not be what they want to hang their hat on when they are buying a solution.

I am going to start writing about this more. I think there is a need for a bimodal translator; what language do you need to make a mental ladder to when you’re going from traditional data center opps to any type of cloud? Have you seen anything like that yet? Or are you having your own issues communicating with a cloud (or a traditional IT) person? If I published a survey to try to understand this more, would anyone respond?

The world of IT has change forever y’all. It’s time to accept that, and roll up our sleeves and get to work.

 

 

 

Leaving Facebook – the process

Posted by Gina Rosenthal in privacy | Tagged | Leave a comment
8January2016

Deleting my account:

I had to pick all the pics that included a cat. The cancel button was the one highlighted. …

deleted-cats

Then they told me I could log back in within 14 days and we’d be all good.perm-deleted

 

But I’m really really done. 🙂

 

 

 

Bye Facebook

Posted by Gina Rosenthal in privacy | Tagged , | Leave a comment
8January2016

Back in the 90s, I bought my first computer so I could do my EET work at home instead of dealing with finding a babysitter for the kids and drive half an hour to work on those busted old breadboards. There was a CD that came with the computer that got me on the world wide web….

aol-cd_featuredAmerica Online was *the* way to connect to the Internet back in the day. It was easy, fast simple…you didn’t have to figure anything out. You just stuck the CD in the CD drive, it installed, it made the modem start making those weird sounds and then you were able to surf and also get into AOL chat rooms.

That was the only reason I was on AOL, the chat rooms. The ability to talk to all sorts of different people was so awesome to me.

When I figured out that I could skip all the crazy bloated software and advertising that gave me all those “free” hours by paying a local ISP to get online…that’s what I did. It wasn’t easy, there was some configuration, and I had to figure out how to still talk to people without connecting through AOL, but I did it. I broke free from the mammoth advertising company that was blocking me from the real world while it tracked every move I made.

Sounds a lot like Facebook, doesn’t it?

I’m leaving Facebook for many of the same reasons. Facebook is absolutely intrusive and downright scary when it comes to privacy. But Facebook is also a bit of a time suck, and if your attention is only on what Facebook’s algorithms think you should be paying attention to…what are you missing?

I’m ready to find out.

Soon after I post this blog post, I’ll cancel my Facebook account. I’m not sure how long it will take for my account to be deleted, but I’m sure I’ll live on as a ghost in the machine because when you leave Facebook doesn’t delete all of your info. I’m not sure how many of my apps won’t work because they are connected to Facebook. I’m not sure what sort of emotional jolt this will be to my system either.

When I left AOL, it was so freeing. I met so many more people, and was exposed to many new ideas and cultures. I’m crossing my fingers that will happen again.

For those of you I’m leaving on Facebook, here’s how to contact me:

email: gina dot minks at gmail dot com

twitter: @gminks

LinkedIn: gminks

 

See y’all on the other side!

keep-calm-and-break-on-through-to-the-other-side-7

 

Leaving Facebook is harder than you think

Posted by Gina Rosenthal in privacy | Tagged | 3 Comments
2January2016

My new years eve party was awesome. After recovering (from cooking and hosting – forgot how much work that was!), it’s now time to finalize moving from Facebook.

The new year’s eve party was the last one I organized on Facebook. In addition to waiting until after this party,  I was waiting for Facebook to send me an email that my data export was ready. I waited a week and never saw an email, so I re-requested the export. This time I kept checking the page where I made the request until there was a download button. It took about 30 minutes.

I still haven’t seen an email from Facebook.

I have all of my pictures and videos, which is what I really wanted. I also found my ICQ number and I remembered my password, so that’s an unexpected bonus! One disturbing thing is all the private messages that are still available. And apparently will remain available after I leave.

But now it’s time to finalize my plans to leave Facebook. One thing I’m worried about are accounts that have to be linked to Facebook as the authentication mechanism. One example is Instagram.  I had an Instagram account before Facebook bought them, so I’m not sure what will happen to that account when I leave Facebook. The honest truth is that Facebook owns Instagram, so that is probably then next one I need to leave no matter what happens. It’s a pretty big mess to untangle.

Leaving Facebook is also confusing. You would think that you’d find that option in your settings under Security. At the bottom you’ll see the line “Deactivate your Account”.  According to text, all this does is disable your account, and ” Some information may still be visible to others, such as your name in their friends list and messages you sent.”.

deactivate facebook

 

This isn’t what I want, I want Facebook to forget I existed, run that rm -rf *.* on my account please! Where is that option? I clicked the Learn more button. That brought me to Facebook’s privacy basics page. After nine clicks, I get to a page that tells me if I want to permanently delete my account, I have to go to learn more in their Help Center. Facebook makes it very easy to deactivate your account, but they put you through nine clicks and still don’t give you the link in the text of the page to take me to the place where I can delete my account (although there is one in the top menu bar). They really, really do not want you to leave.

delete-instructions

 

Before I headed to the Help Center, I checked out the Data Policy link. I clicked on the How can I manage or delete information about me, and found this interesting:

You can delete your account any time. When you delete your account, we delete things you have posted, such as your photos and status updates. If you do not want to delete your account, but want to temporarily stop using Facebook, you may deactivate your account instead. To learn more about deactivating or deleting your account, click here. Keep in mind that information that others have shared about you is not part of your account and will not be deleted when you delete your account.

And apparently, you can never really leave. Messages you have sent remain in the account of the person you messaged with. Facebook will disassociate your account from personal identifiers, aka they replace your user name with your user number. This means some stuff stays forever, no matter what you do. You can check out but you can never leave….

you-can-never-leave

This is the link to delete your account:

https://www.facebook.com/help/delete_account

So my revised timeline is this:

  • Leave date is next Friday, Jan 8
  • I’m going to let my friends on facebook know, and make sure we’re connected elsewhere
  • I think I’m just going to wing it with regard to Facebook-dependent apps like Instagram. It will make my list of apps I need to leave shorter.

I’ll post updates as things progress.

 

 

 

 

How many apps are connected to your Facebook account?

Posted by Gina Rosenthal in privacy | Tagged , | Leave a comment
27December2015

I have 306. I found it by digging into Facebook’s explanation of what information they collect on all of us.

If you want to see how many apps are connected to your Facebook account, the direct link is here.

Three hundred and six linked apps. And I have to remove them one-by-one. Each time I remove one, I have to acknowledge this warning:

This will remove the app from your account, your bookmarks and the list of apps you use (found in your settings). Learn more.,
Note: ★ Which 80s movie defines you? may still have the data you shared with them. For details about removing this data, please contact ★ Which 80s movie defines you? or visit the ★ Which 80s movie defines you? Privacy Policy

Why did I allow my account to be linked to ★ Which 80s movie defines you? And anyways – don’t judge! You know you’ve done it too!!

Click the link and check out the legalese I agreed to just to find out that Breakfast Club defines me (I’m sure it was Breakfast Club…). Basically, it’s Personal Data (for example, name and email address), certain personally non-identifiable information, the information about the number of messages you send and receive,  research on its customer demographics, interests and behavior based on the Personal Data and other information provided to us. This research may be compiled and analyzed on an aggregate basis. Oh and then they sell all that info to other people.

I feel so dirty. Plus anyone who knows me could have told me which 80s movie defines me.

There is so much involved with quitting Facebook…..

 

Leaving Facebook

Posted by Gina Rosenthal in privacy | Tagged , | Leave a comment
27December2015

I’m leaving Facebook. I’ve been wanting to for a while, but the passage of CISA – the Cyberspace Information Sharing Act of 2015 – has finally pushed me into action.

Why am I freaking out over CISA? Many of my friends have responded this way when I have told them about my plans:

  • I’ve always been careful about what I shared, so this doesn’t worry me.
  • I don’t post to Facebook, so I don’t have anything to worry about.

CISA is much bigger than your social media presence or brand, so these responses totally miss the mark. And the amount of content you create really doesn’t matter when it comes to CISA either.

You should be terrified of CISA. The bill strips Americans of basic rights in the name of protecting us from terrorism. The bill was shoe-horned into a spending bill that *had* to be passed so the government keeps running. It will increase the US government’s ability to spy on citizens, by providing unfettered access to the way we interact with online systems.

Oh, it’s all wrapped up in reasonable legal language………

Purpose: create a mechanism for the government to share cybersecurity threats with everyone. I highlighted the undefined terms.

This bill requires the Director of National Intelligence and the Departments of Homeland Security (DHS), Defense, and Justice to develop procedures to share cybersecurity threat information with private entities, nonfederal government agencies, state, tribal, and local governments, the public, and entities under threats.

If companies voluntarily share this threats and how the are taking defensive measures, the government will protect them.

Liability protections are provided to entities that voluntarily share and receive cyber threat indicators and defensive measures with other entities or the government.

The sharing process will be automated and real-time. Good thing programming is a politically-neutral activity huh?

A sharing process must be developed within DHS for the federal government to: (1) receive indicators and defensive measures that are shared by any entity, and (2) ensure that appropriate federal entities receive shared indicators in an automated, real-time manner.

But don’t worry, the government will only use info it gets for very specific, vaguely defined purposes:

The bill limits the purposes for which the government may use shared information to certain cybersecurity purposes and responses to imminent threats or serious threats to a minor. The crimes that may be prosecuted with such information are restricted to offenses relating to fraud and identity theft, espionage, censorship, trade secrets, or an imminent threat of death, serious bodily harm, or serious economic harm, including a terrorist act or use of a weapon of mass destruction.

 

The bill creates a legal climate that gives corporations immunity for sharing our online habits with the government — without providing us any due process. There are not many definitions in the bill, just the expectation that the government and big business will do the right thing. We know that they have an awesome track record when it comes to legislating first and doing the right thing later (the Dawes Act comes to mind for me).

The information that will be shared isn’t fully defined, and that makes the possible unintended consequences staggering. The only way to protect ourselves is to be more vigilant about the data we allow companies to collect. This isn’t just the content you post. It’s what you view. It’s what you like. It’s your connected-ness, and all of these things combined. It’s who you are supposed to be, and any indicators that you may be swaying from your assigned personna and becoming someone else. It’s your role as a node in the lives of your relations (that sketchy uncle or activist sister). It’s more than the data you knowingly contribute, its the information that is derived from that data.

I’m going to start hardening my electronic presence. I’m starting with Facebook because the data they collect on us is staggering.  It is also staggering how hard it is to leave. My leave date is early Jan – I’m hosting a New Year’s Eve party and the invite is on the site (yet another hardship — what will I use for invites? Facebook was so…easy). I’ve removed Facebook from my phone.

I’ve requested my data, but Facebook has yet to send it to me. I’m guessing I do have a huge archive, I’ve used Facebook pretty much since they opened it to the general public. I’ll write up a general how-do-I-leave once I’ve completed all the steps, but this is how to get your archive:

  1. Go to your profile page
  2. In the top right of your browser, click Privacy Shortcuts (a lock with three lines next to it)
  3. Near the bottom of the pop-up window, click See More Settings
  4. In the left panel, click General.
  5. Near the bottom of the page, click Download a copy of your Facebook data.

I’m not sure what happens next, but I’ll let y’all know.

I know people may think this post is a little dramatic, and that’s fine with me. We’ve been super lax about our privacy for too long. We need to protect ourselves and our loved ones.