Tim: 0:00

I'm a pattern recognizer. That's what I do right. That's why I play music, that's why I do jujitsu, that's why I cook, that's why you know I do tech. Like all these things I do, it comes from pattern recognition and finding, like the context behind it and the underlying fundamentals.

William: 0:25

Coming to you from the Cloud Gambit studio. This is your host, william, and with me my co-host, the cheesecake crafting queen of the South, yvonne Sharp. How are you doing today, yvonne?

Eyvonne: 0:39

That would be me, and I cannot quantify the number of cheesecakes I've made in my career. But now I can no longer eat dairy, so cheesecake is completely a gift. I make cheesecakes, I can still make it, but I don't get to eat it.

William: 0:53

I've had one of them and it was very good. It might be one of the best cheesecakes I've ever tasted, and it's not just the cheesecake, it's the homemade raspberry topping with the chocolate drizzle.

Eyvonne: 1:04

Yeah, anytime you're near Louisville, kentucky, and you want to go for a scenic drive, let me know and I'll make you cheesecake.

Tim: 1:12

All right, just so you know my birthday did just pass and I don't recall getting anything from either of you.

Eyvonne: 1:18

Oh, okay, if you're ever in the area, let us know.

William: 1:22

You're on the Christmas card cheesecake list now, well, and so I got to introduce our guest. So with us we have a very special guest, uh, tim banks. So first, of all how are you doing on this fine, this beautiful monday? I don't know if it's beautiful in austin. You're in austin, right?

Tim: 1:40

I am and it is, it is gorgeous. So we've, um, you know, we have survived the Texas summer and we've had our first full week, like in the eighties. My air conditioner turned off at least twice yesterday, which is, you know, that's. That's a monumental time, but I do it. Well, it's sunny out, it's clear, it's, it's. It was breezy the morning started off in the fifties and it was, it was wild. Finished selling right, my right. My birthday week, you know, concludes today like a week from my birthday, and I had a great time yesterday, uh, with some friends and one of my partners, and it was just just. I've been having an absolute blast. Probably, probably, actually. No, I deserve the good times I've been having. I'm gonna be honest about that. I've been, I've been, I've been pretty good.

William: 2:21

So it was good food involved.

Tim: 2:23

Oh yeah, we went to a little Italian place. It's kind of newish here in Austin, I'm not getting sponsored by it. The place is called Casa Bianca. It was so good. They've got kind of like in the same style as you see popularized here in Austin Other places. You just order it and they bring it out kind of random as you order or whatever. There's no sense of like an entrees like that. You know, family, kids, family courses, kona made to share things like that. It was so good, absolutely fantastic. Um, and then we finished off with just a monstrously sized and delicious um, uh, um, millefola, I think, is what they call it in italian thousand leaves, whatever, whatever it translates to in italian. It's like it's what they call it in Italian A thousand leaves, whatever it translates to in Italian. It's like imagine a croissant as lasagna, but it's a pastry.

Eyvonne: 3:12

I'm intrigued, I'm really hungry now.

William: 3:13

Oh, it's so good. Yeah, I know it's delicious.

Eyvonne: 3:15

All we've done is talk about food.

William: 3:16

I know I'm really hungry? I actually haven't eaten anything today, because I'm kind of doing this intermittent fasting thing so I'm like starving.

Tim: 3:22

Okay, I love how you're kind of doing this intermittent fasting. You either do intermittent fasting or you don't, because if you don't do it you're not doing it Like it's. It is a binary state in that way.

William: 3:32

I do so. I wish I, I wish I was more consistent with it. But right now that what I'm doing is three days a week I do one meal, I just do like an early dinner and I like doing that. But the thing is I can't do it on the days that I'm doing sports or like doing anything like really active, or else I get into like the pass out, I'm gonna pass out your kind of phase I uh, I learned very quickly that I cannot myself do intermittent fasting.

Tim: 3:58

When I do jujitsu and and other people at the gym, you know everyone has their turn of like oh, I'm gonna do this. And then they wonder why. Like you know, everyone has their turn of like oh, I'm going to do this. And then they wonder why. Like you know, they're like did you, did you choke them out? Like no, they just fell out, I just ran out of steam Not enough protein today. Is it.

William: 4:14

Yeah, so I actually and I noted down that restaurant cause I I've been in Austin and usually like Austin or Dallas for for work, and I think at some point in the past few years, the last time I visited, actually I was talking to someone and I hadn't been in Austin for a while and it is like blown up, it was since the last time I'd been. It was just crazy. And then the person I was with had said something I think they said it is like the fastest growing major city in the us over like the past five years or something like year over year and it's a great place for food it has become a great place for food.

Tim: 4:55

It was always pretty good and it's a lot. A lot of stuff has come in here, but it's it's in this weird space where it's not it's not a new york or chicago on the level of food, um, and it's, you know, like the pacific northwest and like west coast, like where a lot of influences came from. They have proximity to the sea, which which helps them out. A lot austin's landlocked, so we have fantastic barbecue. The mexican food is off the chain but, like for other things, they're still trying to find the right culinary niche to fit in.

Tim: 5:28

There's an incredible amount of talent, incredible amount of vision. They just need to find the right thing that says this is Austin cuisine and that's. That's more than barbecue. You know what I'm saying? So they're, they're, they're folks that are doing great stuff. I'm excited to see what comes of it, but it's not quite there yet. But, oh, kristen, I think Kristen Nish, I think her name is they were on Top Chef about 10 years ago and then are now one of the hosts on the Food Network Top Chef, and they just won an Emmy and they're based here, out of Boston. That's cool.

William: 6:06

Before I forget, happy belated birthday, by the way.

Tim: 6:08

Well, thank you. I'm in my last year of my 40s and I'm already planning my 50th birthday party, just because it's going to be like, hey, why not?

William: 6:18

The big one. Yeah, sounds like fun. Yeah, for sure.

Tim: 6:21

I know you all have plenty of years left before you get there, but when it happens it'll be fun.

William: 6:29

No, no, I'm one year behind you, so we're getting there as well. I read somewhere recently, I guess in your, it was one of your bios, I think it might have been LinkedIn, but you started out kind of just your whole, I guess, career in the US Marine Corps and I think you your specialty was avionics.

Tim: 6:52

Yeah, yeah. So I started off in the Marine Corps, you know, as my first job and it was funny because I went, I joined the Marine Corps to be in the Marine German Bugle Corps actually auditioned for and made the Marine Drum and Bugle Corps at the headquarters of 8th and I as a percussionist and I was going to go there. It was going to be great. I had a couple of buddies that were there. I was like, yeah, I'm going to go play drums for the Marine Corps, woo-hoo, right, you know, with red uniforms or like that, blah um took my ass, fab went to boot camp and in boot camp they're like hey, um, bro, you're at by the way oh yeah, by the way yeah, like you got it.

Tim: 7:32

You got a perfect score on the ass, fab. So, um, we're not gonna let you play the drums, bro. We can get any any idiot coming here and play the drums, um. So they, they put me in. Um, they put me in. Uh, first there was gonna be like electronics text or something like that, and then they you know that's testing. I swam well, I don't get motion sick or anything like that so great, we're gonna do avionics because we might need some flight navigators. So, um, switched me in boot camp to avionics. I had the option to get out too. I could have gotten out or kind of just taking that. So I went in and I just got a little little little bonus, little little promotion, but did avionics. And it's interesting learning avionics in the Marine Corps because you basically get equivalents of an associate's degree in electronics, but with a crusty gunnery sergeant yelling in your face the whole time. And if you ever need to learn how to assemble a box of parts into a radar while wearing a gas mask, that is the place to go.

Eyvonne: 8:22

You know I will say, like we, I know a lot of young people who are, you know, either either struggling with where to go or what to do with their lives, or they don't have a ton of family support, or they didn't have a lot of discipline growing up. And they, you know, they're, they're finishing high school and they, they don't really know what they want to do. And you know, I know so many folks for whom service made their you know careers, you know, gave them not only experience but connected them to mission and a peer group that was life-changing. I think it's a great path.

Tim: 8:59

I think it's interesting and nuanced, because I joined the Marine Corps during the Clinton era. Right, the Clinton era wasn't devoid of war and I certainly saw more than I wanted to see, but we weren't still involved in that much, you know. Now we literally just had an entire generation of our youth involved in a war 20 and still, um, I don't know that I can make that recommendation anymore. I'm gonna be real honest, and I know I have friends that um either didn't come back or came back greatly altered and not a great way, um, and so my, my, my, my question is to get this foothold? At what cost? You know, um, and the cost is great in the Marine Corps or in any of the military, and I just don't know.

Tim: 9:48

There's got to be a better way. There's got to be a better way. Yes, sure, it can be if that's the thing you want to do with your life, but it shouldn't be your only option if you don't have supports like that. And so, yeah, I would encourage kids, especially now, now that the internet is a thing and there's an avenue, if you want to get a career in something, um, there are ways for that to get that kind of instruction without having to go Um and like cause I'm not. If someone is really passionate about doing it, then I'm yes, we could do that.

Tim: 10:26

But but if, if I, what I, what I don't want to see, is kids going there because it was their only option? Um yeah because that's not a great way to be um that's not when you did go through.

William: 10:32

Did it have like a did? Did it have like a positive impact on you transitioning to tech, or did it have any impact there?

Tim: 10:38

no, a total I. I got hired directly out of the marine corps because I had that electronics background and, to be sure, right. You know, for me that was the right move, but it was at great cost. You know, I do not this is not the day for me to get into like everything in it, but it was. It's a lot of it, it was a great experience, but a lot of it sucked. So I don't know, like I don't know, where I would be without it. I certainly wouldn't be where I am. So for that I'm grateful. But, yeah, it's um, it's we, we, we have to do better. We have to do better than that for, for, for people who want, uh, for people who want a career for sure, yeah, for sure.

William: 11:36

And it's kind of one of those things, too, where there I think I've seen some advertisements here recently where they're, you know, enrollment and everything is like so down that they're trying to get more creative with how they they. You have to have people, but yeah just know what you're doing.

Tim: 11:57

You know, be educated and talk to people that have been there, I think is another good thing. You know to inform your decisions, I guess I think there's this interesting thing and this is something that I think translates very well into tech that we see. Tech that we see, um is that companies with a lot of resources a lot of resources tend to make really dumb decisions. Right, and companies with not a lot of resources tend to make really dumb decisions, but for different reasons, right, um, companies with a lot of resources resources make dumb decisions because why, why not? Was it going to hurt them? Right? And companies who don't have a lot of resources tend to make dumb decisions just because they didn't have enough or the capability or access to information to make good choices. Right?

Tim: 12:38

But then companies that are more thoughtful and everything like that, that haven't gotten too big, they tend to you see, those ones who are smart, they're making good choices because good choices, because they have that culture of perpetuating good decisions and informed decisions and stuff like that, and they haven't gotten so big that they don't really suffer consequences for anything that happens.

Tim: 12:55

Right, and that's kind of like what that ideal size, I think for a company, when a company does something exciting, this company is new, this company is great, they're doing smart, they're doing smart, they're doing, they're making an impact. That's usually when they're at that size. Right, I feel like maybe our military and this may not have been what you wanted to talk about, but here we are I feel like maybe our military maybe suffers from the first, of having way too many resources, and then they're preying on the people who suffer from the second one, which is not enough resources, and the two combined don't make good decisions together sometimes. And maybe it's like, maybe if we made them more agile, like literally more, you know, like let's, let's cut back, let's run lean, let's figure out, you know, if we don't have all these resources what do we have to do?

William: 13:46

That sounds like it makes a lot of sense to me, but yeah, I'm no, of course I'm no expert there. But yeah, I mean our government and the military.

William: 13:55

it is you know, we're just huge and it seems like you know the government just gets bigger and bigger and more money gets poured into you know some of the same programs, without the programs maybe changing. So so much, but yeah, I don't know really what the right answer is. But one good segue for this conversation and one thing that I definitely wanted to touch on was you know, I've followed you on Twitter for a while and I can't remember when I first heard about I think you were on a podcast. Honestly, I think it was. It might've been one of the Duck Bill Group podcasts that you recorded with Corey, and I hope this is an okay observation. But you do a pretty good job of being someone that doesn't let your job or the company you work for sort of define you, if that makes sense.

William: 14:50

No, it does and you have a ton of experience across many really like a lot of big vendors, some startups and even, I think you have some enterprise companies thrown in there as well. A wealth of experience. Can you give us a brief? Because one of the things it's not just the companies that you've worked for, but you've actually worked in a lot of different, a diverse amount of areas, whether it's database, linux, admin, yeah, and that's where I grinded on and when I got my start, it was all Linux, all the time managing Linux servers, before we had fancy tools to manage fleets of yeah.

William: 15:35

So how did you sort of evolve from that? I guess some would call that like traditional infrastructure, but you've really and I actually just sent Yvonne an article today. I don't know if you had a chance to look at it, yvonne, but it was about how, in tech, you have to basically to stay relevant, you have to learn new technologies and you have to keep chugging along. So if you stay stagnant, you're essentially going to, you're going to have a hard time getting a job and keeping a job, which is a good thing and a bad thing, I guess, because you want to keep learning but also, at the same time, you want some stability without being forced to have to go into multiple areas. But can you kind of give us a sort of a background of how you pivoted from that traditional infrastructure the Linux admin, tim Banks to really a community presence, a DevOps presence, open source presence, you're everywhere. So how did how did that sort of happen?

Tim: 16:30

I mean the, the, the. The ridiculously practical answer is money, um, but. But there's more nuance to that. But no, I went, I, I chased the money, because that's why I'm here, um, and it's interesting because you talk about, like me, not defining myself through whatever company I work for and stuff like that is because I'm literally only here for the money and I can be bought, Right, well, actually, I take that back. I can be rented, I can be leased. You can't buy me. That's a better way to say it, right, but you know, I would look at what was in demand, because that's what was paying the most and what was also within my capability of learning the fastest. Right.

Tim: 17:14

And if you notice, a lot of the things I put, you know, go from, like you know, system admin, linux admin, to database admin. That was because a Linux admin working for LAMP web hosts. You had to do Apache, you had to do the Linux operations, you had to do Cel. You had to do a ton of MySQL, right, you had to learn PHP and Perl and all these other, you know. You had to learn WordPress. You had to learn Drupal and Joomla and everything else that folks were using. But the one thing, the two things that were always present, right and on those systems were always Apache and MySQL. And nobody paying a lot of money for Apache admins anymore, right, they're paying money for MySQL admins, right.

Tim: 17:58

But so then you get into like databases and data structures and how data works and in and out and optimization and things like that. And then you're like, oh well, what else runs data back and forth? Well, it's just no SQL stuff. So you like, oh well, what else runs data back and forth? And let's just no SQL stuff. So you know, jumping into some MongoDB as it comes up and then working MongoDB, and then, like you know, working in shops, it's like, oh well, devops, all these, all these tools. So you're a Linux admin and you do a database. So here we have a state store, we're going to do all these CICD tools. So here you go, this is yours now, because I wasn't a dev, because, but I know Linux systems work. Now, this is just a new Linux system to maintain, right.

Tim: 18:34

But then you learn, like, you know these, you know these softwares, like that, and it goes into, you know it moves that way. But the thing that was that is interesting about that, the thing that that I will say that I'm good at is that the particular syntax or the particular implementation of whatever technology is, is very relevant to me. It's the process, it is the things that this is what we're trying to do. This is how you understand the problem. We're trying to do this and we want to do this, and we're going to do this, and this is how we're going to do it. This is how it's going to help us. This is why it's important, right? And those are the things that you can draw circles around in pretty much every piece of technology that you use, and the things that you can relate one to another make it easy to learn, right?

Tim: 19:15

I'm a pattern recognizer. That's what I do, right. That's why I play music, that's why I do jujitsu, that's why I cook, that's why you know, I do tech, like all these things I do. It comes from pattern recognition and finding, like the context behind it and the underlying fundamentals, and that's pretty much all of computing, but also it's like some of your personalities.

Tim: 19:34

I don't, I'm not a developer. I just don't have the. I don't have the patience for it. Gosh, I just don't. I code just good enough to get done what I'm trying to do. But don't ever ask me to write something that's going to make money. That's just that's money. That's just throwing good money after bad. I'm just not good at it.

Tim: 19:52

But then I made this pivot from being an engineer to being more consultative, being a TAM and then a solutions architect, and then Deb Rel and back now as a solutions architect, because the thing that I like to do is I like to talk to people and figure out how they're trying to use tech, like what are your problems?

Tim: 20:08

What are you trying to solve with this tech? Because in the end, that's all that matters to me. The tech is an implementation detail, right. What are you trying to do? What do you need, right. What are your actual goals? Right, and that's the thing that I think a lot of people, especially in engineering wise, they don't see past, you know committing to production, but they're real-life, breathing people on the other side of that computer, on that phone, whatever, who are using this tech to do something trivial or something dramatically important to a lot of people's lives, and you have to understand why, or you have to understand what they're doing, otherwise you miss a lot of stuff, and so and so the why becomes important to what you're doing and then when you use the why, the end goal, why to inform that you can make a lot smarter decisions about what you're doing, tech wise, to meet those goals, cause you have the context behind the requirements and so the pursuit of that Right.

Eyvonne: 21:22

Is what's led me to where I am in my career that, ultimately, that you see enough patterns over time and they all look the same, even when it's a new implementation. I'd love you to we talked a little bit about storytelling before we started recording, and I'd love for you to talk a little bit about how those customer conversations weave together and help build stories to understand and explain the tech. I've heard a lot of consternation, sometimes from technologists about, well, it's just a story. But in my mind, it's never just a story. Stories aren't always false and stories help us make sense of our world, so I'd love for you to talk a little bit more about that piece of what you do.

Tim: 22:13

So, whenever I like to talk to a customer and you probably saw this when I came in here I'm never going to come in here, we're never going to start talking about tech Never, because, again, I don't actually don't care, right? I want to know who you are, I want to know about you, right, and I want to know what you're trying to do, right, because about you and who you are informs what you're trying to do and how you're trying to go about it, right? So I'm going to sit down and we're going to talk about. Hey man, as you saw, like I want to see about this cool thing you have back now, like that tells me about who you are, right? Like I sat down and William was like, oh, that's a really cool sign, and then William told me a story about that little sign, and now it gives me a little bit of information about William and who they are, and then how they go about doing things and what things excite them, right.

Tim: 23:02

And so, with that, now I can like oh, that's a basis for me to be able to relate for this person because, oh yeah, I love that, or I don't know anything about that. Please tell me this. And that's my favorite thing. I know I'm totally ignorant about this thing, please tell me about it. And to watch people get excited about those things, I love it. But when people realize you are actually there to listen to them, they will talk. And they're going to talk to you like they're talking, not like they're presenting or not like they're representing, right. And then you're going to get what I like to call the real tea. You know, I'm not going to get. I don't want your avatar, I don't want the representative. Look, just just talk to me.

Tim: 23:41

What is what is actually trying to go on? Like, how can I help you? You are here because somebody is holding your feet to the fire sometimes. Right, I need to know what you need, right, and if we can do it, great. But I need to know that right, because you're going to spit in me requirements that maybe or maybe not requirements, but even the priorities are going to be different once I know it is what you're trying to do. Right. Are you trying to make an impact? Are you trying to clean up somebody's mess mess? Are you trying to do dramatic impact? Is the business in trouble or is the business great and we're trying to find a way in the future? Like what is that? What is the goal? What do you when, when this is all said and done and you're home and you're happy about it, what happened? Yeah, I know that.

William: 24:20

like all the best sales people that I've ever talked to or like heard a pitch from or even worked with, like they've all. They all have maybe different unique skills, but I feel like something that they all did really well was like storytell, and this is a craft that's as old as this human civilization, you know. Campfire style storytelling especially, and our lovely career of information technology, you know, becomes really important because, you know, again we were talking before we, we hit record and you, you're not going to remember that feature pitch, but you will remember a story. You just they, they somehow just stick, uh, they stick with you really and that's something that I've recently actually like.

William: 25:03

Over the past year or so I've had many people reach out and then you know just asking basically, how do I get better at storytelling, how do you even begin to go down? That you know, because as engineers, if all you do is like work in code and you have your code base and that is where you're grinding like day in and day out, you're maybe not even talking to to humans during the day except for like a stand-up, maybe not even talking to humans during the day except for like a stand up. And maybe you know, I think, through the pandemic and everything, there was such a long pause on in-person events, like even local events, and I love local events and it was hard on me, but just not having human interaction and not having you know it kind of sets you back a little bit. But do you have any tips on how folks can sort of pivot from that product pitching mentality first to more of a conversational story?

Tim: 25:58

There's a couple of ways, and let me I'm going to do this by telling you a story. So KubeCon 2023 was an EU was in.

Tim: 26:08

Amsterdam. Right, amsterdam is a fairly diverse city but a lot of black people there, but pretty diverse. I needed a haircut right and usually when I go to conferences I go down to get a haircut there, just for the experience. My partner at the time was great at finding me a black barber in this place in the Jordan area of Amsterdam, an old mosque right. It was an old mosque that had been repurposed into a barber shop that had like a little bar in it, had a little African and Caribbean food truck in it and there was a place where the African diaspora around Amsterdam gathered. So there was folks from New York City, from LA, from Oakland, from the Caribbean, from New York City, from LA, from Oakland, from the Caribbean, from all over Africa et cetera, from all over Europe was all in this place Cacophony of accents and great, great conversations, great, you know, food and everything like that.

Tim: 27:01

So I'm getting my hair cut in this beautiful prayer alcove I'll have to find a picture of it. It's stunning, stunning mosaic tile in this thing and I'm getting my haircut in this little mirror set up with my barber. His name was Will. I think his name was also Will and he was from Trinidad, and then I was supposed to have a meeting with Kelsey Hightower and I was like I'm selling this place. I'll come up to you, rick. So Kelsey Hightower walks in, he sits down at this bench and he and I start talking. I'm getting a haircut, I've got like a hot towel over my face, my mouth is exposed and I'm having this conversation with him. Um and this, this, and I clear by by at least a decade I'm the oldest person in this place. Kelsey's not far behind, right, um and uh. And well, what do you guys do? And so we work in tech. Oh, what's it like?

Tim: 27:51

And so Kelsey proceeds to tell our barber and the listening people about how to relate what we do right, as developer advocates in technology to the work that they do as people who work on barber and stuff like that. And it's like you know, when you cut someone's hair, you don't just come and define, you don't just come and decide what you're going to do and blah, blah, blah. You talk to them, you get an idea of what they want, how it looks, what kind of you know, you consider all these factors and use your experience and then you make something right. You're making something right For this person and they walk away from this and they want to feel good about what they did right. It's like that's all we do. This is literally all we do.

Tim: 28:29

Right, we make something that people say they want. We're going to talk to them to figure out what it is, and our job as dev rels are the folks who do the talking and the listening and then convey the thing that folks want to the people who are in charge of actually producing it. Right, and to have this conversation in a mosque essentially where I'm getting my hair cut, you know in the middle of Amsterdam, with one of the greatest storytellers I've ever seen Right, was a true. It was. It was like a life changing moment for me to really give an understanding of why the work we do is impactful Right To the people that do it.

William: 29:05

And so the notion of being a fly on the wall there that sounds like an amazing experience.

Tim: 29:10

Um and and with the. The thing that I take away from that, and how this relates to storytelling, is that the first thing you have to be able to do to tell a story is you have to be able to relate to the listener, right? You have to speak in a way that they're going to be able to relate to, especially if they don't know what you're talking about. So when you hear me talk about tech, you'll hear me talk about tech in the context of cooking or jujitsu or building a house or other things that I've done, that people can, even if they haven't done themselves, at least relate to something that is more accessible to them than maybe container orchestration, you know. So find the way to relate to people, the people find a way. You want to tell your story for the person who knows absolutely nothing about what you're talking, right? Yeah, because if you can convey the information to them, then you can convey it to everyone.

Eyvonne: 30:07

When one of the things that stands out to me about all that you're saying is that you're not talking about speaking to be heard. You're talking about relating with the person that's hearing and starting with the listener, not starting with yourself, and I think that's a key trait of those who actually communicate well and want to get their message across. They don't start with themselves. They always have an idea of their values, of their beliefs, of what they want to communicate, but they're connecting with a person and they put that other person or group of people first in order to figure out how to relate. And I think that's that's a super important reality in what you're saying to call out.

Tim: 30:59

I think what's also important too. There's a lot of people who are used to being listened to, right? I don't. I don't have to hear them from them, to be honest, really.

Tim: 31:07

And be very honest, the people who are used to being listened to all the time. I don't have to hear from them because I already know what they want. They've already told us, right. There's a lot of people there who are not used to being listened to or, more to the point, who are not used to being talked to. Right, and their stories are very important, right, because they're going to have different perspectives from the people you're used to hearing from all the time and there's no innovation in doing the same thing over and over again, right?

Tim: 31:36

So I want to hear from the person who hasn't spoken. I want to hear from the person who's in the meetings but hasn't gotten the talk right. Or, more to the point, especially if it's a place where they don't really feel good at all. It's like, hey, let me catch you after this, real quick, I've got a question for you. And then, hey, what do you think about this thing? Like you can just like, just for real, just blah, blah, blah, blah. I feel like your insights might be different. Talk to me about it, you know, and just put them at ease and let them bite into a morsel that they'd never been offered before.

William: 32:11

Yeah, that's great, um, and yeah, that's just such a cool and cool story, cool place, you know, having a Kelsey Hightower there and I remember when he, when he was gonna, he announced his retirement, I was just like, oh, I hope he doesn't stop tweeting. I hope he just doesn't disappear, because his tweets are just so good. Every tweet that he tweets out is like they're all good. He's just such a good person. As far as conveying information, guess not to. Let's see how are we doing on time. We gotta, we still got a little bit of time. But one thing I wanted to, you know, sorry to pivot so quickly, but one thing that I I love that you do.

William: 32:54

Yeah, I just want to fit so much in um, but brazilian jiu-jitsu, um, you know, there, there's many things in life that serve like multi-faceted purposes sports, for instance, like, especially when you're young. You know they can serve as a like a springboard for, like, developing social skills or teaching. You know get teaching, discipline, you know focus, patience, even reducing. You know taking that stress level down. You know building your, your confidence, like. The list goes on. A lot of these things can, you know, actually serve as a great foundation and support for your, your mental health. Really, um, and so you're, you're a very skilled and competitive um in brazilian jiu-jitsu. I think you teach it as well, don't you? Yes, that's awesome yeah, I'm, I'm.

Tim: 33:46

I fingers crossed. I should get my black belt this year.

William: 33:50

Nice. That's awesome and I mean kudos to you, for you know just a lot of uh, a lot of folks that I know sort of lose, you know, maybe they did something as a kid or maybe they didn't pick it up until they were an adult, but then they do it for a little while and they just stop, you know, cause life gets busy and I think it's important to have something outside of work or something that's yours that you can kind of focus on, that you can stick with. It's just something that you love. But when did you start learning Brazilian Jiu Jitsu and how is it? You know, I imagine it's been a net positive in your life overall, personally and professionally. How did that evolve?

Tim: 34:32

Yeah, I've been training in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu for seven years, as of August. So I've been training Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu for seven years, as of August, which is, you know, I've been a brown belt for about a year and a half now. So it grows in the ranks fairly quickly. But I trained a lot. And the thing that I like about Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, which I think makes it stand out from a lot of other things, is the number of boxes it checks for a lot of people Like, first and foremost, yes, it is a physical activity, you are going to get out there, you're going to sweat, you're going to need some stuff, you're going to get flexibility, you're going to get strength, you're going to get endurance. Yes, those are the things that happen, right, it's also a thinking person's game. It is chess. It is very high-level, high-stakes chess with dire physical consequences, I think, as Joe Brogan said at some time or another. But the other thing it is it is tied very deeply to like human psychology, in the way that the thing that you do more than anything else in jujitsu is you touch other people, you have your hands on somebody, you're making contact with another person platonically, sometimes violently, but whatever for hours a day, right. So the thing about higher order primates, right. The thing that you see in common with all of them is that they bond by touch, like their social circles. They touch, they groom, they do whatever like that. That is how they bond is via touch, right? They communicate vocally, verbally, like that, but when you see them all together, they're all hugged on each other, touching. That's the thing they do. That's the things human used to do in our, in our, in you know, a long time ago. Some of the cultures embrace it, ours doesn't. Really, we don't touch nobody, right. We shake their hands, like maybe we hug family members or something like that, but for by and large, we don't touch anybody, right? Not great for your mental health.

Tim: 36:19

Until you realize, once you start doing something where you touch somebody on the trust, you build confidence, you build a rapport with someone right that you can't have otherwise. Right? There are people I will go. There are people that will pay $250 to sign up to go up onto a mat to have someone choke them with an inch of their lives and then when they tap them, they're going to stop.

Tim: 36:45

That sounds ludicrous. This person was about to kill you, but they're not going to kill you why? Because you tapped on their shoulder Like that. Just it sounds silly, like on its face, but that's exactly what it is. It's a respect and it's a trust that you don't get like that from in any other environment. And when you can bond like that with someone or someone in the same practice, right, because you both wear the gi, you both have the belt someone or someone in the same practice, right, because you, you both wear the gi, you both have the belt, you've been to the same thing like that, it's a sense of community that that is, uh, that is really hard to find. It's hard to find a parallel for it anywhere else in the world.

William: 37:20

You know what I'm saying again, yeah, and I think sports, especially like you can I mean everybody needs something outside of work. I mean if you, especially like you can I mean everybody needs something outside of work. I mean if you, especially if you work in tech, you're constantly sitting, I sit all the time and that has that has consequences. So, yeah, I mean you could go ride a bike or you could go do other things. But kind of like what you're saying, you know when you have something, you know whatever it is, where you can, you know build that relationship with other people, you're not alone. You know whether it's a team sport. Well, even I guess jujitsu wouldn't be considered a team sport. Well, I guess it kind of is a team sport Like not when you're one-on-one.

Tim: 37:58

But, yeah, you compete as an individual, you train as a team. The thing about jujitsu right that I really like more than anything else is you can't have an ego. When you do jujitsu right, you're going to do nothing but lose for at least your first several months of doing it. You're going to get beat and get thrown. You're going to get choked. Every everything imaginable is going to happen to you and you're not even going to know what's going on. Right, you cannot go into jujitsu with an ego, right? Um, some people will develop one later on as they get good, but again, it gets checked so quickly, right, I start my day right In an earnest struggle for my life with a 300 pound dude sweating into my mouth, trying to choke me to death while I own clothing like everything else after. That really gets perspective.

William: 38:47

Yeah, that's one way to put it. Yeah, and then sitting at your desk or having, uh, you know, an email that needs to go out late, doesn't seem exactly not at all.

Tim: 38:55

Okay, yeah, it's not too yeah, exactly you know, and it's that level of um, I don't know that I would call it zen, but I would certainly call it a perspective on what's important and what isn't important. Um it, and sometimes it gets you in trouble, because I look at people's like serious situations and everyone's trauma is relative, for sure. But I'm like, oh my gosh, you, I don't know it will be, it will be just fine, my guy, I promise, and we'll send out your little email exactly.

William: 39:26

the work's always going to be there the next day, I promise.

Tim: 39:28

That's it. That's it, it's going to be there Again.

William: 39:32

Pivoting into one more area that I wanted to touch on, you have a pretty big voice in the community and you've had some good opinions over the years In the form of tweets from the ones that I'm referencing about the current state of open source and just community, of community in general. And I know Yvonne's actually been a big staple in the network engineering community over the years. Back when podcasting was becoming cool and popular, she had started. Did you co-host a network collective, Yvonne?

Eyvonne: 40:01

or did you start? It I was a co-host.

Tim: 40:04

Yeah Well, co-founder with my partners Get it right.

William: 40:13

No, yeah, well, co-founder with my partners, yeah, get it right now. So, yeah, I mean, both of you honestly have done much more for and with the community than I've had an opportunity to do at this point. So I I guess my question to you, tim, is you know what is? How do you see the? Yeah, I feel like the community actually coming out of covid has been really bubbling up in a really awesome way. The CNCF is doing some pretty awesome and amazing things. I've had a few folks on to talk about hotel or open telemetry and just really awesome things going on there, but also open source at the same time, since it's kind of having an identity crisis in some regard with some licensing changes, as of late, it seems like one comes along every once in a while and just lights it back on fire again. But, yeah, do you have any thoughts there?

Tim: 41:05

I think it's interesting that you bring up the CNCF in this regard, because I feel like the CNCF started off with a sense of community and how it's just a corporate overlord. Right it is a vehicle for making money with very highly highly paid board members. Right, that use you know the guise of community and not saying that it's all. It's all smoke and mirrors, but certainly some smoke and some mirrors right To to funnel money into, into companies doing work. To to grow the Kubernetes landscape. Right.

William: 41:38

So the Kubernetes supercar, I guess the Kubernetes Corvette.

Tim: 41:42

Kinda kinda and and and I and I draw that distinction between something like the CNCF. And then you look at the Apache Software Foundation, which has software that we all rely on. Even everything in the Kubernetes project relies on something in the Apache Software Foundation. Right, everything there is free. There's not a company that's like, okay, we're going to get this, but we're going to get it. It's like who hasn't used HDBD? Who hasn't used Bind? You know what I'm saying? Like, these things are there and it's a different mindset, right.

Tim: 42:14

But is that community? Nah, no, it's part of the community, like the open source. It is open source software, but the community is different than the both of those, right, I look at something in the community. The first place I'm looking is DevOps days. The first place I'm looking is your local user group meetups. These are places where corporations can sponsor and come in, but it is not thrown by a corporation, it is for the user. I want user forward conferences that are there so that the users and the communities like that can get together and talk with each other, not be talked at, not be presented, to not be pitched, right.

Tim: 42:57

And that's what OpenSource really is. That it's heart and soul. It's not a group of people to be sold to, right, it's a group of people who are building stuff for the people who, for the people, for the builder and then for the community at large, first and foremost. Can somebody make money off it? Sure, right, great, go do that. But it's not. It is not. It's not. It's not a seller's, it's not sellers and buyers.

Tim: 43:23

And that's what I feel like a lot of it has moved towards, and that's why you're seeing a lot of these issues around the, you know, like the licensing and stuff like well, why is it there? Oh, it's, you know, the company has to make money and we don't want other people to make money and we got to differentiate. I'm like, look, here's the thing, dog. The company's success is not the community's problem. That is your problem, right, and? And if your notion of success for the company is going to be the expense of the community, the community is not going to.

Tim: 43:54

I take that very much, right. Um, you know, and it's funny, you know, it was just a few days ago Elastic switched their license back to say now that they're going to use a set of license that um is, um is going to be, you know, makes it truly open source because of their dispute about amazon, amazon forked open search and like why? Why do we go through all this? What was the end? You know what I'm saying? Like for what? And and that's the thing I think that that's really weird is that these companies are doing battles with other companies and they're catching the community in the middle of it. For what? And that's the part that really sucks the most.

William: 44:35

I saw that happen really hard with the HashiCorp license changes in the community. I guess it's mainly because I was closer to that community than some of the other communities and it just kind of like so many folks were conflicted because there were so many good people on than some of the other communities and it just kind of like so many folks were conflicted because there was so many good people on both sides that were impacted.

Tim: 44:56

It just it was terrible to watch unfold it feels like betrayal right, and not just for the people who are of the community, but the people at the company whose job it was to relate to and talk to and get the feedback from the community, because they were not the one, they were not privy to these decisions, their feedback had partner. This is all done in boardrooms, right.

Tim: 45:18

And those are the people and we talked about good. We've got to bring it back to context and storytelling. Those are the people that should be in the community right before you make these decisions, if you cared about them, right. But if you're going to make that decision and you're not members of the community and you're not getting out there, then don't, don't. Don't play in my face telling me it's like oh, we're so, probably, no, you're not. No, you're not. You never were Not you. You know you hire your dev rels. They're part of the community and they're the ones that are catching all the brunt for this yeah, do you?

William: 45:48

think the bigger that some of these organizations, so I guess they I mean they are organizations at the end of the day, whether they're non-profits or not. I guess, like, the more the bigger something gets and the more people that are involved in the bigger board that you have, just the bigger, the bigger, the bigger, the more voices and the more okay we have more voices. We have to appease this side and that side. Do you think that's when it sort of gets out of control? Because I know that I'm going to be speaking at this upcoming conference. That is just the right size conference and it's really community grounded.

William: 46:22

I don't think they have more than like 300 people that they will allow to attend the whole thing. There's like some, you know there's a number and they don't want to get, they don't want to go past a certain point because they don't want to lose the spirit of it being about the community and kind of like what you said earlier. You know vendors can come and sponsor, but the first event that they did, they had all the vendors in one hall so you could go in and talk to them if you wanted to, but it was really separate from all the other stuff that was going on, which was really, really impactful and it really you really had the best of the community there talking really about valuable things. I think it's yeah, there's that growth mindset, though they think they have to grow sometimes and I think that's when it gets in trouble to grow sometimes, and I think that's when it gets in trouble.

Tim: 47:09

There is a and not to, not to, not to lean too heavily into my politics, but but I've said in the past that that capitalism sickens everything it touches. Right, and I say that in this context, because you can have a bright and thriving community and then you're going to have a board member from a corporation who's going to like, hey, we're going to get on the board. Or some VCs, hey, we're going to get on the board, right, and they turn it into a business because that's the only thing they know how to do, right. And as soon as a growing, thriving community starts to take that turn, it's all over by the crying. At that point, right, and and I would love to see more communities outright reject corporate, you know, influence on their boards, on whatever like that, or vc influence like no, this should be the community, like I want the community members to, to, to be, uh, stewards of this and to guide this ship.

William: 48:08

Um, yeah, but kind of goes back to whoever's writing the paycheck is kind of who's going to be making the decisions, if you will.

Eyvonne: 48:16

Well, that's a that's a question of scale too. I was just going to say cause as your community scales, like it doesn't scale linearly. Linearly as the community gets bigger if you want to do meetups, the more expensive it is to get everybody together, the more coordination and planning it takes, the more organization, the more effort with outsized donations or investments from corporations that expect something you know return on their investment.

Tim: 48:56

And that's the difficult line to walk right, and I think that last part you said is the return on investment. Right, because they look at community sponsorship as a sales opportunity, right, and not an investment in the community. And those things are too. They can get the same money from the same booth but, like I said, the context for why they're doing it matters greatly, right? Companies that and there are some companies there that just support the community because we can, we should be there, like, yeah, here, you know, go, go, do this thing. Great, versus ones that want to go there to put a sales booth and to get opportunities and like, okay, I get this and we do this. And then like, if they don't have sales opportunities and they don't get a good ROI, they're not going to sponsor it anymore. Right, and? And and you see that coming out to play whenever the money starts to dry up, like, or whenever times get tough, they, they kill community sponsorships. Right, because they're not sales opportunities, because it's not an investment. Um, and, and that's that's the tell, right, and I, so I think, when communities, yes, can you scale, sure, should you scale? Maybe One thing I learned about restaurants is, like, it's okay to tell people we're full or we can't seat you today, right, because if you try to do too much you're going to lose it all.

Tim: 50:19

Right, you know you relate the story over and over and over again. Right, you cannot scale beyond your capacity to handle things. Especially handle things if you know how you go about doing it matters. And if you're trying to grow, have organic growth, the community, and keep the community at the forefront and keep corporate out and not make money. Maybe you can't scale worldwide, but you have a bunch of little small communities, blah, blah, blah. You know. Hey, you got this little community over here. Give it, give it, give it there. Great, that's fine. You know. Blah, you know. Hey, you got this little community over here. Give it, give it, give it over there. It's great, that's fine.

Tim: 50:50

You know, this is in the, the way the internet works today. If y'all are meeting together and they're meeting together, hey, maybe you just have a virtual thing. Maybe you go on a little road trip, maybe people pop in here. Or, hey, members of this community are all going to this one big, big conference. Right, this big, let's have a little user group meetup for these people over here, right, and it's like that. So find your opportunities, right, um, but like I said, the longer, the more you get into having the same players right for the money that they're.

William: 51:19

They are not there to help the community, they're there to help themselves yeah, so I've got one last question and then I'll open up the floor for avon, after um, after this, but so it's okay. We're in 2024 and 2024 is going way too fast. So, as you see, like the community as it is today, like in sort of the circles that we frequent, and the state of open source and where open source is today, do you see it as like a glass half full, glass half empty, like do you see it trending positive or do you see it degrading and not sticking to its roots? What are you? What is your shake for the future?

Tim: 52:03

I'm going to say, right now, we're at an inflection point, right, the battle for open source is also the battle for open standards for AI and open access to data and seeing how, how these decisions are made, how why they're made and things like that, and the companies don't want to do that. The corporations are making them, they're not inclined to want to give us access to that information and it's like okay, so how do we do this safely? And how do we do this safely and how do we do this openly? How do we do this transparently for and with the community? And you know, as goes that fate goes, probably a lot of other things, right, we're in this point where you're having so much AI-generated content that's supposed to feed the community.

Tim: 52:48

That is just junk, right, which you and Yvonne and I were long enough in the tooth to know that it's junk. But if I'm just starting out, I don't know any better. I don't know who's feeding me LLM generated crap, you know, and is that? And so, like, we have to think about not the community in 2025. When you think about a community in 2035, like, what is it? What is the thing that we're going to have for them?

Tim: 53:18

And that I don't have an answer for that, sad as I am to say, and it scared the hell out of me right now, because I don't know who's going to win on this and I buy it and I and I and I and I pitch it as winning because some people are definitely trying to win and they're trying to make other people lose, right, and it's going to be who's going to conglomerate the money the most in these large organizations. Who make money now off of AI, who make money off of this software, make money out of that software. Things are getting, you know, no-transcript movie generation or audio generation, and then we're talking about who's going to be in control of what we see and what we read, and I just don't know that. I want a corporate boardroom to be in charge of that. So those are decisions that we as practitioners and we as the workers who generate this technology we have to make.

Tim: 54:43

We have to make the decisions right, because the people in the boardrooms, they actually can't do any of this. They don't know how to do this. If they could, they would be doing it. They probably wouldn't want us.

William: 54:52

But they can't do it at scale, so the decision comes down to us you know, we've seen the floundering of boardroom boardroom bingo, if you will yeah over the past year or two too, it's been a little bit contentious as well, yeah, but in the.

Tim: 55:04

In the end, we're the ones making the tech. We're the ones deploying the. We're the ones making the tech. We're the ones deploying the tech. We're the ones who are getting everything networked together. We're the ones who make the documentation. It is up for us to decide how we work with the context of what it is we're trying to do, and that's the context we need to find.

William: 55:24

Love it, love it.

Eyvonne: 55:26

You got anything else, yvonne the philosopher of cloud a group of like-minded people, maybe without as much corporate influence, that really want to rub shoulders with other practitioners. What guidance do you have for folks that maybe have a desire to engage in community but haven't done so yet? What would you recommend?

Tim: 56:02

The first thing I would do is figure out where your comfort level is with engaging with other people and then just like, maybe push that like 5% Right, go to a meetup. Maybe you don't talk to anybody, maybe you just go, go and listen, be seen, you know, hear some conversations, just be a fly on the wall, get a feel for the vibe, for the pulse of that community and figure out if these are people you want to be around. You know whether it's this specific technology that you're familiar with, a technology you want to be familiar with. Meet up for folks in a job you have. Meet up for folks in a job you want. Just go and check it out. Like I said, you don't have to stay the whole time. You can just eat the free pizza and leave.

Tim: 56:49

You know, like, whatever it is you want to do, figure out what your comfort levels. If you're comfortable and you're a social butterfly and you just really need to get in the foot, go to one. You know, um, if you work with someone who is active in the community, like, hey, what is it? Where's the? What's the one you'd recommend? What's the one that? A beginner-friendly meetup, because there's some meetups that are just not for beginners right, it's for you know. It's like you know, going to an old head rap thing Like you can't just be new to rap and go to an old head rap like meetup and they're going to eat your lie, dog. But just figure out the right place, figure out what your comfort level is and then do what feels right. You know, because not every community is great. I like to think that most of them are, but they're not all great. If it's something doesn't feel right, don't do it.

Tim: 57:33

Just do something else figure it out. But but the desire and the willingness to push just a little bit, not a lot, just bump up against what you're typically comfortable with when it comes to interacting with other people. Just push it a little bit, see how it feels and then and then go from there.

William: 57:52

I love that. That's great. And then your, your comfort level slowly is going to shift a little bit If you find your community that you're comfortable with and you fit in the doors are going to open, career wise and many other ways as well. That's it Awesome. Thank you so much for joining us. We went a little longer than we normally go, but that was okay. This is an awesome conversation. Where can the folks out in the interwebs find you?

Tim: 58:18

So I'm on Twitter at El Chefe. I'm also on LinkedIn, I don't know. I'm with Tim JB, I think is what I'm on LinkedIn. If you're a LinkedIn person, I think is what I'm going to link there If you. If you're a LinkedIn person, um, you can. I've got a blog at Tim dash banksghostio, um, which I don't update as often as I should.

Tim: 58:39

I have, uh, as someone with, with profound ADHD, I've got probably about 70 blogs started, um and like for publish right, um, but um, but yeah, that's where you can find me, uh, me, uh, you know. Or if you see me out and about, like, um, you know, come interact with me. I'm, I'm, you know, I'm happy to talk to people. I I have very clear signals. If I'm peopled out, um, and you'll probably, you know, just hoodie up, headphones on, sunglasses, on whatever, like that. That's not the best time. Any other time, come talk to me, right, um, and also, if you, if you want to, if you want to learn some jiu-jitsu, come down to austin. I teach private lessons. Well, we can get in on it something now. Well, you said you wrestle um, I did.

William: 59:17

It's been a long time, you don't. Really it's like riding a bike in some sense, but yeah yeah, I think I figured we can have.

Tim: 59:23

We can have a special edition, maybe like a patreon members only, like one where you come down and you and I will go at it. We'll have yvonne reffin, you know.

William: 59:30

That'd be great sounds like too much fun, I probably I get squashed.

Tim: 59:35

You destroy me cheesecake. There we go.