Technology Blogging - VirtualizedGeek Teck Talk Episode 10
Transcript
hi this is Keith Townsen and you're listening to episode 10 of virtualized Geeks Tech talks today is April the 22nd I believe and if my memory serves me correctly today is the last day to get your uh V expert applications in so if you're interested in that at all hey you uh probably missed it if you're listening to this on the 23rd or after uh there's always next year I don't know if uh my application will get accepted or not but the guy that runs it
over at VMware John troyers um promises us that the the standard isn't so high to uh get into the program and I'm all for low standards uh but actually speaking of John Troyer tonight's uh podcast is actually a little bit less versal zation focus and probably a little bit less Tech focus and is more on uh blogging and uh social media uh so I've been I I got a pretty interesting notice from WordPress uh today today is my three-year anniversary of setting up my WordPress account
I'm almost certain that uh I set it up specifically to comment on a blog post about unemployment benefits because roughly 3 years ago roughly about 3 years ago I was looking for work I had gotten laid off from a uh job and I was looking at retooling myself and potentially getting my vcp which uh I got a couple of weeks ago so I'm only three years late getting it uh and I created a WordPress account uh specifically to comment on a blog post and that kind
of led me to considering blogging uh the the other uh kind of curious event that kind of brought about today's topic was that John trer and a couple other people uh uh someone from Cisco someone from EMC uh run a Blog I'm sorry a podcast called geek Whispers that's actually geared towards uh Enterprise social media uh employees so people who are specifically in the Enterprise and their role is around social media and kind of trumping the cause of uh their Enterprises on social media especially around
uh Tech and to the topic was from uh was about uh guys like me or people uh like John Amy Mark that uh have a big social media presence I don't know if I have so much of a big social media presence virtualized geek is kind of plateau told a little bit uh when it comes to readership but you know uh I've had a coworker tell me that he's famous that I'm famous because he saw my blog about a year ago so I guess I have
somewhat of an impact uh but the topic of the podcast was pretty interesting it was how do you balance kind of your uh blogging and social media presence with your presence in the Enterprise you know one of the things that I've specifically stayed away from especially the past couple of years as I worked for a fairly large organizations that can be a little bit reary of social media in general is that I haven't published who I work for as part of my Twitter handle if you
look at my LinkedIn profile it's part of that I think that makes sense and that's easier for uh the type of corporations that I've worked for in the past to digest that uh I self identifi who I worked for on my um on my about page on virtualized geek but outside of that you know I don't want the corporate types coming to me and saying and kind of policing my content so I kind of disass associate especially my Twitter handle with uh what I do daily
as a everyday job because specifically I don't want to deal with the hassle of someone telling me uh that they don't like my content even though I have you know that whole disclaimer that post are WR uh but the bigger thing was that I wanted to talk about was kind of the risk reward of blogging and having a large social media uh presence uh as I said about three years ago I was unemployed looking for work and I took the I took the plunge into starting
virtualized geek uh took a lot of time to find an available uh domain name that I liked I look back at it I look at uh my domain registry and I actually have quite a few domain names registered one was uh actually virtualization geek which I uh decided not to pursue because I wanted more of a neutral um techn from a technology perspective if I wanted to Pivot away from virtualization specifically which is what I have done uh the handle kind of still made sense and
I could pivot the blog away from just virtualization topics and talk about Enterprise infrastructure Consulting management consulting whatever it was that's technology related and I I took the plunge selected a do domain name and started blogging uh it took a really long time to kind of build up Equity with you guys the couple of you that kind of religously read the blog who uh listen to these podcasts uh for probably for the past year or so you guys have been a a really great audience uh
you've interacted well with me I appreciate it but uh career-wise has really been a a boom for me career-wise uh you can pract I mean honestly you can Google me if you look for virtualization smees or virtualization experts my name will hopefully come up within the next couple of uh within one or two uh Google search p es uh that's a big deal to me uh I'm I don't consider myself virtualization expert uh I I consider myself an infrastructure technology expert in general virtualization just seems
to be a Hot Topic uh I know a decent amount about it especially for my career level as a architect type role it's uh a very critical skill set to have uh but by no means do I consider myself a expert a lot of you guys that listen to the podcast uh and read the blog I must almost definitely defer to you guys from a technical perspective I really do understand it from an architectural perspective and I'm willing to take the risk and put myself out
there and put the readings out there there's been times where you guys have slapped my hand and told me that I'm wrong from a technical perspective or from a philosophical uh perspective but for the most part it's served this purpose and I've gotten my name out there uh if I ever do decide to look for another job uh the fact that I'm known from viralized geek.com is a Advantage uh but it it it is a risky thing you know when you put your name out there
you open yourself up to potential criticism uh you know you have to make sure that you're right me not so much so I kind of uh shoot from the hip it takes me just a few minutes to do most of my blog posts um if I'm not too comfortable about the material I probably won't post it but for the most part um I shoot from the hip and let you guys uh critique me and correct me if I'm wrong I have no problems with that so
it's worked out well for me so I kind of want to get um some feedback you know a couple of you guys I've specifically called out uh personally you know we I've reached out to you guys and ask you to start blogging yourselves uh potentially start a PO podcast or even be a guest of this virtualized geek um podcast I'm toying with the idea of doing a Google Hangout and posting that as a uh potential future podcast but uh I am very interested to know what
reasons either that you've chosen to podcast or chosen to have a big social media presence or chosen not uh not to either do either of those things or you know including blogging uh and if you have chosen to do so I'd like to hear your feedback you know have you kept at it uh a couple of you guys I followed uh some of you guys have been have put out some really great content but been quiet for the past year um you know have you found
the balance um I highly recommend listening to The Geek Whisperers podcast it's uh geek Whisperers dcom uh really great informative podcast the especially for those of us who are interested in uh increasing our social media presence as well as blogging really great uh content on just marketing ourselves as texts look forward to uh continuing the podcast uh you know I'm I'm really appreciative to the one or two people that view this week and I'll keep posting it until I uh until WordPress tells me I'm out
of bandwidth talk to you guys next week
