Ep 57 – Welcome to Tom’s Corner!

In this episode, we interview Tom Hollingsworth! Tom shares how he went from being a Sr. Network Engineer at a Partner to the face of Tech Field Day! Tom also shares his journey to the CCIE, #29213. Also, if you’re interested in joining TFD as a delicate you’ll want to listen in!

Links from the show:
Network Field Day 26: https://techfieldday.com/event/nfd26/
Becoming a Field Day Delegate: https://techfieldday.com/delegates/become-field-day-delegate/
Tom’s speech on imposter syndrome, to Field Day Delegates: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MF0dtK2caW4

This episode has been sponsored by Meter. 

Go to meter.com/aone to book a demo now! 

Transcript

this is the art of network engineering podcast in this podcast we'll explore tools technologies and talented people we aim to bring new information that will expand your skill sets and toolbox and share the stories of fellow network engineers hello there friends it's so good to see you again welcome back to a fun-filled episode of the joy of networking we have a wonderful little design tapestry that we're going to work through this week let's get right to it okay you see me personally when i'm drawing out a design i like to start from the top but for you fine folks falling along from home you start wherever you want because there are no wrong answers here on this show i'm going to start with a happy little distribution switch up here doesn't he look so strong and robust you know what let's draw him a little friend he can have a little neighbor right next door the symmetry is nice and it can save us from some of that pesky down time later although i always say there are no such things as mistakes just happy little outages that we get to deal with alright those two friendly neighbors look nice let's head downstream shall we we'll add in some access layer switches down here oh my aren't those cute little buggers aren't they let's connect them up to our friendly distribution switches i'm going to pretend those are layer 3 connections so we don't have to wake up the spanning tree bear no we should let him hibernate from here we can hook up some computers and even some phones because we like to talk to each other don't we maybe even some access points spreading their rf around wow those aps are free little spirits aren't they well there we have it i'm happy with mine and i hope you're happy with yours at home too can't wait to see you back next time and stay tuned here comes the art of network engineering bye for now friends you tim ross oh that that was i'm gonna echo some of what some of the patreon said that was the best intro ever best one to date tim i'm kind of upset with myself because what's the name of the show the art they are thank you and it took that long and we had we also had a guest a while back from opengear that was an art teacher and i even talked to him about it and it took me this long to come up with the idea to do that well it was beautiful tim it was time has come good job that that was my favorite so far all right well he is at tim burtino tim how you doing tonight that was that was just another fantastic uh intro by tim i appreciate that i am wonderful i am super excited for our guests this evening i'm a huge fan so can't wait to get into it as am i andy how are you ah my central air went tonight other than i'm doing just fine so that's not hair gel tonight that's the sweat on your body look a little sweaty hot and sweaty nobody's going to say that you're glowing andy you're glowing does anybody know what that's going to cost me tomorrow yeah not cheap that's for sure just give them the card i'm good agent find the parts on youtube make a youtube video out of it yeah he's having a uh hot and sweaty window tonight that's what he's doing dan how are you i'm doing great aj how about yourself i'm doing very well very very happy to be here another wonderful night uh in my super hot box office so anyway uh let's get to some wins and then we'll we'll introduce our guest and get rolling here uh andy or tim whoever's got a goat at the ready well because you guys talk shit on me last week we not only did not only was i not on the episode for reasons but they talk shit on me that i'm never ready with the goat and then aj said something like andy and ready so i got it right here bitches nice so there i deserve every bit of that all right in our winning section tonight we have uh river river is very excited he got all of his training funded through june of next year which is big i think that uh getting training funded you know train training is hopefully a part of your compensation for wherever you work so to get that funded uh for the next year is fantastic hopefully get some good stuff in there uh ology congratulations ology they passed their pcnsa which is the palo alto network certified security administrator congratulations always very nice uh baltej geary got offered a job as a desk side tech tier two from ntt data in canada so congratulations okay i've dealt with ntt data oh nice yeah uh and n steinbush got some fantastic csat feedback do you guys call it csat you guys know what seaside is no i need some education uh customer satisfaction oh okay oh yeah so they got some fantastic i must never get good scores so i'm right there with you tim uh they did some echo how training uh to with the customer and they got rave reviews so they posted a nice screenshot of what they got uh in the winning channel uh new patreons in the house uh let's welcome joe and vin thank you so much for your support of the article engineering nice andy can i please get another one he's quick i'm ready with the trigger i love it all right i am very pleased to welcome our guest to the show this evening uh probably somebody who needs no introduction and has done far more on video stuff than we ever have uh so thank you for joining us tom hollingsworth thank you so much thanks for the invitation i appreciate the opportunity to come on and chat with you guys even with a screaming goat have you ever had one of those in your interviews before i can honestly say that no i have never had a screaming goat yes i think we're going to see one on tech field day sometimes maybe nice maybe so tom is ccie 29 213 and he is the face of tech field day hopefully you're watching tech field day there are many events going on throughout the year uh what's what's going on right now i feel like i saw something about a storage field day or yeah we uh we just got done with our 22nd edition of storage field day uh we wrapped up last week we had some great presentations from uh intel and comprise and and pure storage and then we've got a couple more weeks and then we're going to be diving right into uh we've got something going on with nginx uh with around their sprint uh event we've got another tech field day coming up and then of course my biggest thing uh networking field day will be going on uh in mid-september uh we we have a great lineup of presenters and delegates as a matter of fact um there may even be one of them looking at you right now yes i've actually saved the announcement i haven't announced it on twitter or anything i have been invited to the next networking field day and i will be there i'm just yeah this is uh my second one i'm so excited to finally get back tom has actually invited me to a couple throughout this year but i've been way too busy with work and so when he hit me up a few weeks ago i blocked out my calendar and i said no i'm not missing another one so super excited to be here for network field day it's one of the things we've actually found over the the course of the last year with them being virtual is this your boss is like oh well you're already at home anyway can you like do both of these things at once can you like be the face of your community and also try to fix the spanning tree problem at the same time and they just don't quite get how much work goes into doing tech field day nope nope it's crazy if they only understood that you know that the life of uh of uh content creator i guess you should say right the troubles we have um so tom a lot of people in our audience are kind of rookies to i.t they're they're just kind of getting their foot in the door so could we take a step back and kind of explain what is tech field day sure uh because sometimes we we get all kinds of really crazy um descriptions of what we do and it's kind of amusing to hear people describe it back to us um but the easiest way to think about it is you've probably found yourself in a room sometime with someone who wants to present something to you um usually these take the form of sales pitches i mean we've all been in that presentation before where they say things like rate of return and you know gross margin and we're all i.t practitioners and quite honestly we don't care we just want to see things that work hopefully and so years ago uh founder of the company stephen foskett he was getting together with a few of his friends across a whole bunch of i.t disciplines and they're like what if we could do an event where like we got all the really cool technical presentations and we get to ask lots of questions and there was no bs involved in all of it and like everyone's like oh yeah that'd be great if someone would put together an event like that stephen actually got up out walked out of the room and put together the first event on the spot called a couple of his friends he's like hey i want to do this thing and they're like okay cool how many months do we have he's like uh one we're doing it next month and so it's kind of evolved from just like this general i.t kind of you know melting pot to now what we have is is events that are very focused around technologies because it turns out why just talk about a little bit of storage and a little bit of like data center and cloud when you could just spend three whole days talking about networking and so that's where we're at now so you we get a a few of the companies that are in the space you know the the cisco's and the junipers and we say okay you have two hours to talk to us about stuff that you're doing you know uh you know technologies that you're building equipment that you're releasing but this isn't a sales pitch nobody's signing a po at the end of it we want you to bring us the really nerdy people you know like well they're not media trained they may something say something you're not supposed to perfect i want that person because they're gonna tell me the truth and so that's what we get but the idea is is that unlike a webinar like the audience gets to ask questions back and that's actually one of the things that sets field day apart and i know this because i've been in the audience with like traditional professional analysts and they're all like sitting there scribbling notes and they're wondering when the bar opens and our delegates our people that come to field day are in the back of the corner like asking really good questions about you know well how do you see this working or how do you propose that that should should go and i always just beam with pride when that happens i'm like those are the people that i brought not the gartner guys those are my people i like it so yeah so that's that's field day in a nutshell sometimes people like oh you guys are like shark tank and i'm like not really because we're not rich and uh we we actually don't want to like ruin you in in public for for everybody to just kind of point and laugh at uh no it's it's more we're trying to get people to tell better stories because you know they're they have this idea of oh this is what people want to hear well no no practitioners want to hear here's what you plug in here's the demo to show how it works and then you won't have to mess with it anymore and we're like okay sold we'll take 20. exactly so so now you're kind of the face of of all tech field days and so how did you how did you get into that role i mean that's a that's a pretty awesome role in my opinion well so i was a delegate um i've been involved with field a now for over 10 years uh first i was on so for those of you uh the terminology difference we call the people who come to the event like the people who sit in the room around the table delegates because they're really kind of standing for the people in the community um i would love to have a 600 person table uh gets a little chaotic and and then you know if everybody's eating potato chips nobody can hear what's going on but really like you know like aj stands in for the people in his community and so like they're like hey i really want you to ask this question of the the really smart guy in the room and so that's where i was and and i had just you know i was on twitter and i was writing a blog and i got a dm from steven foskett and he said hey do you want to come to this event and i actually remember i was driving i almost drove off the road because i was like um i need to fill out the form right now before he figures out that he invited the wrong person so i showed up and i went to a couple of events and it was really cool and i loved it because like i live in oklahoma there's like not very much tech around here i mean there is but like it's kind of a small community and so like i'm flying to silicon valley and i'm getting to meet people like the cto of a company this is awesome and so that went on for probably i'd say about two years like i was just you know going to events and the funny thing is is that the more i went to the events the more people knew my face the more people knew my face the more they invited me to other things and eventually my boss kind of was like well you can't go to everything this year like like you can go to field day and you can go to cisco live because that's your thing but you can't go to all this other stuff and i'm like well crap i really wanted to go to all of these things so in you know typical network engineer fashion i was whining to stephen i was like god this sucks i really want to do all this stuff and i can't he goes you know have you ever considered becoming the dread pirate roberts i think you'd make an excellent dread pirate roberts and i kid you not that was my job offer so i flew out to networking field day and we had a nice long talk and he goes so i want to hire you and i said um okay and so he did and i started in 2013 and i basically went from being the senior network engineer for a reseller to a video editor that got to book hotel rooms so it was a little bit of a career whiplash but as as my role grew and as the event series grew it basically turned into well tom you know networking and wireless and security really well and steven knows cloud and storage and ai really well so we're just going to kind of do our own thing in those areas and so that's kind of what it is now is like i do all of the really exciting cool stuff when data moves around and he does all the boring stuff where data goes to die so i'm sorry all i heard is that you were a senior network engineer and a reseller and now you're here and now i'm just well i'm a senior network engineer now enough about my career path i don't wanna i don't wanna gloss over that tom because we've got a lot of people in the community that make career changes so to go from that heads down highly technical senior network engineer role to doing something completely different house was that scary oh absolutely it was it was not only scary because i was completely changing my job role like like i wasn't going from like being the storage guy to the networking guy it would be like i'm going from being the network engineer to like barber college and the other thing is my youngest son was a month old at that point in fact the reason why i started in june was because my son came a little bit early in may so like my wife is like so you're leaving the job that you've had for the last 10 years to go work for this random dude and get on a plane all the time and i'm like it's going to be great honey but but yeah like and there were days like i won't i won't lie to you the first six months like every time i had to call a hotel and yell at them because they misspelled our name on the contract or something i was like can i just can i go tweak spanning tree again like i kind of missed that and now like i would have to scale off like years of keyboard rust if i actually had to go deploy something again and and when you make a career change it is the scariest thing because you're leaving something that you're really really good at to do something that you may not succeed at it's like anybody who ever goes to a startup feels the same way and there are some people who i believe it was uh the guy who founded godfather's pizza i watched a management video he's like there are people who have risk factors people with a risk factor of zero will like they don't even go outside because they're afraid they're gonna get hit by like falling space debris they're just completely risk averse people with a risk factor of one will jump out of an airplane and hope they find a parachute on the way down i'm not quite to one i'm a little more than zero but but there you know there are times when you you you keep asking yourself am i doing the right thing and the way that i've always kind of judged that was if you feel like you've hit your your limit where you're at then it's probably time for you to look to move elsewhere and and the in the winning section you know someone's like well i got all my training paid for through june of next year that's awesome because that's the kind of thing that keeps you involved and engaged in what you do it's that moment when you kind of feel like you're rearranging deck chairs on the titanic that you really need to examine what you're doing and that's how bar life for me felt for a while it was like i'm deploying another network that is never going to get used great yeah oh man so you got your ccie was that when you were doing the networking thing or after you started doing tech field day no that was that was one of the things so um i i didn't know when i started out in networking actually i didn't even start out in networking i was a novel engineer um i i can i can repair e-directory with the best of them but as as the thing changed and we realized we really needed more expertise over there i really just jumped right in with both feet and a couple of hands and started doing cisco stuff and they're like oh we need you to go deploy these phone systems we need you to work on wireless and that's how it is at a small bar you become the guy and after a while i started looking at it you know because the ccie is like the holy grail it's like you you're the best in the world but it's so hard and i remember one of my mentors kind of looked at me we were having lunch one day and i asked him because the first serious time i ever said this i said hey wes i i think i'm probably going to try to get the ccie and he's just a slow talking southern guy and he goes well if you keep your head screwed on straight i think you can do it and so that was all the encouragement i needed but then i did manage to fail the test six times before i passed it so you know there's that yeah i was glutton for punishment and so which uh which cci do you have uh i have a route switch because that is the one that has the most uh training material for it and i was one of those people i was like all right i got route switch and then i'm gonna go do something else and then i saw what happens when you try to do the voice ccie which is the greatest thing ever because like when you're doing route switch like your head is down and like you're you're trying to get all the routing protocols to work and you're looking for those little gotchas with like redistribution and stuff and then you're about four and a half hours into the lab right after lunch and you hear yes and you realize that someone finally got the dial plan working for the first time and they've only got three hours left to finish the rest of deploying everything you're like i do not want to do that oh my gosh oh that's great yeah that's that's a nightmare sound though we've talked to a few other ccies when you took yours was this during the the two-day ccie exam no i missed out on the on the vaunted two days of wrapping gum wrappers around cat5 cable troubleshooting or like quick you have 30 seconds to finish the proctor told me like he was like i have 30 seconds to finish and everything is listed up in my labs but i wrote the config that worked so he just walked over to the rack and went click click click click click and rebooted all of his routers and when they came back everything was working he's like okay good i passed no i did uh so i did one day so i the first couple of attempts were before the troubleshooting section was added in fact i i was one of the very first people that had to take the open-ended questions and they pissed me off something fierce because the third attempt i actually failed because of them because they would not clarify something so like i walked up with a book and i'm like okay it tells me that i need to create a virtual link between these two routers and it's asking what information is exchanged are they talking about between the two routers or in general and the proctor just looked at me with like the most stone-cold face and said i'm not allowed to answer any questions about those questions and so like i muttered curse words going all the way back to my cubicle but the problem is like like that is the moment where you're like if i do everything right from this point forward and i screwed those up i don't pass and i didn't and i got so mad like i took a year off i'm like i'm done with this crap and i didn't go back until they got rid of the oeqs and and then it was the troubleshooting section which was a whole different nightmare of of amusement and so that was three more attempts of of getting my face bashed in by uh difficult problems but no i i managed to avoid the whole two-day um lab fund how long did it take you all told to get your ie uh let's see here i think i went to narbix bootcamp the first time in 08 and i passed in 11 so you figured probably two and a half three years something like that nice okay so why why'd you keep going back uh because i'm a glutton for punishment well part of it is that i knew i could pass like like there's there's a difference between like i cuz i've i've seen this before one of my old co-workers told me like he was taking the novell certified directory engineer exam which was a 100 pass rate for a practical exam like you had to get every question right and you wouldn't and he walked in and sat down at the keyboard and looked at the screen and his mind just went and he forgot everything and he just got on the left he goes i'm done thanks and so like those are the moments where you really question if you're going to be good at what you do but every time i went into the lab like i was this close like at no i maybe except for the first attempt where i just got completely shell-shocked i was close every time like like in my second group like i would pass troubleshooting and fail the lab and then the next time i went i would do the opposite i would fail troubleshooting and pass the lab and so i'm like if i could just combine both of those together i would pass and so the last time i was kind of discouraged and i was like you know i told my manager i'm like i don't know if i could do this or not and he goes well you're gonna have to because i'm gonna schedule you and you're gonna go back in two months like uh thanks appreciate it thanks boss yeah yeah did it change your life getting the cci uh if i felt relief my wife was extremely happy that i wasn't labbing every night um yeah it was kind of funny and the other thing that kind of cracked me up was that from from like the day before i passed to the day after i passed i was really no smarter than i was but suddenly having five little numbers after your name makes you an expert on everything and we we got into a situation where i was actually i was i put together a design for a company or a school district in arkansas and i got an email back from the the guy because we've been working with him he goes well um this guy says that you're wrong and i'm like what no no i verified this design i know that it works and he goes well he's a ccie and he says that he knows better i'm like well i'm a ccie too so let's cut the crap and he's like oh good point so like that immediately nullified it and it's like okay so let's debate it and it turns out i actually was right so i was you know a little feather in my cap but it was it was more like if i had if i didn't have a ccie like suddenly that's like the card that you pull it's like the the uno uh reverse draw four card it's like uh i win no you don't like that's not a thing wow geez did you get more money uh yeah i did actually but i had to negotiate that up front i was like okay so if i pass this i'm gonna get a raise and they're like yeah and then i had to go in and remind them but it was funny because the owner of the company when i first started i mean he's just like he reminds me of the dad from tommyboy like he just walks in and he bullshits his way through everything well when he hired me he said son i'm gonna put a quarter of a million dollars into training you to be the best engineer in the state i'm like okay cool well then when i passed i added it up and i think i spent a little over 20 grand of the company's money trying to get my cci between boot camps and travel and lab attempts and all that other stuff so i asked him after i passed i said hey floyd do you think you got your money's worth out of me yet he said damn it boy i felt like another putting another kid through college i would have asked him for the difference there yeah yeah in hindsight i probably should have but one of the cci's who worked for a different company like that was his thing every three or four years he'd go out and like kind of shop around and see what kind of offer he could get and then he would take it back to the company and be like well if you don't pay me this i'm gonna leave and because they were a silver partner and they needed two ies on staff um they they would kind of cave to it i guess but then they came and asked me what it would cost for me to jump and i gave them a random number like we'll keep that in mind but just be aware that if he tries to get more money out of us we may give you a call okay oh thanks i think did you ever get that call uh no i didn't uh actually right after that was when i left to go to field day um and it's funny after i went to field day and started like being involved in all these videos people stopped calling me about jobs i mean i get the occasional linkedin recruiter but evidently i'm deliriously happy where i work and nobody thinks they can pay me enough to for me to leave well there you go i mean i get to do podcasts all the time and i get to yell at people about their mic stop being right and yeah it's actually it's really good because i get to do a lot of really cool uh discussions with people about technology and stuff like that and it it's uh someone because someone asked me well you're not technical anymore i'm like oh i kind of am but i'm not like i'm not like engineering technical like i could probably design a network if i had to but i'm an architect now because i have to understand how all these pieces and parts fit together and the best thing is is that when someone gets on there and tries to feed me a lot of crap and i'm like that's not how that works and they're like uh you sunk my battleship damn it how do you know that d4 hit pretty much yeah and it gets better when you just let them kind of set their own like hook and you're like so you told me that you're using this routing protocol to do that but why didn't you just use like isis huh yeah thank you i'll be here all week so tom i know you've told this story probably hundreds plus times before but i'm going to ask you to tell it again there's this thing that's been going around for years now that's called tom's corner ah what what is tom's corner what does it mean to you and what does it become uh so yes this is probably one of the things that everybody knows me about so it actually ironically enough happened the year that i got my ccie okay i uh i've been going to cisco live for like three or four years by this point and i knew some people but i didn't know a lot of people and i've been on twitter for a little while and so i flew in early like normally i didn't fly until like sunday but for whatever reason i flew in like saturday morning and i remember specifically it was like jeff fry and tony mattke and a couple of the people that i knew from twitter that i was like hey let's hang out and some of them had like those tectorial all-day lab things but i didn't and so i'm like well why don't i just go hang out like i just want to go find a spot and sit down and just say hey come find me i want to meet people and so i did and it was right outside of the registration desk and so like a bunch of people came over like oh hey it's you oh hey it's you and and that kind of thing and that lasted all day on saturday and then sunday i was like well i don't have anything else to do and so more people started coming and and i didn't think anything about it and then the funny thing is is like i think it was monday when like the whole event like starts happening and everything somebody was sitting at that table like like i guess they had their laptop out they were doing work and one of the people who'd been hanging out over the weekend came up and goes what are you doing i'm sitting here answering emails you can't sit here that's tom's corner and i'm like oh god no i'm a thing i'm a meme and that's what happened was like we all cry because people would say hey where are you hanging out and they're like oh we're hanging out down at tom's corner and people knew where that was and so then that was cool and then the next year cisco's like well what if we like gave you a corner like what if we may said that there was like a sign here for tom's corner and i'm like you would do that really and so it just it grew from there and like i it feels weird now when i hear other people talking about it there's there's this story i actually told it at wlpc last year um steven went to aws re invent and like that thing's enormous it's like 55 60 000 people it takes place all up and down the strip and he was talking to corey quinn uh quinny pig on twitter who by the way is absolutely hilarious but uh he was like hey where's where's the community and corey is like well you know we're the community student it's us it's people he goes yeah yeah i know that i know that where do you guys hang out when you're here he goes what do you mean like do you do you have like a lounge or something and some random person looks at him and goes oh you mean like tom's corner it'd be awesome if we had one of those and he told me this story on a call i'd be like oh god really no no but to me tom's corner is like the power of community it's the power of people to say we want to do something cool together and we're just gonna do it because like you know vmware at vmworld has like their hang space and i've been to other places where they kind of have like an area for you to hang out but we didn't have that we had really uncomfortable furniture and we're like well we're gonna plant our flag in fact at one point it was a four-square check-in location like i was like okay uh it's like we're gonna hang out here and and that's the thing i've always told people tom's corner isn't a place tom's corner is where we are at so if tom's corner has moved to like i don't know like re-raw in vegas so be it because that's where we're at do you have a tom's corner discord server no i don't have time to do that and so to to kind of that um in 2020 like we were putting together all these plans to have like because we're back in vegas and it's like okay we're going to do all this cool stuff and then covet and it's like well damn what are we gonna do and so i started talking to stephen and i was like could we do it over zoo yeah i think we could do that so like i i was like you know it's probably just gonna be like three or four of us hanging out like it is at the corner and at one point we had like 30 people on the zoom call oh yeah and people kept rolling like i i wasted a whole monday doing this i say wasted but like well steven thought i wasted it because i didn't get anything done because i was on zoom all day but it was great because it depends on who you ask yeah it was like here are all my friends and i can't see them because we're locked down but i can see them and so this year would have been the 10th anniversary and of course it didn't happen so we're having a blowout bash whenever it finally goes back to vegas we are like bringing in the most comfortable chairs that you can find we're gonna have banners and streamers and confetti just committed to a whole bunch of stuff i'm gonna have to buy so from now until next june that's awesome well i i plan on being there so i definitely want to have that experience i've never been before so and and that's the other thing about the corner is it's so great to to feel people who have like they're coming in for the first time and you've seen them at other events like they're in that that orbit outside they're like looking in there like this cool place can i come in here and and we're all like who are you come here come see us and the one that that blows my mind is denise fishburne so fish is like she's brilliant for one thing but she's she's part of cisco and i remember like uh hearing the story she was intimidated by us like she didn't want to hang out because she's like they're going to think i'm a fake they're going to think i'm a fraud and actually amy arnold uh amy engineer on twitter uh was like no no come on you can meet them they'll they'll think you're cool and of course she comes in and we're talking to her and i mean she's really awesome and we love her to death and then she became a part of the community and and to this day if i see fish anywhere she runs up and gives me a great big hug and she she's like i missed you i haven't seen you in forever and she tells me she's like you guys extended a hand of friendship to me and made me like get over my imposter syndrome and i'm like but that's what we do everybody is here we're we you know it doesn't matter if you're a ccna or just like if you're going to take your ccna or if you have like five ccies you're all the same in our eyes you're a human being that loves networking and loves to talk about stuff and loves to tell stories this is your place that's awesome i'm glad i'm glad you said that because i going to cisco live i feel super nervous because it's like am i going to fit in you know like am i gonna know enough so you you saying that really like that helps me so i appreciate that i i was once the introverted shy network engineer too so i completely know how to get this so so tommy you touched on imposter syndrome and um you know i don't want to spoil any secrets for i guess it's not a secret because you have a youtube video about it but um you give a really great speech on like the first day of any you know tech field day event at least the one that i was a part of right um where you tell us to drop our imposter syndrome at the door can you just kind of like you know you've been in that seat as a delegate and now you're up here leading the group can you elaborate a little bit on that feeling of imposter syndrome and um you know how to get rid of it yeah if you have any suggestions i i find it funny that that most of the people that i know suffer from imposter syndrome and even if they won't admit it out loud they do it's that that you know and we all know what it is that's that nagging feeling that i i don't deserve to be here um and it took me a long time to realize that even the delegates that we invite to field day have that same feeling and the more i thought about it the more i realized what they need is somebody to just kind of tell them no you deserve to be here and that's the thing um the process to be a tech field a delegate is not something that happens willy-nilly so like for example you know when aj submitted his information like we checked him out like we we hired the fbi to tail him for a few months um i talked to his grandma several times like you know we go through your twitter we go through your blog your linkedin basically we're not like we're not interviewing you as much as we want to say we want to get a feeling for who you are you know are you a knowledgeable technical person i mean that's pretty easy to figure out um do you feel like you'd be a good fit around other people because we've met some very smart people who just don't get along with other people and that's okay but that's not who we are and so by the time we've reached out to you and said hey thanks for filling out the forum or hey we noticed that you really like to write a lot about networking and stuff have you considered becoming a field day delegate we get a really good feeling that you would be a good person to fit in there now of course immediately and i there have been several people when we've dm'd them and said hey are you would you be considered consider becoming a philadelphia the first response we get is are you sure you have the right guy are you sure you didn't mean the other john yeah yeah we do but but that that feeling never really goes away and so the the speech that i give and in their youtube videos kind of the abbreviated version of it is you deserve to be here because even if you don't believe it we believe it there are no accidents like like nobody blunders into the room like it's spinal tap you know like hello cleveland you're here because you deserve to be here and if you don't believe it then believe that i believe it and trust me and if you don't trust me well then we're gonna have other problems throughout the rest of the week but to me it and and i use the word insult when i say this but it really doesn't mean to to say that you don't deserve to be here kind of calls my judgment and your like your boss's judgment into question not so much as like you know i can't believe you'd say that to me but like let us believe in you and sometimes that's all people need this here and and when i did this at security field day there were a couple of female delegates in the audience uh one of them zoe rose is someone i actually met at cisco live and she told me in private she goes that's exactly what i needed to hear like like even though i know that i deserve to be here hearing somebody else reinforce that decision is exactly what i needed to hear and from that point forward it mattered and in fact i actually used that speech this year when i did a boy scout training thing um for the staff members and when it was over with a lot of them said the same thing they're like oh my god you told me exactly what i needed to hear today and i like but that to me is the essence of imposter syndrome and ironically enough the people who don't feel impostor syndrome are usually the ones that don't deserve to be there in the first place 100. yeah i i mean i can tell you sitting there in that room and when you look around and see other people you know other people that you know from you know twitter or you know you follow their blogs and uh you know for me i think it was amy engineer like i've read a lot of her stuff i used a lot of her solutions and suggestions from her blog post and in fact it was her blog that kind of inspired me to start my blog i was like you know she's had these really cool experiences that she shares with the world i think i've had some really cool experiences that i want to share with the world so to when i finally got to meet her i was like i'm in the same room like i should help myself out here like that and when you gave that speech it's like oh okay and it took a little bit for me to work up the nerve to ask my first question but after that it was like a huge relief and i felt so much better about being there so a fun point about that is that my second networking field day maybe i think it might have been networking field day two or three i forget which one it was um i was actually in the room with greg farrow ethan banks and yvonne peppernyak starstruck is not even the word that i use to describe this like i am suddenly the dumbest person in this room and i am deliriously happy about it well we got through two days of field day like you know my brain was in a blender and i remember we because we used to end the the second day of field day on friday at the same italian place in san jose that is closed now and i really wish it wasn't but i remember going up to steven at the table and i said steven thank you very much for inviting me to this event once again you let me meet my heroes in networking and he looked at me and he said well now you're someone's hero in networking and i was just like whoa holy crap he's right because somewhere out there is somebody who's been reading my blog and following my ramblings on twitter and they're like i really want to meet tom and that kind of like shed a little bit of the imposter syndrome because as much fanboying as i did for yvonne and and ethan now suddenly i was gonna have to deal with that for somebody else and you're like well how do you do that and you're like i'm gonna pick them up and i'm gonna tell them that they're awesome and i used to be where you're at and one of these days you'll be where i'm at and someone else will be where you're at full circle that's awesome yeah the cycle just keeps happening very cool wow yeah aj what year was that that you went because i remember briefly that you were talking about how nervous you were there at uh tech field day yeah that was uh 2019 the fall of 2019 29 okay yeah so that makes sense and yeah because i remember uh now that was before we started this whole thing um right because i i think we were messaging each other in on instagram or something like that at that point yeah and i remember you talking about that and yeah yeah so it's nice to hear tom say what he said now about you know leave that shit at the door you know come in here we're asking real questions you know forget who's smarter you know don't don't feel like you know you ask a dumb question type thing right and and something else that you know tom hit on there was you know they you know they picked you right they didn't just allow anybody to come in so they're you got to trust their judgment as well so right it's it's it's good to hear that absolutely so uh what is the process to become a delegate because we do have a lot of people in our following that have their own you know blogs or podcasts they create content and i'm sure they would love to know how to get to be a part of tech field day well the easiest thing to do is head to techfilday.com and uh when you go on the homepage there's a little menu bar and one of them says delegates and then uh one of the drop-down says become a field day delegate and you just have to fill out a little bit of information but when we when we look through the delegate selection process there's three things that we're really critical on you have to be independent which means you really can't work for a vendor um as much as i would love to have people from cisco in the room and juniper's presenting um that tends to set off a little bit of that thing going on and it's not even because you couldn't be objective like like amy is a perfectly good example she works for fortinet now she's still the same amy that i've known for years and she's still objective the problem is is that anybody who's a fortinet competitor is gonna go well she's obviously gonna have an axe to grind and so i'm like you know what okay fine so you have to be independent now that you can work for a reseller like i did because you're not beholden to one vendor you're beholden to all of them uh or you know you can be an independent uh analyst you can be a practitioner that works like at a medical company you just can't work for somebody that makes gear that sells them to other people you have to be technical and i'm not saying you have to be a ccie or a cw and any or anything like that but you kind of have to know how the stuff works because we don't walk in with like the 101 how does a frame become a packet kind of conversations it's more like okay you're not a journalist so i don't have to explain how routing protocols work let's move on to the exciting stuff so and we've we've taken people who are fresh out of like you know i've just gotten my ccna and i'm trying to figure out what i want to do next to like terry slattery who quite literally wrote the book on the ccie it's like we can take all kinds and that's an exciting kind of dichotomy because remember you may be just starting out and be really good at things now but eventually you'll reach that point and just think of all the networking that you haven't had to unlearn along the way and then the third thing is you have to have a platform of some kind this is usually where things get tripped up for some people because they're like oh um so i have a twitter it's like okay cool do you have a blog do you have a place where you write um some people make youtube videos uh one of these days i'm gonna get my kids to explain how tick-tock works and then we'll figure that one out but i don't i don't know if network engineers have moved to tick-tock i don't know they're usually trying to keep it up and running i guess yeah but you have a way to reach people because it's not enough for this company to come in and go well here's this grand new exciting thing that we're doing i want to hear what you have to say about it because we've had some people that have like oh well you know that's kind of neat and and maybe you could look at maybe doing it like this we've had some delegates who be like this is the dumbest idea i've ever seen and here's 14 reasons why um both of those are valid viewpoints one of them gets me a few more emails than the other but ultimately when i go back to the company they're like well why did aj say mean things about us i'm like were they lies were they factually untrue well i mean no i mean he he raises some valid points well maybe you should address the points instead of telling me that aj's being mean to you i like it aj go be mean to him is there a lot of that that people just complain like they're being mean they said you know bad things about my my solution well and that's the thing like that's my job i basically get to be the go between because uh having been an analyst kind of because that's my my uh think of it like my bruce wayne job um when i when i'm not like putting together field days um i i talk to people all the time in fact i think i got like five pr emails today but pr people are really weird like the the good ones are great they're they're friends of mine like hey i want to let you know this company that i'm started working for is doing this really cool thing and maybe we can get a briefing but like the ones who are like no i hesitated to use the word bloodsuckers but bloodsuckers they're like hey we're gonna give you a really cool briefing with this really important person in the company i'm like oh okay cool and then i listen to the briefing and i'm like not really my wheelhouse and then i get like an email every week for the next two months how are you going to write about this hey are you going to cover this hey i just want to let's see if you have any questions and i'm like you don't have a thing and so my job is to stand between those companies because at field day the companies don't tell me who gets to be in the audience because i've had that a lot we're like oh we really want this professional analyst to be in the room i'm like no he's not a good person he doesn't write well um i don't want you to have to pay ten thousand dollars to read his report and so they don't get to say well you know aj is a mean person and he doesn't get to be here i'm like aj's coming if you don't want to show up that's your problem but likewise the delegates don't get to come to me and go okay well i love cisco and i love juniper but please don't invite fortinet i'm like they're gonna be there you can skip this when you go to the next one so so there's that kind of because that's one of the things that actually happens if you're putting one of these things together for a company is if anybody says anything negative about you and they flew you out there and put you up at the hotel and like bought you steak all night they actually kind of have the hooks in to go yeah if you could just take out the part where you say that it looks like the ceo probably got hit in the face with a baseball bat we'd really appreciate that you're like but but it's true they're like yeah you're gonna need to take that out or we're gonna we're gonna be mean about it i get to stand in the way and go he does look like he got hit in the face of the baseball bat actually that's not true i i keep the personal stuff out of it but like if a company comes in and they're like well this is a really cool technology and they're like no it's not no in fact we actually had a blog post that went out that was title of company is shit that was the title of the blog post that happened right before i started here and it's like um like the phone call was just epic it's like uh so he wrote this we're like yup well what do you think about it he's got some good points well can you get him to change the title nope well why not i didn't pay him to write it did you well no then it's his opinion and i can't change that i usually warn the people i'm like if you're gonna write the title of a blog post that says company is garbage will you at least give me a heads up when you post it because i'm gonna have to put on my asbestos underwear when i answer my email in the morning but the way that i've always counted it is if he's factually incorrect or it looks like he's just grinding an axe cool we'll have that discussion but if the points he brings up are completely valid and it's basically the i sunk my battleship problem don't argue with me about making him take the post down fix the perception problem that you've got that's a good way of looking at it uh just real quick was it greg but i i have gotten those emails before where they're like is sparrow gonna be in the audience and i'm like yeah ooh we might be out well let's be fair greg's done this enough that he has no qualms about telling people exactly what he thinks now that's good and bad i mean i've seen greg come in and go this is the greatest thing i've seen in like five years to fix this problem and i'm like wow who are you pod person and what did you do with pharah um but but there are times and and believe it or not there are delegates that are actually that have been worse than that like they'll just flat out be like you are an idiot and i'm like oh wow oh wow um we're gonna have a talk just like grab them by the back of the head and like yeah yeah five minutes together please kick them out oh my gosh hey everybody was so nice uh during the network field day i was at i this is all shocking to hear oh yeah well i the the funny thing is is the people who kind of have that that aggressive mentality they kind of select themselves out after a while they're like yeah you know oh i don't want to go sit through another boring group of presentations i'm like okay cool we'll catch up later okay so what what are some of the things that you guys cover there um it i hear a lot about like cisco juniper yada yada that it what what are some other things like do you cover like more software stuff aws cloud stuff like what are some of the things you cover it's funny because we get people asking us this all the time like you guys need to have like the all flash storage field day and we're like um no we're gonna have storage field day and if you guys want to talk about your all flash array that's great but we're not going to have something that we're slicing that thin like sd-wan field day was the one that everybody wanted us to do like you need to do sd-wan field day i'm like i don't want seven companies in there talking about the same stuff you got to break that up somehow and so like we we cover like security uh so we talk about you know sometimes it can be like software like you know password identity management or it could just be firewalls uh we talk about mobility so used to be wireless but you know then everyone's like well we don't make access points i'm like there's more to wireless than access points but like in there now we're talking about things like uh cbrs private lte uh we're talking about 5g um so it's kind of morphing into more of like a connectivity field day almost um stephen started an ai field day but not like you know that pie in the sky we're putting ai and everything it's applied ai so it's like no we're really doing this we're really building a thing that works this this way and so it's kind of neat to see it we you know we have cloud events where we like and the the great thing is like the cloud people that we invite are like aws engineers that live in kubernetes all day long and we'll have a company come in and go well we have a cloud controller okay this is not going to end well for you and that is my job sometimes i have to convince people not to do this dumb thing you're about to do in fact we were talking about it this week and and there have been a couple of times when i because we have like a full pre-briefing with companies and we'll tell them don't do that that's a bad idea it will not work the way you think it will and they're like oh okay we're gonna do it anyway and then it's like there's a little counter like right up here that just increments and then when we get on the call afterwards like that thing you told us not to do didn't work so well i'm like do you see the counter tom is right again but it's it's we've seen this work so many times or not work as the case may be that we're that we're really good at kind of pushing off and going that's not gonna work yeah and so like we we try to because we want good presentations we do not want the first three weeks of american idol where you only watch for the train wrecks we want eight or nine really good presentations that you can all walk away from and i'm i'm so glad that i tuned in or flew out for this because the worst thing in the world for me would be have somebody come back and go this was a complete waste of my time and everyone in here is dumber for having attended i award you no points and may god have mercy on your soul and i don't ever want to come back because that would crush me i'd be like oh really ouch excellent uh i want to flip to our chat here for a second one of our patreons asked so you're not really in like uh a technical engineering deployment role anymore do you miss it sometimes yeah usually when i'm fighting with my cable company because my modem doesn't work you don't usually get to start off the support call with hi i'm a ccie and i know more about networking than you do can you please forward me to the person who speaks my language uh but yeah there are times when like like especially when i see like a really cool demo and my mind starts spinning with oh here are all the cool things that i can do with that and then i kind of have to go but wait a minute you don't do this anymore um but but the flip side of that is like if i got a phone call tomorrow that a friend of mine was like you know hey i need you to come out and fix my wireless controller or help me deploy this you know ssid thing i'm going to have to like bone up on how to make it work before i even get out there because i'm like okay do i use the console cable or can i use no telnet no we still don't we don't just hold on anymore what do we do now and so like like yeah there are times when i'm really like you know getting hands on with something like i can type again i can do command line and then i realize nobody does that anymore it's all apis do you ever get a chance to to lab or or engage with the solutions that you guys are presenting um every once in a while someone will give me lab access to something uh i remember it was a big switch networks before they got bought by uh arista um they gave us a lab environment one time at their office and they said the magic words go ahead and try to break it um we didn't break it on camera but we got close because it turns out that when you give 12 or 13 people the opportunity to do something really devious we're going to out think your deviousness um and i believe it was aaron conaway who figured out that they used the same password for all the instances and they found the master instance and they're like all i got to do is type this command and it just wipes everything out and i remember kyle uh forster was sitting in the corner and you could just see like the color drain out of his face when he realized oh crap fix that nice fantastic is it was that some kind of like challenge or something like what i think what they were trying to attend those at well they were wanting to show that that you could create an immutable setup and that no matter what you did you couldn't break it the other one was actually uh extreme networks is the inheritor of all of the spb functionality uh that avaya developed um and i don't for those of you who are older you probably remember the the great war between spb and trill and it was like game of thrones type stuff actually no it wasn't because nobody won the xlan one but um we were in an spb presentation from uh from extreme and they're like no really we want you to try to hack this and kevin myers i remember he got was it it wasn't team viewer but it was something similar and he had like an entire slack channel trying to hack this yes i remember yeah this was during uh yeah the one that i was at that's right and the only thing that saved them was they ran out of time because they actually figured out that they were about to figure they were going to insert a fake bridge into spb and be able to control it and i remember the guy who was giving the first part of the presentation walked over and was looking at the laptop that kevin was on and i saw his eyes just go and after the stream went off he goes just so you know you would have broken it and we're fixing that right now because like they were like you know we you know spb can't be broken and it almost happened and you know obviously you were gonna need a little bit more than that but i love the fact that it was just like okay i'm gonna get everybody in the community working on this problem at once do your damnedest to break it and they're like yeah okay wow that guy's a poker face is not too great oh no no it wasn't because i was actually looking at the video and i know the exact moment when he figured out what was going on because it was just like yeah you're holding aces aren't you nice that sounds like a lot of fun though i i would like to be a part of something like that one of these days oh my gosh you got to sign up dan the the good news is that we're always looking for more great people to join the community because the funny thing about field day is is that it kind of raises your profile and we actually have kind of this running gag that if this is your first field day event the odds are good you're going to change jobs within the next six months either because you're gonna find a better one or your company is gonna be like we can no longer afford to pay this person so it suddenly becomes like a thing where you're changing jobs or you're going to work for a vendor so guess what happens after that i need more people to stand in for those folks and so like there's always like i i jokingly call it the minor league system because you know everyone's like oh well i want the new york yankees group and i'm like i would rather have like a couple of double a players and a couple of aaa players that are ready to move up because they they have a new fresh perspective on things they're not old and jaded and grizzled like the rest of us and so that gives me it's always giving new fresh perspectives to the event of you know well this is a person who doesn't really use twitter but they're more on youtube and these are the study groups that they were in and you know they don't need to know how adsl dialer groups work so with field day being traditionally an in-person event how difficult was it for you and the team to take that virtual um i was at rsa2020 and uh i got a text message from a friend of mine that said hey did you hear about this thing that's going on in china somebody said there was a case in san francisco and i'm like ah it'll blow over yeah don't ever trust me when it comes to predictions but we had an event three weeks after that and the the two weeks between rsa and the next tech field day event was when everything went ballistic and got locked down and so the good news is the format doesn't really change a whole lot and all we had to do was replace the big u-shaped table in the room with zoom now there were some quibbles trying to figure that out and one of the things that we pride ourselves on at field days we're always changing the way that we do stuff we're always adding something new we're always adding additional stuff so like it took us a while to realize that part of the thing that we didn't get a chance to capture was that just sitting around the bar with companies just like talking about solutions and kind of having this this candid off-camera discussion so we added that after every presentation so when we get done we shut off the cameras then we go into a room for like half an hour and we're like okay now the cameras aren't rolling let me tell you what i really think but but that was something that was missing at first and so and then we realized that you know at field day we're always moving and jumping around and doing stuff so like we would have a two-hour presentation at the hotel then we'd get in the limo and we'd drive over to like you know some office over on first street in san jose so we get up and move but you don't get that when you're on zoom like i literally impinged to this chair the whole day and so it's like at the end of the day you you're you're dead and so we were like no no we've got to scale back we can't do four or two hour presentations in a day people need time to rest and so it took us a little bit of while to to dial that in but now you know we're good at it obviously but we're starting to look at the possibility of what does it look like when we go back in person so for storageville though we actually had a presenter present with an in-person camera crew in the hotel in i believe this is in san jose and so like the presenters there and the characters there were still on zoom but it's like okay now it's starting to feel kind of like normal again and so hopefully by the end of the year maybe we can have an event where there's like a few delegates in the room and a few presenters in the room will still be virtual and i know that with the way that things are going you know a lot of presenters have moved out of silicon valley they're not local anymore so it's like well we really want this dude to present it's like well it's going to have to be over zoom because that person is not going to fly out here anymore and our travel budgets are kind of crazy so excellent well we are coming down on our hour so i i gotta ask um can you share any insights on to the the next event um yes there are a lot of really excited companies that want to talk to the delegates we have every every company who's confirmed to be there is listed on the website right now um you know i i personally am excited to see kind of what juniper's been cooking up i have some friends at juniper who've actually been kind of telling me hey this is going to be really cool you're going to want to watch it um you know it's been a while since we've talked to kentick uh avi friedman if you've never talked to him in person he's just one of those dudes that i want to sit around and have a beer for like five hours and hear all of the stories and he gets to present and that's the best part is like these people are the people like i would love to tell you who you talk all the time and you're going to tell me something really cool about your company even better so so yeah so that's you know we're working through those things uh we've got a couple of other companies that are on the list um the easiest way to do this is just head over to techfield.com and click on the link for networking field day and then as we get the companies kind of slotted into where they're going to be presenting then you'll see a lot more tweets and stuff coming out about that and then i'll probably do a video like the week before talking about some of the cool stuff that we're gonna see but the other exciting thing is you can also see who the delegates are so when we've we've emailed them or like hey we really want you to come and they're like oh yeah it's like the price is right thing where they're running down the aisle they're so excited to be talking to me then we'll list them on the website and then uh you know you'll you'll see some faces that you've seen before like like murray down there but there's gonna be some new faces in the crowd too and that's that's the nice thing is that you get to meet people and you get to create those connections and they're your friends yeah absolutely shout out to one of our supporters uh and one of our our absolutely biggest supporters and the patreon uh gerard gerard is a new delegate this year and oh nice he's going to be at uh nft 26 superintendent that's awesome yes and we're very excited and i'll tell you that when i emailed gerard and i asked him to be a delegate the response i got is actually one of the things that just makes me kind of happy inside it's like oh my god you picked me it's so exciting and i'm like if i ever not get that like like just old hats like yeah i'll come it's a thing that's when i know that we've kind of lost the edge but as long as we're still getting really cool responses like aj's and gerard's i'm in till the end of time that's awesome so that's what i heard all the way here in nebraska all right he wasn't sure what that noise was that's awesome that is so cool all right glad that we have two people in our community that are that are oh yeah and i wouldn't be surprised at some point oh yeah yeah that's the thing about me i'm always taking notes you you might see one or two more before it's all said and done with oh nice tom where can people find you all right so the easy so it depends on whether or not you want to see bruce wayne me or batman me if you want to see bruce wayne me go to techfield.com and go to gestaltit.com and yes that's a german word but we don't speak german around here it's g-e-s-t-a-l-t-i-t dot com so that's where i do a lot of like my day job work where i take briefings and i i do a weekly news podcast and i actually just finished recording another episode of my conversations where i compare wi-fi 6e to ipv6 and i'm waiting for both of those camps to like you know stab me to death but when i'm not writing professionally i'm being a snarky jackass on my own website at networkingnerd.net and on twitter networking nerd um it's better than it used to be like i've kind of mellowed with age i'm no longer character assassinating people in the comments um mostly but like that's sometimes i'll just come up with a blog post and be like this is the dumbest technology i've ever heard of which by the way if you're wanting to sponsor my event please disregard that and send me a check that's a fine line to walk there uh it is yeah that's that's gonna be and sometimes i have to feel like the adult in the room where everyone's like oh we're gonna like we're gonna burn them with pitchforks and torches because their demo wasn't live and i'm like how many times do you think i've seen a demo that wasn't live or that it was live screw up in a unique and different way i told them to do this please torch is down for at least another 10 minutes that's fantastic so you can look for the next networking field day september 14th through the 16th i'll be there gerard will be there and a lot of other cool people and oems as well and i'm looking forward to it very much thank you so much for the invite tom thank you so much for joining us tonight this has been fantastic incredible time thank you tom awesome all right everybody thank you so much out there for listening and we'll see you next week on the next episode of the art of network engineering hey everyone this is aj if you like what you heard today then make sure you subscribe to our podcast and your favorite podcatcher smash that bell icon to get notified of all of our future episodes also follow us on twitter and instagram we are at art of net eng that's art of n-e-t-e-n-g you can also find us on the web at art of network engineering.com where we post all of our show notes you can read blog articles from the co-hosts and guests and also a lot more news and info from the networking world thanks for listening you