 Hi, I'm Stu Miniman, and this is a special on the ground at the 16th annual and final VTUG Summer Slam We're here in Maine and happy to welcome back to the program a cube alumni Pumala Schmidt Who is a senior cloud advocate with Microsoft? But you know a very active member in the communities here one of the keynote speakers of the Viet Pumala so great to see you Thank you for having me and you are representing. We've got the lobster fest tonight One of your lobster dresses on I hear even there might be a costume change before this evening There will be a costume change with lobsters and clams. Yeah, I'm a big lobster fan Well, you were definitely on point with the couture there and you know you you were right in the mix You know love that the keynote themes this morning. I think Josh has well did it well I said, you know, hey, how many people here? You know IT operations and like it's most the audit and how many years have you been doing it? And it was like one year two year and it be the over 10 was most of this audience and of course We know there's a lot of change going on this industry, but you know companies and individual careers don't necessarily keep up So, you know, you're a little bit about, you know, what you've been working on You know what you see in the communities out there. I mean, you're definitely right Companies are you know struggling to keep up the their staff. It's it's tough. There's so much technology out there You don't know where to begin. So what I've been doing this past year is just helping the community Get up to speed helping them figure out what they want to do because there's the cloud What do you want to do in the cloud? Here's some options I mean, there's just I speak to so many people and they're like we heard about this Azure thing But what can I do in Azure? You know, where can I go learn and it's it's all good stuff. So that's pretty much my past years Here's what you can do. How can I help you get to your ultimate goal of just knowing more and leveling up? Yeah, so, you know, I think back to you know, when I was learning in college It was you know getting together with a group of people was one of the best ways to learn You know who had been through the class or who could you help work through this? The virtualization community was one that worked well together You know, these groups were ones where you know, people would get together They'd all write blogs about it and you know cloud has been a bit of a transition So, you know, what's the same? What's different about cloud and say what we'd seen in the virtualization communities? So cloud is fearful People fear their jobs Because they feel like okay, the cloud is gonna take away my job because now I don't gotta manage this infrastructure And you know what that's not entirely true. You're still gonna need people to manage these systems You're still gonna need people to manage the applications. Someone has to govern it Someone's got to click the buttons. Yes, it's not on your premises data center But there's still machine out there running because serverless doesn't mean there's no servers So we have to dispel that belief or that myth that you won't have a job if you go to the cloud Yes, there's some organizations that have reduced some workforce, but ultimately there's still jobs out there And there's actually more jobs cloud related jobs security focus a compliance focus That deal with the cloud because you know if you look at the headlines now Each day I'm gonna swear there's always somebody having a data breach They're being fine for doing something not correct with their data And so there's their jobs out there. So our you know the IT staff the IT operation space our sys admins It's taking that fear out and here's what you can do with it Yeah, yeah, you bring up some great points there We understand look there are changes happening in jobs If you think you can go with the same skill sets that you were doing years ago You probably need to update that being said there's nobody that I talked to that said hey If I could give you an extra hour or an extra day in the week Do you have other things that you have to work on? Absolutely You brought up security is something that you know needs more of our attention and it's not all going to be You know robots and automation taking care of it people plus machines need to work together And therefore there's a lot of ramp. It is early days for all of us in this So what can I learn? How can I make sure that I'm value for my organization and ultimately, you know Have a longevity in my career another thing that I've been finding and with speaking with people is that they just don't have the time They're like I'm just so busy at work where we're you know We've downsized and we're expected to do more with less. I totally get that I've been in their shoes But ultimately your career you own that the company you work for does not own your career So it's up to you to make that effort to just learn a little bit more It it goes a long way and I'm seeing a trend now with IT professionals. They're they're getting it They're like, you know what? Yeah, we need to step up. We need to figure out what to do next because Technology is moving so fast and if we don't keep up We won't we we won't have jobs, you know, you're gonna be outdated. It's got it's got to keep moving You know Josh's keynote perfect Matt's keynote perfect Technology is constantly evolving. So you as the IT professional we must evolve too. We must evolve with our technologies You know, it's it's a circle. Yeah, you can bring us some great points We understand there are only so many hours in the day. And yes, there needs to be some work life balance But, you know, we need to take control of where we were going and what we're learning if I just get kind of You know stuck in my same old way You are building that rut for yourself as opposed to breaking yourself We want to give you a final word, you know, what what what other tips do you give people? How do they make sure they kind of break out of there, you know existing, you know Environments and you know some areas that they might be able to easily, you know Start understanding what options are available for them in the future the internet. That's that's the easy way MS learn we've got learning portals for You know professionals that go out Testings we've got different labs. There's plenty of blogs out. There's user groups out there You know go out to your local user groups meet up with people go the conferences I know they cost money, but there's free ones out there Network LinkedIn find a find a good network and it just it just expands from there and social media You know that there's a lot through social media between LinkedIn and Twitter You can do so much and learn so much from other people. Yeah, you bring up some great points We've talked to you at some of the big shows like a VM world or a Microsoft ignite and not everybody can afford the time Or the money to do those but there's meetups in your local environment There are user groups usually that can do that so you know reach out and find your community or online There is there just so many environments Lots of form lots of forms there's so much out there and you know reach out to me on Twitter. I've exchanged goddess I'll point you to the right. Absolutely and Puma. Thank you so much You've helped introduce our community to lots of different people so exchange goddess of Twitter of course, I'm at stew on Twitter and We're here from the Vtug SummerSlam 2019 be sure to check out the cube.net for all the events We're gonna be at as well as if you do the search You can actually find some of the historical interviews that we've done with guests like Puma and many more. I'm Stu Miniman As always, thanks for watching the queue