Starting a Tech blog!

Why am I starting a blog? For a seasoned IT professional, there are many reasons for setting up a personal website or blog. Drawing on the ever-evolving technology landscape or documenting the challenges experienced every day, there is a magnitude of content waiting to be published. For me the primary objectives for going down this path are;

• To gain a deeper understanding of the topics researched.
• To document new skills using the philosophy “You Never Really Learn Something Until You Teach It”.
• A way to validate my knowledge.
• To improve my written communication.
• Giving back to the community.

Why now? With a global pandemic rampant, enforced ‘working from home’ policies, the immediate future looking a little grim, this may seem like an odd time to start. After never working from home for more than a single day in my entire career, I was excited by the opportunity the situation presented. The extra time made available through the lack of commute and the flexibility in work hours would mean increased time with my young family and further personal development opportunities.

It would seem people have reacted in two ways to these circumstances. Either bettering themselves through learning new skills, enhancing their fitness, improving diets or the opposite, binging Netflix, eating junk, generally hating on the world and if you are in Australia hoarding toilet paper.

I think I’m the first type and have focused heavily on my fitness and diet, the one outstanding area for development was to work on learning some new skills. Like many tech enthusiasts, I love researching and playing with new technologies, from reading blogs, watching training videos to tinkering in my home lab. While this is enjoyable, the knowledge gained always ends up as scattered thoughts lacking the structure needed to be fully absorbed and used constructively. Starting this blog is my way of bringing these ideas together. Leaning on a key objective I highlighted earlier, the best way to deeply understand a topic is to teach someone else about it.

If it’s such a good idea, why the delay? The usual reasons that go through one’s mind when publishing online;

• No one wants to listen to anything I have to say.
• My writing isn’t good enough.
• Someone ‘smarter’ than me has already written about that.
• The fear of being ridiculed by peers.
• What if no one reads what I write?
• I don’t have time for that.

In the end, these are all worthless excuses if you want to improve yourself then you need to bite the bullet and get it done.

Some people want it to happen, some wish it would happen, others make it happen.
Michael Jordan

What topics will be covered? In a career that has spanned almost 15 years across the full spectrum of IT Operations roles, service desk to management. While I will lean on my experiences from over the years, these roles have primarily been with manufacturing organisations with a focus on traditional on-premise infrastructure. The focus of this blog will be the discovery of the ‘modern’ infrastructure landscape and the practices that enable it.

Follow my journey to the clouds!

If you found this article useful, please let me know at @ccoombes83 or email me at [email protected].