Monday, June 4, 2012

Random thoughts


For the past couple of months, I've been quite humbled by how far the SP community had moved without me. I visited Gambia for the AFNOG conference, this time I stayed for the entire gig. Made two presentations and sat on a panel then of course the main plan was to teach the AR-E (Advanced Routing) class; I ended up learning alot more than I ever got to show or teach.
Team AR-E


Philip was truly an inspiration and if some day I can do slides at half the rate he produced the 'design module' for the AR-E class, or be as confident with some of that material, I will be quite happy with myself. *and thats yet another confirmation that being a CCIE can be quite rubbish without some real world in the woods bare knuckles cli combat experience. Lots of it if you are going to teach which explains my interest in teaching/contracting.

It was definately a great opportunity for quiet reflection too (having  a beach close by helped), The fact that I still need more exposure to get any good was obvious. There is no way to land any of those 'big' contracts as a free lancer - so something to think about.

Since the EANOG is supposed to mirror AFNOG, we had a nice chat on how we can make the group truly east african.We have a working plan for this.

Leaving Safaricom was a big deal for me. It was time to head out and experience the world. I am quite open to any opportunity. However as far as full 'permanent and pensionable' jobs are concerned I would only be interested in two scenarios. One is being fully employed by an 'own' business ie one that I own an actual stake in or well I'm sure you can guess the other one. Other than that I'm more than happy with 1 month to 1Yr contracts or just hanging out at the farm:-).

Meantime? I will work on my presentation skills,teaching skills, interview as much as I can (getting interviewed is a great way of knowing what companies want) and definately upgrade my technical knowledge. I suck at all of them at the moment, I will however get better ..... see you around