AWS Summit 2023

June 15, 2023 by Mark Myers Leave a comment

So I’m back for another AWS Summit. As always with Amazon, the actual organisation was slick and well put together, you received a phone call beforehand, asking what you were hoping to get out of the conference, the joining instructions and the app for managing what you got out of the summit was also really good. They seem to have scaled everything to an nicety.

No recorded waiting music here, a live jazz band to pick up your pass

After picking up the pass and doing a good hard zip through the vendor showcase while they set up (making a list of people I wanted to see and chat too) it was in to the hall for the main presentation.

As expected, it was very, very AI orientated.

The main presentation on AI was exceptionally good, in that it broke things up into reasonable chunks and also was not only technical enough for the geeks, but presented things for the senior managers in a way that would be understandable. So, not only did they present their own AI as Amazon Titan, but it also brought into the common language the concept that there are multiple different types of AI cores that you could use, and how using them with bedrock, you could pick the one that is most suitable for your needs.

All of this was summarised really tightly and really made AI config into a wizard. ¹

There was also a perfect nod to Amazon code whisperer which is a rather adorable plug-in, and is a truly practical use for AI with genuine productivity

Thankfully, it wasn’t all AI. They did demo a bunch of the core stuff that makes AWS so good, and laid out the different levels of servers vs containers vs serverless. showing that you can move between them at any point, etc etc, which always needs to be hammered home I feel in the modern app world.

The Lower Floor showcase floor before it got busy

However the conference was not perfect.

The showcase floor was scaled the same as other showcase floors. yet somehow felt constantly busy. I think there was enough room for the crowds to pass through, or for people to have conversations with the vendors, but not both at the same time. Now normally this is not a problem, because in such events you do most of your conversations when all of the sessions are on and the showcase floor goes quiet, but that break did not seem to happen, and that’s not to say there weren’t a load of sessions. They were dozens scattered all over the place. But they were on the short side, and there was no solid path or trail to follow. If you looked on both the app, and on the PDF, it was just a list of codes and the only colour coding or pathing was for the map its self. This seemed to dissuade people from going to the sessions. I never saw any large scale movement to get to the next session as you would in any other conference. People didn’t seem to know that the sessions were on. Which meant that I missed a number of sessions I would have rather liked attending, but quite frankly to have got them I would have had to sit down grimly with a pen and paper and some highlight markers myself and worked it out. So perhaps that needs to be improved for next year.

For the vendors them selves, They did seem to have a hard time differentiating themselves. There’s a lot of them there. and because you’re moving through quickly because of the constant pressure. It made it hard to just stop and have a look at ones that caught your eye (I really wanted to spend some time with CockroachDB but its was like fighting up stream).

The only other criticism for me was of the food. I’m one of the picky eaters on planet Earth, and myself and a colleague² stood in front of a long queue. Then we were faced with a bunch of identical bowls. And had to work through a list of ingredients to try and find which ones could be eaten, at which point we gave up and went to the pub.

Conclusion

So was it worth it? Would I go again? yes to both, but only just….

AWS? Yes.

The technical side? Yes.

The chance to see which vendors are core to AWS and to talk to them? Yes.

The organisation of the conference and the facilities of the conference? No

And this is what I was being dignified on

Dear Lord setting up an AI with a wizard, never thought I’d see it[↩]
who was one of the non picky eaters[↩]

Corporate term: Good Tenant

May 31, 2023 by Mark Myers Leave a comment

Definition:

This is the nice corporate way of saying: “This bit of IT kit is not your personal property, please stop treating it as such”

Explanation:

People have a very strong sense of entitlement when it comes to IT equipment. particularly in a corporation.

This can vary from shared SQL servers that they just simply hammer the hell out of thinking no one else uses them, to their laptops which they seem to think will just run forever and are outraged when they are told that a patch or upgrade is needed.

This puts IT support in a tricky position, because while they want people to feel a certain amount of engagement with the equipment, treat it well and use it fully, they don’t want people to treat it as if it’s their personal property and develop a personal attachment that makes it harder to manage for the good of the corporation as a whole.

The word that seems to be the perfect match for this need is “Tenant”.

If you are a tenant of a shared server, you know you are not the owner of that server, and moreover, it has overtures that not only might it be shared by other people, but will be used both before and after you. So please look after it.

Its just a nice phrase I’d heard desktop support use and figured other people might find it so.

Disclaimer: As always these posts are not aimed at anyone client or employer and are just my personal observations over a lifetime of dealing with both management and frontline associates.

The therapy of writing your CV

May 26, 2023 by Mark Myers Leave a comment

To most people in IT, and indeed to all of business, updating and refreshing your CV is, at best a burden and at worst torture. Particularly, if you have moved from role to role on the basis of reputation. This means that long periods can go without you having to sit down to rationalise and justify your knowledge and skill base.

This is a poor state to be in, as for most of us, our skills and abilities are what we are selling and you need the marketing for your “product’s” kept up to date and relevant.

I was once told that you’re supposed to redo your CV every six months, and yes I do normally do that, but I don’t do it with the same vim and vigour that I really should.

I’ve decided to change that. And given that I’m in the middle of looking at new roles I figured a proper sit down review of my CV was worth the effort, and it’s amazing what it turns out you’ve done in your life.

Not only does this point out items that you need to address and learn in the future, but It also gives you confidence in the sheer volume and amount of stuff. you have piled through in your life. I’ve been doing this nonsense for 25 years now and it really has been a busy couple of decades.

Filtering the hundreds of points of view and ideas on writing a CV, a few stood out

Keep it to 2 pages, no one is going to read a 10 page CV.
Companies are not going to read more than a couple of paragraphs before making an initial decision.
Agents, HR and job sites are going to mangle it anyway, so keep the format simple.
Don’t just edit it in place, copy and type it up in a new file, it helps to shake out the useless bits.

The Result. My newly refreshed CV is here

When is gossip not gossip?

May 16, 2023 by Mark Myers Leave a comment

In the corporate environment, gossip is a non positive term ¹, and really implies that what you’re talking about is nothing really to do with you.

This would indeed be the case if it relates to the personal affairs of a colleague, e.g. changing job, pregnancy or something like that, that’s none of your business.

However if something is happening in your organisation and you are not being kept up to date and it could have a solid impact on your future life or career, it is not gossip. it’s a perfectly valid attempt to look after you and those that matter to you.

But that is not how corporations work, or how such companies communicate. Communication on large scale matters are cards held very close to the chest of those in power and thus you introduce an environment of fear, uncertainty and doubt in those that work for you. if I was to advise a truly senior manager on such communications it would be in the form of some simple statements.

Your Authority is not stronger than peoples desire to pay the rent: If you as a senior manager tell your team “We will tell you in due course” about something that has a dramatic impact to their job, their livelihood or their ability to feed their family, they are not going to accept that, they are going to continue trying to find out information on their own.
If you can’t say or don’t have some key information, then present a brief plan on when you will. : Flip it around, if you would not accept “We don’t know when we will be telling you” from a team member, then what would you accept? , present what you know in that format.
Know the difference between an external press statement and an internal communication: Most of the people you will be talking to as a very senior manager will have more information sources than just your statement. Indeed, often they will know more than you on some areas you are talking about, as their information is not filtered. They see it in real life. So understand that when you make a corporate statement to such people they will know absolutely if some of it is being spun or twisted, which will call into question the entire credibility of any statement you might make.
Understand how often you need to keep people up to date: When you don’t know something how often do you chaise your team members?, well that’s how often you should be updating them on the big things they are waiting for, even if you don’t have anything, show you are trying and that you share their frustration, be human.

Ultimately, understand that what as a very senior manager you might feel is gossip, is actually just normal people trying to plan their lives and protect the things that are important to them.

I think the formal word is pejorative[↩]

Corporate term: Brittle Process

May 12, 2023 by Mark Myers Leave a comment

Definition:

A brittle process is a business or IT process that is stable and works well providing nothing changes, with an overtone that any changes that come might not be predictable ¹.

Explanation:

This is a relatively new term and comes due to many companies having a lot of different systems integrating with each other in a long chain of dependencies. A brittle process might be strong, it might be stable, but its a process that if you change it in one place it breaks everywhere. This might be down to items being read off one system being very very dependent on a specific structure, or one system has poor quality code, or they might not be able to adapt to different structures, It might even be down to very strict timings. For example, if you have timed jobs that run a certain time every single day, and their receiving jobs depend on that timing. If you change the timing in any way, you can break the whole process. With modern systems that have processes that feed off other processes which in turn feed of even more processes, it becomes harder to identify and harder to document as people make assumptions with everything they do, and don’t realise that their systems are now critical to items further down the line. To try and get around this, insure end to end transparency. A good change control system with robust communication, and decent quality documentation. Also, code reviews help.

Disclaimer: As always these posts are not aimed at anyone client or employer and are just my personal observations over a lifetime of dealing with both management and frontline associates.

I have been told that his comes from the book Antifragile by Nassim Nicholas Tale[↩]