Tag: Sabbatical

15 Years of INEX, me one year on

There were two anniversaries last week. The first was the 15th Birthday of INEX – the Internet Exchange Point in Dublin. To celebrate this, they organised a rather good event at Dublin’s history-steeped Mansion House (the first Dáil sat there in 1919) complete with distinguished speakers such as Dan Kaminsky and Geoff Huston, and a rather good dinner from the adjoining Fire Restaurant.

It was also Arthur’s Day, another excuse to drink copious quantities of the black stuff. Coincidence? You decide…

Dan spoke for over an hour, including Q&A, with no slides, no sheaf of notes, just this interesting stream of consciousness that made you want to sit up and listen.

Some things that Dan said got me thinking, not least the comment that “The world’s social life is being run from Silicon Valley”, and more to the point by a bunch of nerds (e.g. Facebook, G+, etc.), maybe some of the most anthrophobic people you might find! This linked up with some other stuff I’d been reading.

So I thought I’d try and make sense of what was going through my mind. Continue reading “15 Years of INEX, me one year on”

I don’t work for the GOOG…

…or anyone else for that matter.

As you may know, I recently stood down from my full-time role as CTO of LINX – I’m taking a bit of a sabbatical between now and the end of the year. However, I still attended the NANOG50 meeting in Atlanta last week.

So, I was surprised when several folks asked me “How long have you been working for Google?” I think I was more surprised than the questioner!

Where had this rumour started?

Matt Petach usually keeps good notes of proceedings when he attends NANOG and sends the notes out to the mailing list so that other folks can benefit. It’s a good, community spirited thing.

Turns out that Matt had managed to affiliate me with the GOOG in his notes! It certainly got a few sideways glances!

In any case, I really don’t know if I even have the patience to jump through Google’s legendary recruitment hoops – though ask me that again in about a year, if I’m still out of work and living on a studentesque diet of baked beans and canned tuna.

So, just to categorically state: I dont work for GOOG. Or anyone else, for the moment. Phew. 🙂

Freedom. Whatever that is…

So, as some folks will know, I recently left my employer of 11 years.

I felt it was time for a change, and time for a break – I’d been wanting to take a sabbatical for a few years now, but I realised that it was becoming less and less likely to happen soon – so I took the plunge.

When you take a big step like this, you find out a lot of things. Especially who your friends are – which I’m happy to say, seems to be most of you…

The plan from here is that I take between three to six months off full time employment, while at the same time keeping in touch with an industry I’ve been 110% involved in for the last 15 years. So I’m probably still going to crop up at industry meetings, and I’m still going to be involved in some of the voluntary work I do in the community, such as help run UKNOF meetings.

One of the things that was suggested to me as a way of keeping connected to the community is that I start blogging and writing about tech stuff…

Of course, I’ve always had an opinion on most things, so why not do what comes naturally!