TL;DR Dell Technologies is no longer funding the open source initiative of The {code} Team (read more). I am looking for a new opportunity that touches on areas of containers, kubernetes, docker, cloud native, developer advocacy, golang, nodeJS, and more. Connect with me on LinkedIn, twitter, or view my resume.
In early 2014, I got a phone call from Brian Gracely about this idea to form a group to explore what open source means at EMC. What did it look like? No idea. There was no roadmap, sales pipeline, or product idea. Just a general concept of trying to get EMC recognized in the emerging trend of development and open source, ala the new kingmakers. It was up to us to make this successful.
After months of waiting, the time had finally come. In October 2014, along with Clint Kitson and Jonas Rosland, EMC {code} was formed. We spent the better part of 4 months trying to find an identity. We developed small applications that sparked our interest from s3 migration tools to vagrant standardization to even a Photo Booth. We spoke at meetups and conferences on DevOps, NodeJS, and every other technology we knew about at the time. We evaluated emerging trends in the datacenter and tried to make sense on how we could be a part of it. We visited pre-sales engineering teams and got them up to speed on modern development practices. We were throwing stuff against the wall to see what would stick.
In early 2015, the team noticed the container movement and narrowed its focus. This was when Docker was creating the Volume Interface within their experimental branch. REX-Ray and Docker were in their infant stages but it was decided to put all our effort into solving container persistence and making REX the best possible solution. {code} hired more engineers and expanded with a marketing presence. With this new blood, we had the ability to get our projects in front of larger audiences all over the globe. From there, we began solving persistence with other container platforms. The team developed the mechanism that allows Mesos to have data persistence (which is now merged upstream) and also began tackling Kubernetes integrations.
There’s a lot of achievements I’m overlooking, but fast forward to now. The team has secured a project moving towards a neutral governance home and worked with the community to build the Container Storage Interface that has been adopted by Kubernetes and Mesos with a commitment from Cloud Foundry to increase container adoption. Our projects were accompanied with successes, mistakes, new relationships, and growing the community built around it.
I’m very proud of what we accomplished that contributed back to the open source community but also created working solutions for customers who want to run containers with Dell EMC storage. As time progresses, I can only hope these achievements aren’t forgotten artifacts but continue to live on by the success of open source development.
We carved a path for any developer within Dell EMC to get past the red tape and open source their creation. We developed software that gave new life to Dell EMC storage in the container ecosystem. We shattered glass and stepped on a few toes to change the face and culture of Dell EMC. If you ask me, we achieved our mission to figure out what open source meant to EMC.
I'm disappointed that Dell Technologies is no longer funding the open source initiative of The {code} Team, but it gives me a chance to reflect on the past 7.5 years I spent within the family. It’s been fun and I have had the opportunity to meet lots of great people and visit plenty of interesting places in the world. I am looking forward to seeing what's next and what challenges await. That being said, I'm on the market and looking for a role that touches on areas of containers, kubernetes, docker, cloud native, developer advocacy, golang, nodeJS, and perhaps a splash of VMware. Not in that order, but they all sort of meld together. This blog isn't the best indication of my recent work, but please feel free to peruse the {code} blog with my authored articles before the hosting service contract ends. You can also see my speaking engagements on YouTube. Connect with me on LinkedIn, twitter, or view my resume to get in touch. If you're looking for top-notch engineering talent, be sure to get in contact with others on the {code} team from the About Us page.
Here's to the next chapter.