Ben Peterson

I’ve fallen a couple weeks behind in my blog posting. My new job has been a rollercoaster of emotions! But I’m starting to settle in and thus it’s time for me to get back to my routine of weekly blog posting.

My enterprise career was born and raised at Sony – I didn’t know what to expect at this new place. Plus it’s all about The Cloud and I’ve never known how much BS vs actual “not-a-buzzword” technology The Cloud really is.

Culture-wise I was wary at first because there wasn’t much up on the walls in people’s offices/cubes, and my geek radar didn’t immediately pick up fellow Comic-Con attendees. Slowly but surely I’m finding familiar cultural artifacts that make me feel at home:

• The guy in the cube next to me happened to have purchased the same model mechanical keyboard as me. 
• There’s more than one StarCraft fan (though they don’t hold a candle to the fire that was a certain Sony coworker’s ladder ranking)
• I once again have a coworker with lots of dogs and horses (although this time > 20 horses … it’s a whole side business!). I definitely miss not seeing dogs around in the office though
• Without having to make any special requests, a pair of new Dell 24″ monitors were set up for me and is standard-issue
• I found my Comic-Con attendee friend, but he works across the country in the Boston office

Here’s a breakdown of the technology-related changes/differences I’ve picked up on:

• I thought I was definitely not a network guy, but certain network infrastructure choices I see being made at the new job suddenly make me care a lot, and realize how much knowledge I had soaked up via osmosis while at Sony
• It may be a Production environment, but Production Development problems never change
• People who don’t have to regularly activate Windows over the phone don’t know what they’re missing. And should never know it. Guess who just implemented their first project for improving processes in the workplace!
• I’m already getting pulled into lots of cool projects that I just happen to know lots about, which makes it hard to manage my time because I’m excited about all of them
• I’m glad I took the time when I could at Sony to be involved with pioneering the IPv6 path
• I need to put together the Perfect Pitch for why the IT group needs to go out to conferences like TechEd or VMworld. Every day I’m using some skill or knowledge I picked up from there!
• While I do believe that The Cloud is more than just a buzzword, don’t underestimate the value good old fashioned elbow grease