Category Archives: what I do

bio, videoblogging, what I do

How I Shoot Video in 2015

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Current Rig

(This is an update of what I used to use. I have ditched the Beachtek adapter, though it might still be useful in some situations, and the Rode VideoMic, ditto.)

Camera

I am still faithful to the Canon Vixia models, though I’ve finally made the switch from tape to memory cards. (Which I am now completely paranoid about losing.) A good-quality consumer camcorder now costs around $200.

Mics

I still love the Sennheiser mic sets like this one – at least, when I have a corporate budget to buy them with (these have not diminished noticeably in price since I first began buying them around 2008). But, for home and personal use, I make do with the camera’s internal mic and it’s usually fine.

Tripod

It’s worth buying something a little better than the cheapest possible tripod, to try to get a smooth swivel in the head mount for when you’re filming a speaker who moves around a lot, or panning a room to get focus on different people speaking in a panel or group. My current work tripod is a Manfrotto compact model, because it’s handy to be able to stash it in a backpack or carry-on. I’m not entirely satisfied with the swivel on this one, however.

Filming on an iPhone

In a pinch, I use my iPhone. It’s not my favorite option, because:

  • The zoom is hard to use, and noticeably diminishes video quality.
  • Just because of the way it fits your hand, an iPhone is harder and more tiring to hand-hold and keep steady. However, in a situation where I’m reduced to using it, I’m also not likely to have any kind of tripod available. (Yes, there are tripod mounts for iPhones, and you should certainly get one if you’re going to use a phone for extensive filming.)
  • You have to have plenty of storage space free on the phone to shoot long videos and, when you’re in a hurry, it can take too long to clear stuff off your phone to make room.

But I have used iPhones to film in many situations, including a full-length OSCON talk.

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bio, my life in tech, portfolio, what I do

Marketing Your Tech Talent (at OSCON)

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In early 2013, I submitted a talk to OSCON entitled “Marketing Your Tech Talent.” It was turned down, but soon after I was honored to have it accepted for Monktoberfest, where it was well received. I was amused and flattered that, as soon as I finished the talk, Laurel Ruma jumped up to congratulate me – and suggest that I submit it for OSCON. So I did, it was accepted, and I delivered the talk at OSCON 2014.

The Monktoberfest version was aimed more at tech marketing departments or individuals who need persuading that letting technical staff speak for themselves is a great way to market technical products. For the OSCON version, I spoke directly to the techies themselves, encouraging them to market themselves and their talents because “there’s no IMDB for geeks – you are responsible for your career.” The video here was done by OSCON; they don’t share all OSCON talks on their YouTube channel (they’d like you to pay for a viewing package to see them all), but they do allow individual speakers to share them ourselves.

The slides for both (in notes and non-notes versions), as well as other talks of mine, are available here.

Both conferences are fun to attend, great ways to learn a lot on many topics, and meet interesting people. As a speaker or attendee, I recommend both.

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bio, what I do

The Place for Me

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On June 16, I became an employee of Ericsson, the Swedish telecom multinational, following Jason Hoffman (above), the founder who had originally hired me into Joyent in late 2010, and was until last September the CTO and my direct boss there.

Continue reading The Place for Me →

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bio, my life in tech, portfolio, what I do

Metrics Workshop at LISA13

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At USENIX LISA`13, Brendan Gregg led a Metrics Workshop, along with Narayan Desai, Kent Skaar, Theo Schlossnagle, and Caskey Dickson. “This was an opportunity for many industry professionals to discuss problems with performance metrics and monitoring, and to propose and discuss solutions.” More details from Brendan here.

I filmed the day, above is a playlist of all the resulting videos. Below is the gallery of photos from all of that edition of LISA, which was… eventful.

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bio, portfolio, what I do

What I Did at Joyent

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I started working at Joyent on December 1st, 2010, as the Director of Training. My task was to lead the creation of three levels of training materials:

  • for end users of the Joyent public cloud
  • for customers who were buying SmartDataCenter and using it to run their own clouds
  • for systems integrators and others who would resell SDC and would therefore need training in all of the above, plus in how to sell it

By the summer of 2011, with hard work from many in Joyent ops, support, marketing, and engineering, this training was being delivered to customers worldwide (by Shannon, Ryan, PeterG, Nima, Aaron…).

Continue reading What I Did at Joyent →

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