Some of the Things #20
Where I share some of the things I've been thinking about, learning about, and exploring across work, tech, wellness, and life.
Hi Friends,
I’m writing from a train. Six and a half hours on the Amtrak Empire Service from Rochester NY back to my home in Westchester. Comfortable seat. More than enough leg room. Hot coffee. Power outlet. WiFi that works. Beautiful scenery out my window. Can’t complain.
What I’ve Been Up To
Last week I was in Las Vegas attending the DevOps Enterprise Summit. You can read my reflections and a recap of my favorite sessions over on my medium blog. One thing I didn’t write about in my blog was how nice it was to both reconnect with old friends and meet new ones in the greater DOES community. There’s Andrew from the DevOps for Salesforce world, Steve the Value Stream guy, Virginia from the NSA, Phil the VPE with a heart of gold, Charlie the spiritual intellectual, Rupert the solo consultant and mountaineer, Kamran the engineering leader with a diverse team who is biased against CS degrees, Patrick the godfather of DevOps, Levi with his enthusiasm for connecting with people, Ivan the devops podcaster. I had so many interesting conversations with these folks, all with very different backgrounds, but a common denominator of curiosity and community.
Speaking of the summit, I also reconnected with
from Linear B. One year ago, Conor inspired me to move from ad-hoc blogging to building a regular writing practice. I saw how he was writing and podcasting and how rewarding it was for him. So it was much to my surprise to see Conor’s writing habit fall to the back burner this year - his last substack has a January date! (Though in his defense, he is doing a lot of content creation for his actual job). I gave him a subtle guilt trip to get back to writing and I was thrilled to see he’s back at it. Check out his latest piece about perfectionism.gm Farcaster - Several weeks ago I started a collaborative experiment in onchain media with the Nounish Prof, who I met at Farcon in June of this year. We’re live streaming 3 mornings a week to talk about Farcaster news. Each episode gets streamed on Unlonely.app, then the recordings are made available as NFTs. And yes, you can watch the recording on Zora without owning the NFT. We’re 10 episodes in, having fun, learning a lot, and plan to continue.
I was onsite at a client this week holding a workshop about Data Stewardship and its role in helping organizations get the outcomes they want from Master Data Management initiatives. To prepare, I spent the weekend perusing the 600 pages in the DAMA DMBOK, the Data Management Book of Knowledge. I’m always interested in how the theoretical gets applied at the practical level.
When there are devastating, traumatic events in the world, I tend to turn inward. For me personally, I don’t find it valuable to join social media real time discussion. But it doesn’t mean I don’t think and feel. Cameron Armstrong’s writing this week - happiness is a bubble - captures a lot of complicated feelings I have about safety, meaning, happiness and what happens when it’s ripped away in an instant.
A quick little detour
Regular readers of my substack know my mom passed away earlier this year. As I am writing, just now, a text message from my Aunt L (one of my mom’s younger sisters) came in and I’d like to share what she wrote. But first a little context: my mom more or less raised her younger siblings. My mom’s life story is quite remarkable and maybe one day I’ll write about it in more detail but for now, just know that when she was 8 or 9 years old, her mom walked out and left 6 kids behind to practically raise themselves. At 8 or 9, she was the second oldest and stepped into the mother role. As adults my mom and her sisters were close like sisters, but they also look up to her in a way that is different than older sister.
Here’s what my aunt shared with me just now, much of this I had no idea about. I don’t know why I’m including it here except a desire to have her story written and not forgotten, so please indulge me:
I idolized Nan from the get go. She was Thespian Society, National Honor Society, Quill & Scroll, Class Artist, Most Popular, Cheerleader. She taught me how to paint, draw, groom correctly. She showed me everything. She introduced me to Sartre, Fitzgerald, Thoreau, Camus, Dostoevsky to name a few. When I was only 9 she gave me Animal Farm, Clockwork Orange to read. Kahlil Gibran, all the classics. Timothy Leary, Ram Dass, The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, Vonnegut Siddhartha. She would quiz me on all this reading. I guess she enjoyed teaching! When I visited her at art school she introduced me to Alan Ginsberg who she worked with at the first Earth Day in Philadelphia and he came to her dorm room and complimented a papier mache cow that Sue created and gave her. Both of my sisters were so cool and smart. Both were at Woodstock. So lucky was I to learn from them! My Dad! Another amazing tale of drive and perseverance. One day I will tell you if you’re interested.
Do we all think our mothers are special or was mine truly unique? I can’t ever know.
A note to my subscribers:
I started this substack in December 2022 as an experiment to see if developing a writing habit would help clarify my thinking and/or provide any other benefits. You can read about my original intentions in my first post here.
I plan to continue to write about twice a month and will be sharing musings, meditations, and links to things I’m finding interesting as I build out my consulting company, raise my kids, and have fun creating and learning in the worlds of crypto, tech, finance, science and wellness.
Thank you for supporting my writing and journey. If you’d like to get in touch you can reply to me here, or find me on twitter and farcaster.
Until next time, keep putting good into the world. —adrienne🌏❤️