Mentions
Ex-Amazon 'Master of Disaster' Animates Server Chef
The Register profiled my move from Amazon's Master of Disaster role to co-founding Opscode and launching Chef, tracing the line from reliability engineering to infrastructure as code.
Velocity: The Art of Web Operations
Tim O'Reilly's note opening Velocity 2009 tells the origin story: Steve Souders, Andy Oram, and I asked for a conference for our community. Two years in, 700 people showed up.
Five Whys: Try to Learn a Dollar's Worth of Lesson for Every One You Spend in Failure
Eric Ries built his Venture Hacks Five Whys guide around a line of mine: try to learn a dollar's worth of lesson for every dollar spent in failure.
“Try to learn a dollar's worth of lesson for every one you spend in failure.”
The Do-Good Imperative
BusinessWeek's CEO Guide to Disaster Readiness covered my work at the seam between emergency response and technology, including the Velocity conference I co-founded.
“One of the interesting things with being a pretty senior technology person operating in a disaster is that you get to see the state of the art versus the state of the practice.”
Making Maps Work When Disaster Strikes
Companion piece in BusinessWeek's CEO Guide to Disaster Readiness. I described navigating post-Katrina Louisiana on broken maps and what that says about crisis tooling.
“One of the interesting things with being a pretty senior technology person operating in a disaster is that you get to see the state of the art versus the state of the practice.”
Understanding Operations Culture (Part 1)
I wrote this in 2008 to define web operations culture using what I had learned from the fire service: the habits that separate teams who handle incidents well from teams who don't.
“You don't choose the moment, the moment chooses you. You only choose how prepared you are when it does.”
Operations Is a Competitive Advantage (Secret Sauce for Startups!)
The post that started it all. Jesse Robbins argues on O'Reilly Radar that operations is a competitive advantage and occasionally a strategic weapon. Luke Kanies introduces him to Adam Jacob in the comments. The rest is history.
You Become What You Disrupt
What happens when disruptive technologies win a platform play and take on the obligations of the systems they replaced? Jesse Robbins coined this principle on O'Reilly Radar in 2007.
“You become what you disrupt. What changes occur when you win a platform play, when you go from disruptive technology to a public utility?”