Speaking
Talks about where this industry came from, and what it was like to be in it.
Prepared talks, written to be enjoyed rather than endured, from someone who has been in enterprise networking since 1996.
- Language
- English or Portuguese
- Events
- Conferences, company events, team gatherings and internal sessions
- Travel
- Welcome, and arranged as part of the booking
Two tracks
Two kinds of talk, for two kinds of moment in an event.
Technology, industry and change
Where this industry came from, how its markets formed, the great transitions, and what they looked like from the inside.
For conferences, leadership events and technical communities.
The talk The Technology Revolution
Humans behind the peripherals
The people who keep technology running: field stories, the call at three in the morning, the travel, teams under pressure, and learning to laugh at the industry. Recognition, humour and shared experience, rather than therapy or motivational slogans.
For off-sites, kickoffs, partner gatherings and team events.
The talk Hard Work, Hard Party
The talks
Technology, industry and change
The Technology Revolution
From punched cards to here
From punched cards to the biotechnologies of cognitive prediction, and the question underneath the whole arc: what becomes of us? A wide-angle talk for a mixed audience, built from three decades of watching the industry promise things and then deliver something adjacent.
Humans behind the peripherals
Hard Work, Hard Party
Field stories
Tales that could have been lived, witnessed or overheard on the road as a field engineer. Any resemblance to real events or persons is entirely coincidental. For audiences who have done the work and will recognise themselves, and for those who have not and should know what it is like.
Formats and audiences
- Conference talkA prepared talk, fitted to the programme's slot.
- Internal sessionFor a company or a team that wants an outside voice for an hour.
- Partner and industry eventsPartner gatherings, channel events and kickoffs.
- Panels and moderated discussionsA seat on the panel, or a conversation led by a moderator.
- Fireside conversationA conversation on stage with a host, with the audience's questions.
- Executive briefingA closed-door session for a board or a leadership team, built around one organisation and its decisions, is advisory work rather than a talk. Executive briefings, under Advisory
Audiences
- Technology professionals
- Networking and security practitioners
- Vendors and channel partners
- Engineering leadership
- Business leaders facing technological change
- Students and people early in their careers
- Mixed corporate audiences
Other subjects
The industry history on this site runs to 364 company records, and much of it has never been said out loud. If an event needs a talk on a specific era, technology lineage, or the way a particular market actually formed, that is a conversation worth having.
Behind every talk is work you can read first: the industry record, the career record, and the articles in Learn.
The industry record →The career record →The articles in Learn →
Speaking, Training and Advisory
Three different things, for three different needs.
- SpeakingPerspective, discussion and memory, for an audience.
- TrainingCapability: courses, technical workshops and certification preparation, delivered through Red Education and booked there, not here.
- AdvisoryJudgement on a real decision, for one organisation, executive briefings included.
A talk carries no recommendation for your organisation, and no consulting dressed up as a talk.
Beyond the talk
Some gatherings want more than an hour of listening. Selectively, the second track also goes further:
- Decompression and connectionA talk that opens an off-site or closes a hard quarter, so a team laughs at the work together.
- Facilitated team sessionsThe room takes part: it looks at how it works, works through something, and leaves with an outcome.
- Off-sites designed around the groupBuilt from what the team needs, sometimes with other facilitators or creative specialists.
Planning something less conventional? Tell me about the team, and what you want the room to experience.
Booking
Write to me directly about any event. The useful first message says the event and the organisation, where and when, who the audience is and roughly how many, the subject or what people should leave with, the format and its length, and whether it will be recorded or streamed. Travel and recording rights are agreed before anything is confirmed.