Conferences

The Presidents of the United States Play VKTRS

Joe Pruitt — Fri, 07 Nov 2008 16:52:23 GMT

Here's the last clip from our little band's opening for one heck of a great group at our recent sales conference. MTV chose to air this song as their first video played in North America and PUSA do a great cover on it! This song seems to be an opener for them but during this show it was towards the tail end of the set. And seeing how in the song "The Radio Star" was "Oh-a oh, you were the first one" meaning first video on MTV, I thought it was fitting that "Oh-a oh, you were the last one" meaning the last video I'm posting from the show.

So, sit back and enjoy "Video Killed the Radio Star"!

Technorati Tags: F5, DevCentral, Presidents of the United States, The Encrypted Packets, PUSA, Joe Pruitt

The Presidents of the United States Play Kitty

Joe Pruitt — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 18:53:52 GMT

Here's the forth clip from our little band's opening for one heck of a great group at our recent sales conference.

It's Meow Meow time with a "Little bag of bones been out all night" and while "Kitty at my foot and I wanna touch it" but you can't, how about "watching" it instead. Here's Kitty!

Technorati Tags: F5, DevCentral, The Encrypted Packets, Presidents of the United States, PUSA, Joe Pruitt

The Presidents of the United States Play Lump

Joe Pruitt — Wed, 05 Nov 2008 16:16:49 GMT

Here's the third clip from our little band's opening for one heck of a great group at our recent sales conference. For all you Wierd Al fans out there, you may say to yourself that this song sounds a lot like "Gump". We'll it does, because this is the song that is the source for that parody.

So, don't "sit alone in a boggy marsh" and definitely don't let "mud flow up into your pajamas". Just sit back and watch PUSA playing Lump!

Technorati Tags: F5, DevCentral, The Encrypted Packets, PUSA, Presidents of the United States, Joe Pruitt

The Presidents of the United States Play Peaches

Joe Pruitt — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 17:40:11 GMT

As I mentioned yesterday, our little band had the pleasure of opening for one heck of a great group at our recent sales conference. Here is part 2 with a few more to come of the Presidents of the United States playing on of my favorites.

So, let's "take a little naps where the roots all twist, squished a rotten peach in my fist and dreamed about you, woman..." Here's some good and yummy Peaches for your viewing pleasure.

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The Presidents Of The United States Play Back Porch

Joe Pruitt — Mon, 03 Nov 2008 23:42:25 GMT

Our little band had the pleasure of opening for one heck of a great group at our recent sales conference. Luckily I had my camcorder along for part of their set. The audio is a little distorted but seeing how I was a body length away from their amps, there wasn't much I could do about it.

So, without further ado, get "happy with no teeth", be "happy here in hibernation", get "slurpin' on a peach", and start "staring' at the situation" - on the Back Porch!

Technorati Tags: F5, DevCentral, The Encrypted Packets, Presidents of the United States, PUSA, Joe Pruitt

DevCentral Tokyo - Day 4

Joe Pruitt — Fri, 23 May 2008 02:08:19 GMT

Day four on my DevCentral trip to Tokyo started with some work in the hotel room and preparations for my presentation at the first Japan DevCentral Users group meeting. I went through the slides once figuring that since I know the material pretty well, the flow of topics would be all I needed. Boy was I wrong. More the that later...

At 11:00 we headed to the F5 offices to meet some colleagues, grab some lunch and head over to the user group meeting. We have been lucky enough on this trip to have some wonderful hosts that have taken us to very small, out of the way, restaurants that have just been amazing! I've found that the quality of the food is inversely proportional to the amount of american text and pictures on the menus - meaning full Kanji menus meant very very very good food. We stopped at one of these places for lunch. It was a old residence converted into a Chinese food restaurant. I had a rice bowl with a layer of egg covered by crab with a teriyaki type sauce - mmmm! The rest of the group all had steamed dumplings that I'm told were equally as impressive. I sure miss home, but I'm going to really miss the wonderful food I've had here.

After lunch we headed to the user group meeting. Did I mention that it was being held at the US Embassy! Another first for me. Security was pretty strict. No electronics of any kind were permitted. And once we made it through the 3 checkpoints and were escorted to our room, no food or drink was allowed and you needed an escort to leave the room and walk the 1 foot to the restroom door. I was a bit worried about speaking without a water backup, but it went well.

Jeff started the talk going over DevCentral Japan and how we see the community growing. Following Jeff, the "PowerShell God" of Tokyo from Microsoft spoke about PowerShell and walked through the iControl Cmdlet's for PowerShell including the installation and execution of some of the CmdLet's to return system data. I was stoked on that one as it's always fun watching someone else demo a product you personally created! I followed that talk up with my presentation on Sumo Gambling techniques with a little bit of iControl and iRules thrown in for good measure. As usual, the iRules Optimization Tricks slide was the most popular. My talk was followed by another F5 Joe who ran some iRule challenges that each table competed in to win a prize. I'm not sure what was asked as the questions were all in Kanji but that didn't stop me from helping judge group "B" as the winners!

After a reception a group of F5 folks headed to another wonderful place for beer and sushi. Double Yum! And of course the night wouldn't be complete without a little bit of Karaoke. Let me just say this, Jeff does a mean "Born to be Wild"! It was also a treat to see some great performances of Japanese songs by our F5 colleagues.

Then after getting lost in translation for a second time (our cab driver couldn't find our hotel), we told him to drop us off at a shopping district and we took the trusty train back to the hotel. Tomorrow is the partner conference with the added bonus of seeing me in a suit. Then it's off to the airport for a red-eye back to the states.

-Joe

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Off to TechEd

Joe Pruitt — Tue, 05 Jun 2007 00:08:34 GMT

I'm finishing up the days work here and packing my bags for TechEd in Orlando. I'll be presenting at a Vendor Lunch so if any of you out there are going to be at the show, please stop by and say hi.

Session # LNC 17: Wednesday June 6, 2007: 12-1:45PM. Room N310 A

I'm at the tail end of the session, so grab a bite for lunch and then drop by. If you miss the presentation, or have other things scheduled during that time, I'll be twittering my location throughout Tuesday and Wednesday. Tuesday night I'll be at the VSIP party at the Kennedy Space Center, which should be a blast.

I've got a pretty wide-open schedule outside the presentation, so feel free to look me up via twitter or email (joe -at- f5 -dot- com) and we can get an impromptu DevCentral User Group meeting. Anything is game, Configuration, PowerShell, VS, Application Ready Networks,...

See you there!

-Joe

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I'm still here...

Joe Pruitt — Fri, 13 Apr 2007 17:37:09 GMT

It's been a while since my last post. The last few months have been pretty busy including releasing the new version of DevCentral, fixing all the things we missed in the migration, taking some long overdue time off, helping out in the forums, and working on a couple of other internal projects.

One of my pet-projects is DevCentral Labs. I'm on the lookout for a new project or two to take on. Don has started the basis for one but I know there are other areas out there that could be covered. I've been contemplating a Windows Mobile app next (in fact, I already have a compact framework version of the iControl Assembly that I plan on posting to soon). Any ideas for that project, or any other project, would be highly appreciated! Who knows, if you are up to doing some of the work, we can make you a co-lead on the project.

On the horizon...

Next week on Wednesday the 18th and 19th, I'll be at a Windows PowerShell Developer Conference at the Microsoft campus in Redmond. Anyone else planning on being there? If so, give me a shout.

And April 30-Mar 2, I'll be at Mix down in Las Vegas (which is already sold out!). I know at least one of reading this will be there. I couldn't convince Jeff to go this year, so I'll be there solo. Anyone want to meetup and talk networking? If we get enough of you, we can plan a mini F5 User Meetup - that way I can expense the drinks B-)...

Technorati tags: MIX07, Conferences, Microsoft Solutions, DevCentral

[Listening to: Roxanne (Police Cover) by Fall Out Boy]

-Joe

ISC, Spike, and The Encrypted Packets

Joe Pruitt — Tue, 31 Oct 2006 18:45:00 GMT

Another F5 International Sales Conference has come to a close. We spent the second half of last week up in Vancouver, BC at the Westin Bayshore. The DevCentral crew was hosting a booth and talking about all things iControl and iRules. What a blast it was seeing everyone (and meeting a slew of new folks).

The surprise for this event was that at the closing party on Friday night (at the Commodore Ballroom - House of Blues) we had Spike and the Impalers lined up to play the party.

The even bigger surprise for the event was that a few of us had formed a band, aptly named "The Encrypted Packets", to open for Spike. This was only known to a choice few before the event (although a couple of fellow employees seemed to get a clue when they saw us hauling around our guitars and amps at the hotel).

Jeff, Colin, Dave and I, did a 4-song set including "BIGPipe", "I Gotta Write Some Code", "iRule Idiot", and "Are You Gonna Be My Girl". The first three were parodies with an F5 twist. Bonus points to those who can name the originals. Nothing like playing at such a venue for first ever concert - what a rush! At first I was a bit intimidated by the wall of Marshall stacks used by the Impalers, but I quickly overcame that. We had a full stage and sound crew and it was so surreal when ran the first verse of BIGPipe in the sound check. We even had our own Green Room back stage (although it was tiny in comparison to The Impalers room) stock full of blue M&Ms as our contract demanded.

Spike and the gang were very very nice to us. A couple of the guys just arrived back from playing Royal Albert Hall in England with Paul Rogers. I figured pros would have big egos, but these guys were very down to earth and we chatted quite a bit back stage after the sound check. Bob Rivers also talked us up on his radio show Monday morning.

If you are ever in need for an awesome cover band, I'd highly suggest you consider them for your event. Or... If you can't quite budget their expenses, I know a great Networking Parody Band that is looking for work B-).

Now back to reality...

-Joe

Mix06 Update - Day 3

Joe Pruitt — Wed, 22 Mar 2006 22:25:00 GMT

Day 3 started out a bit earlier with sessions starting at 8:30. First on the block was "Open, De Jure, De Facto and Proprietary : Standards and Microsoft" lead by Chris Wilson of Microsoft. I was a bit dissapointed by this one. Basically Chris just went over what standards are and how some are proprietary and how the standards bodies work. I was looking for more of how Microsoft was "tailoring" standards to suit their interests but he didn't want to go that direction (not surprisingly...).

Next up was "Building Components and Services for the Programmable Web" by Nikhil Kothari, Software Architect at Microsoft. He went over a lot of code on how to build mashups, and expose "gadgets" for extenral services. Pretty cool stuff! Again, the main thing that stands out is that the effects of the network are not being taking into account and will be a major issue to be addressed. Luckily they all have F5 to help them out B-).

The last session of the show was "The Future of Media and the Web", led by Marc Canter of Broadband Mechanics and paneled by Jeff Sandquist of Microsoft, Laura Porto of Avenue A/Razorfish, Paul Sidlo CEO of REZN8, Jason Rapp of the New York Times, and Mike Kelly of Arrow Design Studio. This was one of the more interesting talks of the whole show. Basically it focused on how media is going to have to be super simple to publish, distribute, and consume and how DRM and Localization ties into the upcoming uses of media. Very thought provoking...

I'm at the Las Vegas Airport at the moment and since they have free Wi-Fi, I'm able to post this update. Thanks Las Vegas for the connectivity! Home I go...

-Joe