"webops" entries
Understanding Web Operations Culture (Part 1)
“You don’t choose the moment, the moment chooses you. You only choose how prepared you are when it does.” – Fire Chief Mike Burtch (Note: I became a Firefighter-1 and EMT in 2000. My experiences in the fire service profoundly influence my efforts in technology. Much of my work over the past few years has been translating and distilling my…
CloudCamp gathering after Velocity
On Tuesday after Velocity closes there will be a CloudCamp gathering at Microsoft's San Francisco Office. I'll be going (unless I'm too exhausted to stand). CloudCamp was formed in order to provide a common ground for the introduction and advancement of cloud computing Through a series of local cloudcamp events, attendees can exchange ideas, knowledge and information in a creative…
Bill Coleman to keynote Velocity
Bill Coleman has twice transformed our industry, and I'm excited to announce that he will keynote Velocity later this month. Bill is most famous for being the "B" in BEA and for leading the creation of Solaris while at Sun. He is now the CEO of his new startup, Cassatt, which "makes Data Centers more efficient". Bill is awesome and…
TLS Report grades and reports on site security
My friend Ben Black just released TLS Report, a free (ad-supported) tool that evaluates SSL/TLS configurations across websites and assigns letter grades. In the example below, Facebook gets a D because it accepts several keys that are below 128-bits and relies on MD5: Ben explains: Cryptography is arcane and complex. Cryptography is also the basis for the various protocols that…
DisasterTech from Where2.0
I was honored to speak with Mikel Maron at Where2.0 about innovation in Disaster Technology, a topic that is extremely important to me. Here is the video: This talk covers the ongoing efforts of: World Shelters, the UN Joint Logistics Centre, Humanitarian.info, InSTEDD, and Humanlink. You can read about the development of SMS GeoChat, the Sahana effort for Burma/Myanmar (Radar…
Automated Infrastructure Podcast on IT Conversations
Adam Jacob and I did an IT Conversations podcast with Phil Windley last week, which I really enjoyed. We started with a summary of Adam's excellent Web2.0 Expo session, covered the phases of startup growth using virtual infrastructures like EC2 and 3tera, and discussed how Puppet shifts us to "Infrastructure as Code". We even got into the challenges and opportunities…
Structure and Velocity
Several people have asked me about the differences between Om Malik’s Structure conference and our Velocity Web Performance & Operations conference. Velocity is on June 23 & 24th at the SFO Mariott, and Structure follows on June 25th in San Francisco. The conferences are complementary: Structure discusses what is changing in internet infrastructure, and Velocity teaches how to make that…
Velocity preview at Web2.0 Expo
At the Web2.0 Expo this month we have a small preview of some of the topics and speakers at the Velocity Web Performance & Operations conference. (Radar readers get a 20% discount by using “vel08js” as a discount code… and yes it works with the $300 early registration discount!). Failure HappensFriday @ 11:00 am, Room 2009 Artur Bergman and I…
What is Web Operations?
Theo Schlossnagle wrote a brilliant summary of one of the biggest challenges we discussed at the Velocity Summit in January:What is this Velocity Summit thing? It was a bunch of web architects from highly trafficked sites sitting around talkin' smack. It was operated in Foo style. However, one thing that made me really appreciate this meet-up was the lack of…
Paging systems and Conference Bridges for startups & small teams
Early registration for the Velocity Web Performance & Operations Conference has opened. To help spread the word, I’ve written this “simplest thing that will work” hack to a common Operations need: Paging systems and Conference Bridges. Step 1: Establish a team contact list with SMS email addresses Create a Google Spreadsheet to create a team roster like this one. My…