We had a two week vacation over at Gulf Shores, Alabama. Despite three days of rain, it was great. If you’re looking for a Gulf-beach vacation, it’s an excellent place to go - just about 10 hours from Austin if you drive fast and don’t have to stop a lot for kids to go pee. Well, and adults with tiny bladders too. Coté Content How to avoid getting hoodwinked by a DevOps hustler My column at The Register this month, how to find and rate a good consultant.

Just a few updates and links this week. I don’t list them all below, but there’s several interviews from OSCON and DevOpsDays Austin in the Coté Show Variety Podcast as well. Programming languages XML, all alone on its own. The RedMonk programming language index is out, as always it’s interesting to see how things rank and read over their explanation. Also, if you’re interested in coming to Spring Days in NYC or Atlanta this summer, they have a $50 off discount code right at the start as part of Pivotal’s sponsorship.

There was some interesting container orchestration news this week which we discussed in Software Defined Talk. If you’re into Slack, I started a Slack channel for Software Defined Talk listeners. There’s other channels in there, of course, but if you’re into extremely low-traffic stuff - or want to make it higher traffic, send me a DM in Twitter or email me at sdt@cote.wtf and I’ll add you. It’s been two weeks since I sent this out, so pardon the bulk below.

It seems like all I do now-a-days is podcasts. So, here's some down below, plus some links of interest. Recent PodcastsPivotal Conversations: The management perspective on transforming Allstate, with Opal Perry — soundcloud.com I talk with Allstate's Opal Perry about how Allstate has been shifting how they do it, to a more cloud-native approach. It ain't easy. Drunk & Retired Podcast: The arrogance of making sure you get what you want — cote.

Just a few podcasts and links today. I should have a The Registercolumn on OpenStack up by next issue (gotta write that next!). Cloud-Native Strategy Workshop, June 7th in D.C.Come check out a day-long workshop with me and Mark Heckler: You'd like to improve how your organization or agency writes and runs software. Like most large organizations, you're expected to deliver software that delivers on ever evolving requirements while remaining stable and resilient.

I've been at OSCON this week and have a pile of video-cum-podcasts to edit and post, still from DevOpsDays Austin! The usual links and such below. Enjoy! PodcastsPivotal Conversations: User Account and Authentication (UAA), with Sree Tummidi — soundcloud.com For God's sake, don't write you own access and authorization services. Coté Show: John Willis on DevOps, inclusion, burn-out, and biz dev — www.cote.show Barton George and I talk with John Willis at DevOpsDays Austin 2017.

I’m at DevOpsDays Austin this week. This must be the 4th or 5th one, and I’ve been to all of them. It’s a good show, put on by good people. Next week I’ll be at OSCON in Austin (find a discount code over in this week’s show-notes). There’s mucho links this week, I even left some out! To find them all in real-time, go over to cote.io. It’s a WEBLOG, so you can even subscribe to the RSS if one of my fellow olds.

Hello, as I like to do every six or so months, I moved some publishing infrastructure around. This time, back to Revue from the fully automated Mailchimp. Yay me. Links Here’s a mix of things I’ve done recently and other items I liked. The Frontside Podcast: 10 Pounds of Dirt in a 5 Pound Sack Charles and I talk about the job I do, how industry analysts work, and other tech marketing tactics.

It’s the end of the year - might as well be over once I wrap up today. On the other hand, if you’re in sales, it’s hardly the end of the year. It might be the most white-knuckling two weeks left. I’m sure glad I don’t do that work. Infrastructure Software in 2016 summerized Coté Content 2017 Predictions, Software Defined Talk In the last episode we make whacky predictions (not too whacky, actually) for 2017.

I’m in New York today for a quick meeting, ostensibly on DevOps, but as ever on how organizations can do software better. “DevOps” has increasingly become the term people use when they mean “doing all that new stuff, in new ways.” Vendors, like Pivotal, have tried to use the phrase “cloud native” to describe it, but that hasn’t stuck too much outside of the vendoring and chattering class. The key phrases, I’d say, are: