Community

Microsoft Museum and Brothers in Tech Dinner

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Last week was packed with activities, one of them included another trip to Microsoft HQ in Redmond. I attended onsite team meetings, connected with colleagues, and caught up with my friend Ayobami Ayodeji, MENG, PMP.



After 13 years of traveling to Redmond, I finally made it into the Microsoft Museum with Ayo! 🏛️ Every previous time, it was either closed or under construction.



The highlight of this trip was attending the Brothers in Tech dinner, hosted by Billy Anders (thanks for the invite!). The friendships and brotherhood at this dinner go back decades among some these veterans and heavy hitters at Microsoft. It was an honor and privilege to be included in such a special gathering.



Being able to plug into a community like this is rare. At the dinner, I finally met one of my mentors, Derek Hazeur, in person. I also had the chance to connect with Corey Rosemond, Rodney Bryan, David Fowler and many others. The laughs never stopped! 😂



Big shoutout to Glenn Grant for being a great colleague, the ride, and congrats on 35 years at Microsoft!

I’m looking forward to attending more of these dinners in the future, and continuing to get to know these brothers and build friendships.

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Appeared on Kare 11 News to Promote Microsoft ManCode

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Recently I made an appearance on the news today alongside co-organizer Amondo Dickerson on Alexis Rogers “news at noon” show on Kare 11!

🎉 We had the opportunity to share about the upcoming Microsoft ManCode Mentoring Event, which I’m proud to be a part of. You can check out the video here:

https://www.kare11.com/video/news/local/news-at-noon/89-d37157f3-8d4f-4994-9f04-8e6953fdd6c2

or watch it here:


This event, now in its 4th year, is all about providing young men of color the chance to learn from local black leaders in tech, business, and beyond. This year, we’re covering everything from AI and robotics to financial literacy, education, and careers in tech/gaming. It’s happening at Minneapolis College on October 17th & 18th, and it’s FREE for young men ages 12-17!



Special thanks to Microsoft, 100 Black Men, Twin Cities, and the Phyllis Wheatley Community Center for keeping this event going.


The motto of the 100 Black Men Twin Cities is “What they see is what they’ll be,” and this event embodies that vision. 💪🏽

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Combining Kubernetes Community and Careers

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I was a guest on a very popular cloud podcast. This is one of the longest-running cloud podcasts around starting in 2011. It is the Cloudcast Podcast.

I was on episode #714 titled “Combining Kubernetes Community and Careers”. In this episode, I had a great time chatting with Aaron Delp about my journey in the Kubernetes community, building a personal brand through education and sharing, content creation, and maintaining a healthy work-life balance.

Here are the show notes breaking down the topics:

Topic 1 – Today we are going to be talking about careers and Kubernetes. Steve, welcome to the show! You have a super fascinating career journey, can you give everyone a quick introduction?

Topic 2 – I heard you over on the Kubernetes Unpacked podcast. First off, it’s hard to keep up with everything you are doing in the community these days. What is your current focus and passion? Have you reached 20 courses on Pluralsight yet?!

Topic 3 – How do you balance the day job (Program Manager for AKS) and the nights and weekends (PluralSight courses, blogging, podcasts, etc.)? Besides learning and sharing, what benefits are you seeing with this approach?

Topic 4 – I believe your journey parallels our journey here. We started the podcast to learn and give back to the community. Prior to the podcast, blogging was the big thing (we are completely aging ourselves I know) but I think it is safe to say blogging isn’t a primary source today. How would you recommend folks new to the industry get started sharing their journey? Where is the most “bang for your buck” these days?   

Topic 5 – Let’s talk about Kubernetes and specifically AKS, what are customers finding new and interesting? What are the leading solutions and integrations you see combined with AKS? How do you create a “stack” in AKS (GitHub Actions, Azure Container Registry, etc.)

You can listen to the full episode here:

https://www.buzzsprout.com/3195/12719684-combining-kubernetes-community-and-careers

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