About This Blog
Hi. I’m Mike. I started this blog in 2012 as a place to document what I was learning about DevOps, continuous delivery, and monitoring. Over the years it’s expanded to cover infrastructure automation, team leadership, and the cultural aspects of building effective engineering organizations.
I’m a nerd at heart — a trained computer engineer turned to the software side long ago by the lure of faster feedback. I quickly discovered that I am passionate about building great teams and systems, and I work every day to make the lives of my teammates better and to attain a more holistic understanding of the world around me. As a leader I do my best to inspire my teams and foster a learning culture, with the ultimate goal of delivering high quality products and retaining happy engineers.
Professional Background
My passion for high-performance culture, innovation, and the accompanying results guides me in my role as CTO, Americas at DEPT® . DEPT® is a full-service digital advertising agency with an outsized weighting to technology services. The DEPT® technology teams do it all: enterprise data systems and business intelligence, digital products, platform architecture and implementation, immersive interactive experiences, and award-winning campaigns. We strive for a blend of innovation, scalability, reliability, and practicality.
I was active in the early DevOps community and was a co-organizer of Chicago’s first DevOpsDays. It was an incredibly supportive and fulfilling experience to be part of the movement as it gained momentum and popularity. If you were wondering, I believe firmly that culture > tools. I credit my experience within the DevOps community as seeding my passion for building both software and human systems that support the delivery of work.
Beyond Work
On my way to a career, I took an adventurous detour into ProAm bike racing. It was tons of fun and taught me a lot about what it feels like to pour all your energy into the pursuit of a goal. A few searches will turn up more than I’m willing to divulge here about my cycling days. I’ve caught the racing bug once again and currently race for 606 Racing , of which I was a founding member in the fall of 2019.
Get in Touch
The internet has accumulated plenty of my fingerprints, some of which you can find in these places:
Thanks for reading!