TNO072: Connectivity and Community with Jason Gintert

0:00This episode is sponsored by Meter, the company building networks from the ground up. I want to take a second to talk about something a lot of us don't think about until it's a problem, the network. I could tell stories here. If your org is running on gear from three or four vendors with no one really owning the whole thing, that's a liability. Meter changed how I think about this. I'm integrated stack, wired, wireless, and cellular, with hardware and software that they build in-house, predictable pricing, no surprise renewals, and you remain in the driver's seat for network management if you want. If you're worried about the transition, they handle the migration without you losing control. Go to beater.com slash Tenobs. That's M-E-T-E-R dot com slash T-N-O-P-S and book a demo. Welcome to Total Network Operations. The podcast for all your hardworking network operators and the business of delivering all

1:01the packets. Our mission is simple to bring out great ideas and net ops. I'm your friendly neighborhood podcast host, Scott Robon. And today, I want to bring you to the conversation immediately, Jason Gintert with USNUA, with Bits and Flight, with several billion other things. Jason, man, great to have you. How are you today? Hey, it's great to be here, Scott. I am fantastic and I'm really excited to talk with you. You are fantastic. Let me affirm that assessment. Very good. Well, look, there's two big things to talk with you about today. We got to unpack your life as a networker, some of the things that you came through, some of the personal things you've dealt with in your career. And then we do want to talk about how that's impacted what is today, the US Networking User Association. But let's get the dirt on Jason Gintert. How did you get in the tech?

2:03What got you interested? What was your path? So I started playing around with computers at a young age. My dad was a field engineer for Honeywell. And he brought home a Commodore VIC-20. That was my first computer. There you go. Okay. And so I learned how to program basic on a VIC-20. One of those, remember the old spiral bound manuals that I was flipping to the basics of basic? And I remember programming this stuff and then you had to save it to an audio tape. So I had a cassette interface. So I would save the little programs that I remember writing a song with peaking poke statements. And I just kept going and going with it until it said out of RAM. And that was like my first experience with like, what is what what that just happened? Like I like this bug you know that I had where actually it's just me like using up all

3:04the resources on the host. I couldn't even save it. 64K probably. It was 5K. It was 5K. Okay. Wow. I was being generous. All right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. The Commodore 64 was the upgrade. I used up all the RAM to the point where like there was no RAM left to save it. So it spent like hours writing this and couldn't save it. But anyhow, that was my like, you know, introduction to computers. And I spent a lot of time on that one. And then we got at some point a 386 and then a 486 and then a panium and that, you know, just right, iterated through many different computers. And I always always found myself drawn to it and spending time on the computer. And you know, graduate from high school, just kind of a drift. I didn't go to college. I didn't know what I was doing with my life at that point. I ended up working at a movie theater and then one of the managers at that movie theater ended up at a dial up by SP. And he said, Hey, man, you seem to know something or two about computers.

4:06You want to come over and work and do dial up tech support. And I was like, I didn't like I said, I didn't know what I was signing up for. All I knew was like, it was like, you know, a buck more an hour. I was like, hell yeah, I'm coming up. Sure. I'm taking it. Sure. And for the newer, for the newer engineers and interested parties, you might want to explain what dial up is. Seriously. Oh, yeah. So there you had, you know, back before you had, you know, broadband internet, there was, you know, having a modem on your computer that would dial a number and you'd go into a rass, a remote access server that would do it, you'd connect to that had a bunch of phone lines on it. And that's how you got on the internet. So you'd, you know, dial up there, be a bunch of squeal and scratching and before you knew it, you're on the information super highway. It was where you go. That's right. That's the first time that was the first on ramp, you know, before cable modems, before DSL. That's right. So 100% yeah. So spent, um, the beginning of my career in that dial up ISP and

5:10helping people on the phone troubleshoot, you know, their connectivity, mostly rebuilding TCP IP stacks and Windows 98. That's wow. Yeah. I mean, like two or three reboots and do you have your disk and yeah, it was, it was a lot. But necessary pain that you endured. Absolutely. Absolutely. I mean, it did teach me the importance of helping users and being able to communicate in common terms with with somebody about what they're looking at. Because so for example, when I'd say, Hey, I need you to take this CD ROM that you got to install, you know, the drivers for and they and to do the dial up setup on your machine. And then and I had one person say, Oh, you mean the cup holder? Like I, yeah. Yeah, let's take the cup out of the cup holder and let's put the CD in there and close it. That's right. Um, but yeah, lots of incredible experiences there.

6:11And then, um, the company I worked for got acquired by another company and they decided they were going to move all of the dial up tech support tasks to a group in Chicago. At that point in time, we were all, you know, my group was, you know, obviously concerned for our jobs, but they, they told us all sit tight. We're going to find a new role for you guys. So hang out. It's all Cleveland. So you're on Cleveland. Yeah, it is in Cleveland. Yep. In the Keith building, which maybe we'll talk about later. Yeah, those are my, you know, this was the like the early days of the internet, the carrier hotel. There's 1621, you could secure your hotel at Cleveland. So this is where I was working at the time. And, um, yeah, they took, they took our jobs and then moved it to Chicago, but let us, you know, hang out and we were literally just hanging out with no tasks. So the first couple of weeks were amazing. To be very dangerous. They could be very dangerous. Yeah. With lunches and, you know, whatever, people napping in the back room. It was, it was a free for all. Um, but, um, you know, after a while, I, it seems fun at first when you're like, I'm

7:13getting paid to do this. I'm just hanging out surfing the internet because we're sitting on that scream in T3 at the office, you know, like, yeah, the rip in 45 megs of internet bandwidth. Um, but after a while, um, some of us started to get bored and we're like, you know, what? Uh, in fact, we kept going to our, our superior and be like, Hey man, do you have anything for us because we're really kind of starting to, uh, we've seen everything you can see on the internet. Then I hope we're really looking for some work to do. Um, so that's when a few of us started just putting stuff we found in the back room together. We were taking old Cisco, you know, 2500 routers at the time. We were shaking, you know, um, I think 3600s and, um, even 7500s and taking the line cards and like plugging all this stuff together to build our own network in the back. Sure. And that's when I, I started to, um, I guess, um, develop a love for networking at that point. Cause I, I learned, once I learned about subnetting and I learned about, um, you know,

8:16uh, the, uh, the appropriate way to build out a network and the importance of like good design and all those things. Cause we're, sitting there reading the, the books and I think we were, you know, going for our CCNAs at the same time, we all kind of decided like, might as well take advantage of this, all this, free material and, yeah, and get the cert. Um, so we, you know, we're setting up servers and connecting them to the internet. Cause as I mentioned, we had like access, you know, at the time, 45 megabits per second was a tremendous amount of bandwidth. So, um, so that's how, you know, I got my start and then they eventually did move us into a different group. I got moved into the DSL division, uh, as DSL was, was, was coming to be, um, and learned a lot there. Uh, I learned an important lesson about, uh, failing at scale. Um, when, uh, I, I made an, uh, a pearl expect script that was supposed to go, uh, update the user names and passwords on a lot of, uh, DSL. So DSL was a, you know, um, and Scott, you're, you're familiar with DSL. I think you were very much, yep, worked with it a little bit.

9:18Yep. But, um, you know, it was the early days of broadband when they were, um, putting a digital subscriber line over those copper lines, a dedicated, you know, broadband line. And, um, they had these things called DSL access multiplexers or DSL. And, um, I had a script to go update the, uh, you know, locally managed user names and passwords on 34, uh, DSL, um, in three different markets. And that, um, that script deleted all the administrative users off of all those devices. Oops. Yeah. That's what I said. It's the, you know, deep down in the pit of my stomach, I knew like I screwed up pretty big and, uh, and, you know, had to, had to go talk to my manager about that. I really thought I was losing my job because I just basically locked this out of all the DSL names that, how many, how many and how geographically distributed, uh, 34, uh, in Cleveland, Columbus and Chicago. Okay. So not just driving around neighborhoods. Yeah. No. It was, I think it ended up being a $50,000 professional services project.

10:22And, and this is like 2000 year 2000 money. Like, $50,000 meant real money. That's right. Yeah. So it was, it was not an insignificant amount to go out and do what's called a nindy procedure to restore those, those stingers. So they had to put a little jumper on it to reset the, uh, the nand flash and, uh, and reconfigure them from scratch. Yeah. Wow. Thankfully they had backups and we made it happen. But so that was my start. Learned well in those first two years. Well, you know, so we just covered the teen noops segment of the podcast, right? Where, uh, you know, that's the, you do this long enough. You do something like that, you know, um, failing at scale. Like, uh, you, you win on that one. I'm not sure we've had anybody the tops, tops that. So, um, you, you talk about Cleveland infrastructure, right? Um, and I think, you know, as I've gotten to know you, it's like, you really know your way around town and what's where, not just from a comms infrastructure, but, you know, good music and good food too.

11:25But, uh, you know, this is obviously setting up for other community-focused things that you may have been involved in, um, US anyway. Um, but so what's unique about Cleveland in that regard? Like, there's, there's some interesting repurposing of an elevator shaft. Remember you told me about, uh, yeah. Yes. So that is that Keith building where I started, I started on the 18th floor of the BF Keith building. It's that 17th and you couldn't down to on Cleveland. That was the carrier hotel of Cleveland because, uh, AT&T, which is our, our, lack, they had, um, their, their global IP pop was on the second floor. Okay. So what happened was all of the other providers wanted to connect to AT&T, because at the time they, you know, had the, had the most broad swath of connectivity. And that was the best place to do it. Um, so then you had global crossings move in and then you had, you know, Verizon had up hop in there or back, I guess it would have been maybe even GTE at one point when they actually moved in.

12:26But anyhow, there was, you know, at one point, I think 10 different carriers in this building that exchanged links between each other. So, you know, P and I's between, uh, sort of private network interfaces between all of those different providers. And so they're, they got to a point where they were pulling so much fiber between fours and they had so much conduit where, as you mentioned, they had to decommission one of the elevator cars. Do you use a dedicated elevator shaft for all of that? Wow. All of that conduit. Yeah. Wow. So, and there was actually, uh, I had an electrician friend tell me that he had a, a ladder in there somewhere, but he couldn't get it back out. Be after they put some conduit in. So, he just, it was just left, left to the, uh, the conduit gods. You're going to write that off, right? You can get it, you can get another ladder, you eat more easily than trying to snake that out. Yeah, 100%. But that was, that was the, you know, and this building was built in 1929. Actually, fun fact about that building. It was how we got to per capita, um, the, um, theater district in Cleveland, the second only

13:28to Broadway. Um, not many people know that. But there's, uh, there's a lot of theaters right in that stretch. Um, and those theaters actually got built because of the BF Keith building. So, the guy who built that building, he actually wanted to build the theaters. But at the time, there was no grants for, for the arts to do what he wanted to do. But there were grants for commerce. So, he built this commerce building and he interconnected them all with it, with a tunnel down the back. So, they were officially one building, but he actually got you know, four theaters and, and a commercial building on the corner out of it. Um, but yeah, spent a lot of time in that building. And, um, yeah, there's another, a number of, uh, other, you know, points of presence throughout town. But, uh, years of work for service providers because after, you know, the dial up ISPA I went to and then, you know, doing DSL. I mean, I just stayed in the service provider world for, um, you know, a good 15 years or so. And popped around to different service providers and we'd all, you know, spent time in those

14:30buildings, whether it was installing customers or, um, extending fiber or copper, uh, through those buildings got to know, um, the city in town well. Um, and then, um, eventually founded my own company and, you know, during my time there, um, you know, came to realize that, um, you know, from a community perspective that, you know, I saw all these other groups out there like, uh, the VM, uh, VMware users group or Linux user group. There's all these user groups for, uh, other disciplines and IT, but there really wasn't a good, common one for, for networking. So we started, um, what we called at the time, the Ohio networking user group. Um, so this would have been about, I don't know, 2017, um, where we, almost 10 years, almost 10 years ago. Yeah. Where we, we were getting together, network engineers and it started out as just like 15 people at this restaurant, where, you know, uh, where we just got together,

15:32had some beers and, and kind of set some ground rules like, you know, we don't want to do any selling here. We just want to sit and talk tech and we, you know, want to talk about, uh, you know, our days, the challenges we face best practices and, you know, see a few faces we hadn't seen in a long time. Um, and that was kind of the, the, uh, the genesis of what is now the USNUA or the US Network and User Association. That's right. Yeah. Dressing for the show, uh, I mean, actually, both of us, that's right. Yeah. I'm pimping the OG. Oh, there you go. There you go. Yeah. But yeah. So that, that's the genesis of, uh, of, um, uh, USNUA, and where we got started, it just started here in Cleveland. We wanted to get the network engineers together to hang out with one another and, and, share, share thoughts and ideas and commiserate maybe some over things like locking yourself out of 34 D slams. Exactly. Yep. So, so how long, how long did it incubate? Like, when, how long was

16:34Cleveland moving before you decided to take it elsewhere in Ohio or expand and, and do you have any really funny, uh, memories of some of those initial conversations from the original snug meetings? Yeah. Um, so we got started and, and, you know, like I said, there was about 15 people, and there was 20 people, and then they kept going and going until 2019, actually, right before COVID, we had, I think it was 120 people at that event. Yeah. And, um, that's when we realized between that and people in other states that were close by who were coming to our events and going, hey, how do I do this where I'm at? Like I'm, I'm from Detroit, but I want to do this in Detroit, or I want to do this in, uh, in Pittsburgh or Indianapolis, whatever. Um, so we're like, huh, well, maybe there is something to that, you know, we were really just focused on Ohio and, um, moved up to a point where we were not just in Cleveland, but in Columbus, Ohio and Cincinnati, Toledo, and we were kind of,

17:35you know, every quarter rotating to a new city. Um, and then, like I said, the 29 19 hit and, and we, um, we had that, uh, uh, that, that super big event, then what hit in the beginning of 2020? Right. You recall right? Yeah. Something to say about a pandemic and, uh, being, having to stay home, I was, I was out of the country, uh, just being February 2020, just before the Sal Kim got it was a Nokia training event. It really was a training event. And, uh, yeah, I remember right before, um, leaving my wife started asking me questions like, hey, this sounds serious. Um, what's, what's going to happen here? And I said, well, my company's pretty conservative. And then I'm sure if they felt there was any risk of the event still happening, they would pull the plug on it. And that was, um, improvising, shall we say? Um, and, uh, we, you know, we got home just in time

18:37right before things kind of ground to a halt. So that had, had to have an impact on your Ohio Noga activities. Like, how did you, how did you survive? What did you all do? We started doing what everyone else did, started doing meet-up sun zoom, um, where we do like, I mean, similar format, we'd pick a date and say everybody hop on zoom, what have their beer and, you know, be hanging out for happy hour. And, you know, there was a few people there, but I think there was definitely zoom fatigue. But I think we, we took that opportunity to reflect on what we'd built and what it could be. And that's when we started, you know, putting together the pieces for a national organization, the USNUA. So taking what we'd built for Ohio as the template to do elsewhere. And we played, I think we dabbled in like helping, you know, maybe Indiana get off the ground and maybe Michigan before that. But it was really just like these one off things. And they, but there was no real standardization or no model built around it. So we got serious about it. And in 2020,

19:39decided, okay, we're going to, to, you know, formalize this a little more. We're going to figure out how to to templatize this and make it repeatable so that we can add more groups and keep this going. So, um, built it out and, you know, through from 2020 to 2021. And then in, in 21, that's when we really started in earnest to grow it out. Um, so, you know, over the past five years, we've gone from, you know, maybe a handful of chapters then. So, you know, let's say three or four around that time to now, um, we've got 30, we're around 37 groups right now. That's awesome. Yeah. I didn't realize the ticker was that high. That's, that's very cool. Yeah, we're, we're expecting to be at probably around 40 by the end of the year. Um, and really excited to keep, keep that going. Um, because I think more than ever, um, we need, we need to be, um, together in person. I think.

20:46Uh, I, you know, between, um, social media and AI and so many people work from, from home and being behind screens all the time. There's just this, um, this missing human piece. And I'm seeing it, you know, in careers. So when people apply for jobs, it's just difficult to get seen and, and to, to connect with people. And so we're trying to create a space for, you know, that, that original intention that we had here in Ohio, which is getting people together to, to, to talk about their days and the things that they're working on and new technologies and all of that stuff. Um, but then starting to incorporate in, you know, um, those new new to the industry or new to, um, a career, um, network engineering, getting them connected with their peers locally, um, giving them, um, you know, opportunities to see if there's maybe roles for them. So we start every, every event now with, um,

21:46a simple question. Just, is there anybody hiring in the room? Right. And I'm, I'm shocked sometimes. I mean, even in Toledo, I think we had four people stand up and go, I'm looking to fill a role. And just having people in the room that, uh, connect with those people and it's building community regionally, which I think, um, we, we need because, um, we spend so much time talking to people online and people who are in our backyard. That's right. This is a phenomenon that happens, uh, a lot where, um, I don't know if you experienced this world, but where I go to a conference on a meet someone from where I'm from from Cleveland. And I'm like, how do we not know each other? Right. Right. So we're trying to create that let literature between people locally and get, get them out to see one another. And it's also great for seeing, you know, people you hadn't seen in years. So maybe someone you worked with at a, at a previous, uh, you know, organization and, and catching up on things and reconnecting and, um, that's, that's really what it, what it's all about for us. I, yeah. It's actually between people. I, I couldn't agree with you more. And, um,

22:52you know, there's been, I think the trend toward more remote work plus the pandemic, you know, really, um, dealt us some very difficult cards for sure. And like in, in network operations in particular, you know, look, that path was you started in the knock and the knock was a place. And yes, you had to be there during the maintenance window, you know, a two in the morning with whatever music that you wanted to play over the speakers in the knock. And I know Jason, you have some select tastes and what you might be playing, you know, during the maintenance window, but, um, you know, that's all but evaporated, you know, and, and for any maintenance window activity that still exists, people, you know, of course, I just want to come up to my office and not have to roll into, you know, my commute 15 or 30 minutes away or whatever, but you really lose the contact with the more experienced people that have seen, you know, this particular mode of issue before or this particular routing issue before, um, and, you know, learning around,

23:55in the break room or getting a beer when your shift is over or coffee when your shift is over depending, um, you know, that's, that's gone away to a large extent. And I think the nugs help bring back part of that. I don't think it's a complete solution, but I think it's, um, necessary for sure. Yeah. And certainly something we're striving towards, which is, you know, in person, face to face communication between, between peers. Um, so that's, that's really our mission. And you'll, you'll see more about us incorporating, um, you know, some of this, this career development, um, this sort of aspect to, to what we're trying to do. Um, but, you know, first and foremost is getting, getting butts and chairs, getting people to come out and spend time with one another, getting to know, you know, your peers in your region. Um, that is, you know, what, what we're all about. Um, in the way, the way that it works now, you know, our, our events are

24:59paid for by sponsors, but the sponsors, um, you know, it's, it's a lot of brand awareness. It's giving them an opportunity to stand up and talk for maybe, you know, five, 10 minutes about who they are and what they do, but there's no sales pitches. There's, there's nobody there that, that's selling you products or services that they have. It's, they're in the room and they're hanging out and they're part of the community too. Um, we want to give, uh, a them an opportunity to, to tell their story about who they are and what they do so that there's people in the room who are interested in what they sell. They can find each other. So kind of as a matchmaker, but, these events are not about, uh, about selling or, or pushing any, any, any particular agenda. Um, other than, you know, getting people together to, to, uh, to interact with one another and to learn something new, um, you know, so usually the way an event looks, usually a happy hour event with, you know, a presentation of some kind and then a panel discussion and that's sort of the format that we find works really well, but other groups have played with different formats like

26:03lightning talks. You know, we had Phil Delphi at the, uh, you know, I think it was like five, 20 minute lightning talks, um, which I heard was, was awesome. I wish I could have been there. I want to try that for Virginia. Like, I think that's a great idea to mix it up a little bit. So absolutely. Yeah. And, and for people who keep coming back, it's good to kind of play around with the format a little bit and switch, switch things up, but we very intentionally leave time in between, you know, we don't pack it with content. It's about, uh, you know, the social spaces on, on, like so we open up with just kind of mingling, uh, before the, the presenter, and then, uh, between the presenter and the panel, we try to leave some space for more, you know, more conversation in between and then try to end before, you know, we're going to kick out of the venue, which sometimes there's people who are hanging out and chatting right up until they're shutting the lights off. So, um, you don't have to go home, but you can't stay here. That's right. So exactly closing time. That's, that's what it's, um, that's what it's all about. So, yeah.

27:10I mean, we've, you know, I've been to a number of these events. I like to travel around, especially for the, for the first ones to get them off the ground. I think you and I are headed to Pittsburgh. Uh, so we are, by the time this publishes, Pittsburgh will already have happened in late July, but, yeah, looking forward to seeing you in person there and not recording via video. So, all right, here's a quick word from today's sponsor meter. I actually want to explain why I agreed to work with them because it's relevant to many of you listeners and viewers. If you're in IT or you run infrastructure for an org of any size, you know, the pain of a network that was never really designed, it's just accumulated or just happened. Different vendors, different contracts, nobody owning the full picture. And every year, it's the same thing. We knew what you have, absorbed the cost, hoped nothing breaks at the wrong time. Is there ever a right time for something to break? Meter is the company building something different. One integrated network stack, wired, wireless, and cellular. With hardware they built from scratch, they install, they deploy, and support.

28:12The pricing is predictable. The migration is managed, and they even offer upgrade credits for your existing hardware, so the sunk cost argument goes away completely. Companies like Bridgewater and Lyft have moved to Meter and haven't looked back. If you're thinking about what it would actually take to get off legacy infrastructure, this is the cleanest path I've seen. Go to meter.com slash T-NOPs. That's M-E-T-E-R dot com slash T-N-O-P-S to book a demo. Thank you, Meter for sponsoring, and now back to the show. I want to throw, I'll probably get a little personal here. Hopefully, I won't cause either of us to cry. I have this view. I spent a lot of time on the vendor side, right? Juniper, Cisco, Nokia, and I really enjoyed those jobs, and I've learned so much from them. And as I went out doing consulting work, had the opportunity to get involved and help create network automation forum, and then shortly after that, kind of discover USNUA and get involved

29:16with Virginia Nugg, at this really powerful examples of complementary community. NAAF is turning into a couple of events a year that tend to be bigger. USNUA, smaller, more distributed, hyper local, where you can really, I worked down the street from this guy, I just talked with, and so forth. Let's just say my view of community prior to 2023, I'd say it was really dominated by church and spiritual structures, and that's where I have community. And I didn't really think about it outside of that. And NAAF and USNUA have really showed me the power of community in other ways and other venues. I don't know what that says about me, but it really has been a, this really is powerful. And again, coming off the pandemic and that

30:24distance that was driven between people, I think it created a little more hunger for it. I remember the first NAAF that I went to after the pandemic. And just feeling the buzz that it's good to be with other people again. And I still get that through the USNUA Nugg events that I get to go to, and of course, from NAAF as well, it's different. But I really believe in that, you know, they're complimentary. That's the way I view them. Yeah, professional community, I'd consider it. And if you think about how much time we spend as, you know, in our careers, like to have that community where you can help one another, and I guess developing grow together, there's something to be said for that. Just like in your own personal community, like you said, maybe you go to church or you have groups that you're a part of in your free time.

31:28I, you know, that framing, I really like that. Thinking about really building and crafting a professional community where you can be friends with the people you're working with and anything out with them and have real relationships and really help each other as humans in whatever profession you've chosen in our case, network engineers. We're really, you know, please focus on building out that network engineering community. Yeah. And even as much of an introvert as you might brand yourself, you know, and I actually am an introvert, I fake extroversion really well, and it exhausts me, right? But even at a nug, you know, like I know there's the people I want to talk with. And, you know, I'll sit at a table over here, and I'll stand over here and, you know, have some more smaller conversations. Super, super valuable. And just like it's made so much more

32:30important by the wave of AI stuff that's happening. And I know neither one of us are anti-AI per se. But, you know, when people are writing content, you know, with LLMs to be consumed by other LLMs, you know, there's even more opportunity for us to be human, you know, when we're sitting around, you know, just listening to a panel of, you know, these four people talk about, you know, their data center architectures and so forth. It's like I think current conditions have made it even more important and useful for gatherings like the nugs. I'd agree more. Yep. Yeah. Now for people that want to get engaged, you can go and quietly walk in and just sit down and consume everything. And you can do that. But you might get more out of it if you go with a mindset to at least try to engage. Do you, have you seen any like effective strategies for new people,

33:35you know, whether they're new in their career or old in their career? You've been to more of these than either of us. You know, what do you see that works for people who show up and like get the most, they want to get the most out of it? I think finding a table where there's others like, don't go off in the corner and set it a table by yourself. And sit down with some people that maybe you already know, maybe you don't know. But I'd say reach out and say, I'm so and so. And here's what I do and see and see what comes of it. The thing that I think that this really, and this is happening, I think in a lot of industries, but it's really a problem in network engineering is that the folks moving out of the industry, whether they're retiring or they've moved over to doing cloud, cloud services or things like that. There is a definitely a shortage of people in this industry. So yeah, we are all looking to how we can attract and bring in the next

34:43generation of network engineers. So I think you'll find it most of these events, not just, you know, due to the need or demand, but guys like us that have been in this industry for a long time, we love meeting new people are coming into the industry and doing what we can to be mentors to help, you know, bring them up professionally. So even if you're, you know, in the room with, maybe people are a little older than you, don't be shy, reach out. Like there's no judgment. There's no one who's who thinks less of you because you're just getting started in your career. In fact, if anything like we're very excited to meet those early in their career and, you know, even provide guidance or answer questions or just make a connection for, you know, continuing the conversation in the future, which by the way, if anybody's interested, we have a Slack, a USNUA Slack that we use for communications. I know it's not as cool as discord or some people that prefer discord attempt to prefer Slack. Maybe it's, some would told me it's like discord for grownups is

35:46Slack, but that's not a bad. It's not I, I, I, I end up with like the different login for every discord group. And I know I'm doing something wrong. And it's like, yeah, I've never had that problem with Slack. So yeah, I have challenges with it too. For some reason, I just, like, just discord does not drive with me, but Slack does. But we have a Slack. There's a lot of cool people on it, fun conversations, updates about, you know, events in your area. But, you know, you can come to a nug, you could get on the Slack before or after even, maybe if you want to just kind of feel things out before the event see who's who's in your region. And because we have a different channel for each local group. But make those connections. I think, you know, don't be afraid to have a conversation with somebody and see where it goes. And if you're in the room and you're looking for a job and, you know, during that, that, that time when we open up the event, somebody raises their hand with an open position, just go up and have a conversation. And even if it's not a fit right now, like, I've

36:52been there where I'm like, oh, man, I'm not quite qualified for this position. But, you know, if you meet that person, make an impression, you'd never know where you're going to be at in life where you encounter that person again. And maybe, you know, that connection could be made then. So, I guess, don't think of connections as transactional, go into build rapport and sure, long term connections with people because you never know where that leads. Yeah. Let's also talk a little bit about, you know, the vendor versus end user, operator, dynamic. You know, you mentioned it earlier, like, this is not a place, you know, for selling opportunities, right? And you, you know, you do a great job of, I think, making that clear and all your nugs without being overbearing about it. I, and you'll see my angle here in a minute, having come from the vendor side, right? Like, there are people, you know, there are a lot of assies, tech engineers, professional services engineers that get their paycheck from vendors that are really smart and have good

37:57things to say and aren't, aren't there to sell. And like, they respect the nature of the venue, right? And it's true for us anyway. It's true for NAF, right? But there's, there's always that thread of somebody somewhere has been abused in a sales relationship with a vendor and that colors their view of salespeople and assies in general. I like the balance, you know, that I think USNU way has struck where, you know, you can, you can be here and you can have your vendor badge on, just remember, you know, leave selling at the door. You know, if you, if you're there and you engage in technical conversation in a way that's like meaningful, you'll probably have people come back to you and ask you questions and maybe even ask you if your kit can, can solve any of the issues. But it's a very, you know, the payoff may not be right away and it's certainly not going to be a PO right away. I don't know if you want to speak to any of that. I know I threw a lot out there. No, that's, that's, I mean, we do really focus on the balance. We'd like to, we prefer to see

39:03ourselves as batch makers when it comes to end users and sponsors. So the members, our members, we want to make this a place that they can come and not feel threatened and not feel like some of these friendly crams, something on the throats. You know, it's about technology. It's about, you know, meeting with your peers and spending time together. That's, that's first and foremost. And wherever we can, we try to keep those sales element out of it to the point where we have, you know, there's yellow and red cards in in soccer. So, you know, yellow cards are warning and red card is you're out of the game. We send those to all of our groups and we encourage our group leaders to use them if anybody is being, let's say, difficult and maybe, you know, because we've we've had challenges where salesperson gets up and goes, well, my solution does this and solves that problem and it's like, Amen, come on. Like, you know, be cool. Like we're here to, to, to talk in in general and spend time with one another. Let's not like, we'll keep it a sales free zone. We do mention that at the outside of every event. We encourage the group leaders to say,

40:07you know, let's let's be let's be cool here. And you know, we see ourselves as matchmakers that we don't want to be adversarial to the vendors because we wouldn't have these events without them. Exactly. Yeah. So we want to make sure that they're able to get their brand out there. They're able to tell their story about who they are and what they do and give them an opportunity to those that are interested. But by no means is anybody in the room obligated to talk to any of those sponsors, we don't give away your information to those sponsors. So that's a key point to make to be signed up for an event. We're not just handing off, you know, a list of email addresses to to two sponsors. We're we're very careful about about, you know, your privacy, your information and making sure that that you know, that stays intact. And we're really very mindful of of making sure that, you know, we we it's a it's a fine line to strike, but we really work hard on making sure that that you know, people come in feeling, you know, safe being there without without

41:14anyone selling to them or or being overbearing. But on the other side, we really want to make sure that the vendors do give value out of this and that they are they feel as though their message got through and that they were able to, you know, make some connections or some relationships in the room. So yeah, and you've got the the spark talks now, right, for some of the top tier sponsors, like that give that short opportunity for a high-end sponsor to like, okay, you've got five minutes or I forget what the time limit is to, you know, we're gonna we're gonna let you do this, you know, and get your exposure and then let people come to you. I think I think that's a great model, right? Yeah, yeah, it's five, five, 10 minutes, you can get up and talk about who you are, what you do, and say, if you're interested, you know, yep, I'll be in the back of the room, come reach out to me. Exactly. And, you know, to give credit where credits do, you should not hear with us, but like, you've got a guy who's been involved for a long time, Chris Kane, who is a systems engineering leader

42:15at a network equipment manufacturer, and I've never seen him go in a sales mode. Like, he's, and he's like, I don't know when he sleeps, right, for all the stuff that he studies and all the topics he brings up, but you know, he's definitely modeling that behavior from the vendor perspective. He knows how to engage, he knows, you know, is like, this is what we're here for. And if somebody wants to ask me about what, you know, product extra product, why does still come talk to me? So, yeah, sorry Chris, you should have invited you here. We just, you know, we're thinking about you, man. So, yeah, next time, you know, it's so funny, not that I would discourage anybody from not taking their spark talk, but the vendor he works for has sponsored events and, and, and, and when I've offered Chris, I'm like, hey, you get a spark talk. Do you want to go up there? He's like, nah, I'm good. Because he, it's like he said, he gets it and that's what it's all about. It's, it's about developing relationships first. Nowadays, people know when they want to solve a problem,

43:16they know who the players are, they know who to reach out to. But, so, you know, I think having a presence in the room and letting people know that you're there, you know, helps is certainly if somebody's already kicking around, right, your, your platform as something that they're interested in. But they're going to come find you, you know, so, and if we, if we know anything from modern marketing and the, the availability of information we can get online and consume it our own pace, it's like, if people want to find out about your solutions, you know what? They're probably going to figure out a way to do it, right? And, and better to let them come to you. You know, I, I know it's a noisy environment and everybody's trying to get their signal through all the noise, but I'm at the point where I'm probably over rotating on this. I just, we'll wrap this segment up with, you know, the balance is great. And, you know, having the, having the sponsorship support and the playing really well with everybody in the room, that just makes these,

44:19you know, the nugs even more useful in my view. Well, it's great to hear. It's like I said, it's a delicate balance to strike and we've played around with a bunch of different things like, you know, sometimes, you know, maybe we have gone too far with, with what vendors have accessed, but we try to err on the side of really defending the, the members and their, their identities, their, you know, professional lives, but making, you know, connections available to vendors in the room. So, yeah, we've worked hard at that. So now take out your crystal ball or your palantir for all your token fans. You're at 37, 37 groups. Why do you get to have 40? What's next? Like, what are you trying to do with, with nugs that we're going to see later in 2026 earlier in the 2027? Come on, give us, give us something. Get in there. Come on. Well, we are working on some new programs for, for sponsors to give them, you know, some additional,

45:26I guess, value with us. So for all the sponsors out there, we are working on programs that, maybe a workshop or a round table or something like that that's opt-in before the event. And some additional ways that sponsors can connect with users, but in an opt-in way. So, you know, all the members out there don't worry. Like, we're not going to start something to start spamming your cellulists or any of that. It's, it's being mindful of ways that we can be a better matchmaker between our, our members and, and the sponsors that keep us going. So that's one thing that, might seem more of. So if you get an invite for, maybe, you know, an event you might be interested in before the nug. That's what that's all about. We're also working on adding access to a platform we've built out. So we, we now have a platform for, for running events. So, Scotts going to get

46:27early access to this, but we're going to have a place where group leaders can start to manage their events that they run. So all of our group leaders that run events in each region are volunteers. And, you know, there's a lot of interaction and there's a lot of moving parts to these events, most of which the USNUA handles for, for our group leaders. But, you know, we're working on better systems to keep them up to date on their local events. And eventually, we plan to roll that out to end users as well where you'll have a portal or you can access resources like, you know, presentations that have happened at previous events or, you know, videos, video footage, which, you know, I think we plan to put this on YouTube as well. But we plan to have a one repository, one place where you can get more information about what's happening with your local group in your area. So those are some things we're working on adding. We're also working on merch source. So this is actually what I've got on right now is, is some of the, the new trial merch. So this

47:27might be up and running by the time this comes out. But we're working on having a store. The shirts were very popular for a long time. But for many reasons, became kind of, economically untenable for us to give them away for free all the time. But we'll have a store available for you. So the shirts are coming back everybody. If they haven't already by the time this, this airs. So those are the some of the fun things we're working on. I mean, just keep, we want to keep developing and adding more value. We're actually open to feedback and what both members and sponsors would like to see out of the US anyway. So I think we've got some other exciting things for members coming up. Maybe some access to some exclusive things for first select members that we'd like to introduce that might come by the end of the year being a next year. So always working on new stuff. Always open to talk about ideas. If you have any, I'm, you know, reach out to me on LinkedIn or join our Slack. If you go to our page,

48:29there is, I think it's the, I should know this, but the membership section, you can say you become a member. And becoming a member gets you updates to when our events are coming up and communications about the US anyway. And then if you go under groups, there's a get involved button there and that underget involved. There's how to access the Slack, how to start a group if there's not one in your area. Also a really important point that I've kind of glossed over, there's also a link in there for if you're interested in presenting at a group and you want to be a presenter, you want to be on a panel or you want to get up in front of everyone and share your ideas. We're always looking for presenters and panelists at all of our groups. We're always looking for, you know, group leaders in areas. We're looking for sponsors. And but most importantly, we're looking for more people to show up to events to come sharing the fun, fun things we're doing.

49:34Cool. We again, timing wise, if you're hearing this, there's probably a Virginia Nug coming up in a week or two right after this episode air. So if you're in northern Virginia, the DC metro area, come out to rest and we'd love to have you. Check out us anyway.com for where all the locals are. I think you usually have a running list of the next upcoming 10 or 12 nugs that are confirmed and like accepting RSVPs. So it's really easy to find one near you. By the way, at our last Virginia Nug meeting, there was somebody visiting from Colorado who heard about Virginia Nug and he was in town visiting his mom. I guess you need to get out of the house. So he decided to come spend some time with us on the Virginia Nug. So we'll look, I, we've got to bring this to a close from a timing perspective. But Jason, I love what you've done with us anyway. I've loved getting to know you. You know, Katnay was a really good friend and you know, this is just one of these conversations that you'll you'll hear more about in 2027 and

50:39it beyond. So thanks for coming on Jason. Thanks God. Pleasure to be here. Very good. And to everybody else who tuned in, thank you for listening. You know, we're here on Pack of Pushers. You've got a lot of other options of good shows to listen to heavy strategy, network automation nerds and many others. People like Jason come and share their knowledge through the nugs and through pods like this because this is the kind of person Jason is. So we would also love your feedback. Please contact me via LinkedIn, send me a DM or you can do follow up via packuppushers.net slash follow up. Thanks again and we'll see you next time on Total Network Operations.