During last weeks #APACVirtual Podcast (Episode 70 – Engineers Anonymous pt1 – Engineer2PreSales) the panelists (of which, I was one) where discussing what it took to become a successful candidate in transitioning from a technical engineering role to a pre-sales/architecture role. It was universally agreed upon that passion is a much sort after trait in those roles. Someone who is passionate about what they are doing can overcome almost any professional deficiency and succeed where others might fail. It was discussed that someone who is seen to be passionate is a more sort after asset than someone who is simply technically brilliant.

I’m a passionate guy…those that know me generally would describe me as such. When I find something I love I tend to embrace it with all that I have and it becomes a driving force in life…I wear my heart on my sleeve in most aspects of life…be it family, playing cricket or work, and for each of those…passion manifests it’s self in different ways.

I’ve mulled over this post for about a week now…it’s been written and re-written a number of times as I try to best represent and explain passion and how it can contribute to a successful and rewarding career in IT. At the end of the day I can’t explain passion with any great level of verbal prowess…it’s too much of a basic raw emotion!

Passion is something you have, or don’t have…it’s a driving force that makes you strive to better yourself and it fuels the fire within to drives you to succeed and excel in anything you attempt in life.

Passion has the ability to lay down the foundation of a lasting legacy…

I posses a driving force when it comes to my work…I truly believe in the technology I work with…When talking with colleagues and clients alike, I am always passionate in my evangalization of those products and technologies.

My current passion lies within Hosting and Cloud technologies and i’m a big believer in what VMware is doing in the market at the moment. Previously I was (still am to a lessor extent) passionate around Hosted Exchange services and other Microsoft technologies…in that, the driver of passion can change depending on current circumstance and in my case, the agent of change was directly related to the way Microsoft started treating their partners…that and I was consumed by the vSphere, ESX, vCloud Virtualization stack and the power of transformational change it can offer clients…look no further than the EUC push for evidence of this change.

Not everyone possess passion, and I see examples of people without passion everyday…I can’t comprehend this…I can’t understand people that work without anything truly driving them…

One person with passion is better than forty people merely interested.

— E. M. Forste

Again, it’s almost impossible to represent what drives me…but I know i’d rather be passionate in life than not.