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Yesterday I attended the Melbourne VMUG UserCon for 2016 and had a great day catching up with community friends, presenting with PernixData and attending other quality sessions. As I listened to Keith Townsend‘s morning Keynote I couldn’t help but think that I had heard one of his core messages around change before…Sure enough not one year earlier at the 2015 Melbourne VMUG UserCon we had John Troyer (@JTroyer) talk about Pivoting to the New IT

…His presentation was based around a change of expectation around what it is to be part of the IT Industry…and even though there are some IT Professionals that will not embrace the shift that’s currently happening…the VMware/vExpert/Virtualization/Cloud Community is at the forefront of driving that change and best positioned to harness the pivot that’s currently on offer.

[Have a read of my 2015 recap here where I go into more detail around John’s talk]

Fast forward back to 2016 and with Keith talking about how he had embraced significant change in his work roles I started to think about how all I have heard over the past couple of years on repeat is that we in the IT Industry need to change or die…or adapt or die.

I’m not doubting the message that’s being drilled into us and without question there are more disruptive technologies and methodologies appearing in the IT Industry almost on a weekly basis. However I almost feel that the message around change is one that is to abrupt..too harsh. And for the IT guys sitting in the audience hearing these messages I feel like it can almost come across as…What the hell can I do? What am I doing?

I saw the tweet below from the Sydney VMUG UserCon and when I referenced it in context to the Melbourne Keynote I thought to myself the message is a little too simplistic.

https://twitter.com/grantorchard/status/701911265694732288

Why would I give up all the hard work and knowledge that I had worked extremely hard to learn and master over the first 10-15 years of my career in IT. All that I have done previously has allowed myself to evolve to where I am today in a technical and personal sense. If I hadn’t started work on Linux servers configuring BIND or SENDMAIL I wouldn’t have developed an interest for internet messaging which lead me onto working on Hosted Exchange Services which lead me onto working on Hosting Platforms which lead me onto looking into Virtualisation which got me into deploying my first Hyper-V cluster which lead me to get familiar with vSphere and ESX which lead me to Cloud Management Platforms like vCloud Director which now leads me into technologies like Network Virtualization and Hyper Converged Platforms that has in turn exposed me to consuming platforms differently via APIs which now leads me onto the next evolution of my career.

Get where I am going with this?

Don’t feel like you have to change just because…that can be harsh and change is abrupt…you can’t pivot without having your foot on the ground before planting the other…EVOLVE!

P.S I am not having a go at the presenters (or Grant via that Tweet) as I respect them 100% as community leaders and understand the messages around change needs to be heard…I’m trying to portray the message in another light based on how I have interpreted the it…feel free to comment below.