Category Archives: Musing

On Open Source and Volunteering

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I saw a recent post on LinkedIn from Alex Henthorn-Iwane that gave me pause. He was talking about how nearly 2/3rds of Github projects are maintained by one or two people. He also quoted some statistics around how projects are maintained by volunteers and unpaid members as opposed to more institutional support from people getting paid to do the work. It made me reflect on my own volunteering journey and how the parallels between open source and other organizations aren’t so different after all.

A Hour A Week

Most of my readers know that one of my passion projects outside of Tech Field Day and this humble blog is the involvement of my children in Scouting. I spend a lot of my free time volunteering as a leader and organizer for various groups. I get to touch grass quite often. At least I do when I’m not stuck in meetings or approving paperwork.

One of the things that struck me in Alex’s post was how he talked about the lack of incoming talent to help with projects as older maintainers are aging out. We face a similar problem in scouting. Rather than our volunteers getting too old to do the work we face the issue of the kids aging out. When the kids leave the program through hitting age limits or through growing bored with the program their parents usually go with them. Since those parents are the source of our volunteers we quickly have gaps where our most promising leaders are gone after only a couple of years. Only the most dedicated volunteers stick around after their kids have moved on.

Recruiting people to be a part of the fun, whether a project or an organization, is hard. People have even less time now than they did a few years ago. It could be social media or binge watching TV or doing the work of an extra person or two but finding help is almost impossible. One of the ways that we’ve tried to bridge that gap is to make sure that people that want to help aren’t overwhelmed. We give them little jobs to do to help get them into the flow of things before asking them to do more. That would translate well to open source projects. Give people small tasks or little modules to work on instead of throwing them in other the deep end of the pool with no warning. That’s a quick way to alienate your volunteers. It also keeps them from burning themselves out quickly.

We ease them in by saying “it’s only an hour a week”. Realistically it’s more like two or three hours per week to start. However, if you try to burden people with too much all at once they will run away and never look back. Even if the developers are overwhelmed and need the help they need to understand that shifting the load to other volunteers isn’t a sudden thing. It takes time to slowly move over tasks and evaluate how people are doing before letting them shoulder more of the load.

My Way or the Highway

The other volunteer issue that I run into is the people who are entrenched in what they do. This applies greatly to the people that are the die-hard maintainers of a project. They have their way of doing things and that’s how it’s going to be. Just take a stroll through any Linux kernel mailing list thread and see how those tried-and-true things are encouraged, or in some cases enforced.

I’m all for having structure and a measured approach to how things are done. Where it causes problems for people is when that structure takes precedence over common sense. In my volunteer work I’ve seen a number of old timers who tell me that “this is the way it’s done” or “my way works” when it clearly doesn’t or can lead to other problems. Worse yet, when challenged those people tend to clam up and decide that anyone that disagrees with them should just leave or get with the program. It leads to hard feelings and zero desire to want to help out in the future. The well is poisoned not only for that person but for anyone that knows about the story of how they were rejected or marginalized.

People that are shouldering the load want help. Even if they’re so set in their ways that they can’t conceive of a different way to do it we still need to offer our help. What we need to realize on our side is that their way has worked for them for all this time. We don’t need to come crashing through the front door and trying to upset everything they’ve worked hard to accomplish. Instead, we need to ask questions that help us understand the process and make suggestions where appropriate instead of demands that must be met. My Way or the Highway doesn’t work in either direction. Compromise is the key to accomplishing our mutual goals.

Tom’s Take

Writing an open source library isn’t like taking a group camping in the woods. However, the process isn’t totally foreign. A group of dedicated people are doing something that is thankless but could end up changing lives. We’re always overworked and we want people to help. We just need them to understand why we do things the way we do them. And if that means pushing back it’s up to us to make sure we don’t scare anyone off that is genuinely interested in helping out. All volunteer work lives and dies based on who is helping us accomplish the end goal. Don’t get hung up on the details when evaluating those that choose to give of their time for you.

Human Generated Questions About AI Assistants

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I’ve taken a number of briefings in the last few months that all mention how companies are starting to get into AI by building an AI virtual assistant. In theory this is the easiest entry point into the technology. Your network already has a ton of information about usage patterns and trouble spots. Network operations and engineering teams have learned over the years to read that information and provide analysis and feedback.

If marketing is to be believed, no one in the modern world has time to learn how to read all that data. Instead, AI provides a natural language way to ask simple questions and have the system provide the data back to you with proper context. It will highlight areas of concern and help you grasp what’s going on. Only you don’t need to get a CCNA to get there. Or, more likely, it’s more useful for someone on the executive team to ask questions and get answers without the need to talk to the network team.

I have some questions that I always like to ask when companies start telling me about their new AI assistant that help me understand how it’s being built.

Question 1: Laying Out LLMs

My first question is always:

Which LLM are you using to power your system?

The reason is because there are only two real options. You’re either paying someone else to do it as a service, like OpenAI, or you’re pulling down your own large language model (LLM) and building your own system. Both have advantages and disadvantages.

The advantage of a service-based offering is that you don’t need to program anything. You just feed the data to the LLM and it takes off. No tuning needed. It’s fast and universally available.

The downside of a service based model is the fact that it costs money. And if you’re using it commercially it’s going to cost more than a simple monthly fee. The more you use it, the more expensive it gets. If your vendor is pulling thousands of daily requests from the LLM is that factored into the fee they’re charging you? What happens when the OpenAI prices go up?

The advantages of building your own system are that you have complete control over the way the data is being processed. You tune the LLM and you own the way it’s being used. No need to pay more to someone else to do all the work for you. You can also decide how and when features are implemented. If you’re updating the LLM on your schedule you can include new features when they’re ready and not when OpenAI pushes them live and makes them available for everyone.

The disadvantages of building your own system involves maintenance. You have to update and patch it. You have to figure out what features to develop. You have to put in the work. And if the model you use goes out of support or is no longer being maintained you have to swap to something new and hope that all your functions are going to work with the new one.

Question 2: Data Sources

My second question:

Where does the LLM data come from?

May seem simple at first, right? You’re training your LLM on your data so it gives you answers based on your environment. You’d want that to be the case so it’s more likely to tell you things about your network. But that insight doesn’t come out of thin air. If you want to feed your data to the LLM to get answers you’re going to have to wait while it studies the network and comes up with conclusions.

I often ask companies if they’re populating the system with anonymized data from other companies to provide baselines. I’ve seen this before from companies like Nyansa, which was bought by VMware, and Raza Networks, while is part of HPE Aruba. Both of those companies, which came out long before the current AI craze, collected data from customers and used it to build baselines for everyone. If you wanted to see how you compared to other high education or medical verticals the system could tell you what those types of environments looked like, with the names obscured of course.

Pre-populating the LLM with information from other companies is great if your stakeholders want to know how they fare against other companies. But it also runs the risk of populating data that shouldn’t be in the system. That could create situations where you’re acting on bad information or chasing phantoms in the organization. Worse yet, your own data could be used in ways you didn’t intend to feed other organizations. Even with the names obscured someone might be able to engineer a way to obtain knowledge about your environment you don’t want everyone to have.

Question 3: Are You Seeing That?

My third question:

How do you handle hallucinations?

Hallucination is the term for when the AI comes up with an answer that is false. That’s right, the super intelligent system just made up an answer instead of saying “I don’t know”. Which is great if you’re trying to convince someone you’re smart or useful. But if the entire reason why I’m using your service is accurate answers about my problems I’d rather have you say you don’t have an answer or you need to do research instead of giving me bad data that I use to make bad decisions.

If a company tells me they don’t really see hallucinations then I immediately get concerned, especially if they’re leveraging OpenAI for their LLM. I’ve talked before about how ChatGPT has a really bad habit of making up answers so it always looks like it knows everything. That’s great if you’re trying to get the system to write a term paper for you. It’s really bad if you try to reroute traffic in your network around a non-existent problem. I know there are many systems out there that can help reduce hallucinations, such as retrieval augmented generation (RAG), but I need that to be addressed up front instead of a simple “we don’t see hallucinations” because that makes me feel like something is being hidden or glossed over.

Tom’s Take

These aren’t the only questions you should be asking about AI and LLMs in your network but they’re not a bad start. They encompass the first big issues that people are likely to run into when evaluating an AI system. How do you do your analysis? What is happening with my data? What happens when the system doesn’t know what to do? Sure, there’s always going to be questions about cost and lock-in but I’d rather know the technology is sound before I ever try to deploy the system. You can always negotiate cost. You can’t negotiate with a flaw AI.

Back On Track in 2024

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It’s time to look back at my year that was and figure out where this little train jumped off the rails. I’ll be the first to admit that I ran out of steam chugging along toward the end of the year. My writing output was way down for reasons I still can’t quite figure out. Everything has felt like a much bigger task to accomplish throughout the year. To that end, let’s look at what I wanted to do and how it came out:

  • Keeping Track of Things: I did a little bit better with this one, aside from my post schedule. I tried to track things much more and understand deadlines and such. I didn’t always succeed like I wanted to but at least I made the effort.
  • Creating Evergreen Content: This one was probably a miss. I didn’t create nearly as much content this year as I have in years past. What little I did create sometimes felt unfocused and less impactful. Part of that has to do with the overall move away from written content to something more video and audio focused. However, even my other content like Tomversations was significantly reduced this year. I will say that the one episode that I did record that dealt with InfiniBand was actually really good and I think it’s going to have some life in the future.
  • Insuring Intentionality: I tried to be more intentional with things in 2023 and we see how this turned out. I think I need to make sure to put that more at the front of my mind in 2024 as we look at the way that writing and other content creation is being transformed. In fact, the number of times that I’ve had to fight my AI-based autocomplete to make it stop finishing sentences for me reminds me how intentional I need to be in order to get the right things out there that I want to say. And before you say “just turn it off” I want to see how trainable it is to actually do what I want. So maybe part of the intentionality is making it intentional that I’m going to beat this thing.

Looking back at where I was makes me realize that content creation is always going to be a battle and so it making sure I have time for it. That means prioritizing the schedule for 2024, which isn’t going to be easy. Tech Field Day is now a part of the Futurum Group, which means I’m going to need to figure out how my role is going to be different in the coming months. I’m still going to be a part of Field Day but I also know I’m going to need to figure out how to navigate new coworkers and new goals. I have also been named a course director for my council’s Wood Badge course in the fall. That means doing some of the hardest leadership I’ve ever had to do, which I’m sure I’ll be documenting along the way here. As to what I want to specifically work on in 2024, what needs the most help?

  • Reaching Out For Help: Not surprisingly, this is something I have always needed help with (pun intended). I’ve never been one to ask for help with things until it’s almost to the point of disaster. So I need to be better in 2024 about asking for the help I need or think I’m going to need before it gets to be a huge problem. But that also means asking for assistance with things early on to help me get on the right track. Help isn’t always just doing things. It’s about making sure that you have the right ideas before you start down the track. So I’m going to make sure I’m ready to get the guidance and assistance I need when it’s needed and not when it’s an attempt to save the day.
  • Prioritizing Scheduling Intelligently: Part of the struggle in 2023 was making sure I was prioritizing things appropriately. Yes, work things always take priority as they should. But It’s also about other things that are part of my calendar that I need to get a handle on. I’ve done a good job of letting some of them go over the last year so the next phase is taming the ones that are left. Making sure the important meetings have their place and time but also making sure that those meetings have prep time and other pieces in the calendar so they don’t push anything else out of the way. It’s not enough to just block time and hope for the best. It’s about knowing what needs to be done and making it happen the right way at the right time.
  • Staying Consistent with Content: After the rise of GPT assistants and the flood of video content in 2023 I realize that I like writing more and more. Not having something complete my thoughts for me. Not jumping in front of a video camera to do stuff cold. I like to write. As much as I love the weekly Rundown show that we do I love writing the scripts almost as much. My Zen is in the keyboard, not the camera. I’ll still be creating video content but my focus will be in creating more of the writing that I like so much. I’ve already been experimenting with LinkedIn as a platform and I think I’ll be doing some more there too. Maybe not as much as I hope to do here but we will see how that goes.

Tom’s Take

We all have challenges we have to overcome. That’s the nature of life. As the industry has changed and evolved over time the way we communicate our ideas and perspectives to everyone has had to change as well. If you’d have told me ten years ago that Twitter would be a ghost town and Youtube would be everyone’s preferred learning tool I might have laughed. If you’d have told me five years ago I couldn’t have foreseen how things would turn out. The way we make it work is by staying on track and taking the challenges as they come. Switching social media platforms or embracing new content styles is all part of the game. But working with your strengths and making people smile and helping them to be informed is part of what this whole game is all about. 2024 is going to be another year of challenges and opportunities to shine. I hope the make the most of it and stay on track to success.

Does Automation Require Reengineering?

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During Networking Field Day 33 this week we had a great presentation from Graphiant around their solution. While the presentation was great you should definitely check out the videos linked above, Ali Shaikh said something in one of the sessions that resonated with me quite a bit:

Automation of an existing system doesn’t change the system.

Seems simple, right? It belies a major issue we’re seeing with automation. Making the existing stuff run faster doesn’t actually fix our issues. It just makes them less visible.

Rapid Rattletraps

Most systems don’t work according to plan. They’re an accumulation of years of work that doesn’t always fit well together. For instance, the classic XKCD comic:

When it comes to automation, the idea is that we want to make things run faster and reduce the likelihood of error. What we don’t talk about is how each individual system has its own quirks and may not even be a good candidate for automation at any point. Automation is all about making things work without intervention. It’s also dependent on making sure the process you’re trying to automate is well-documented and repeatable in the first place.

How many times have you seen or heard of someone spending hours trying to script a process that takes about five minutes to do once or even twice a year? The return on time investment in automating something like that doesn’t really make sense, does it? Sure, it’s cool to automate everything but it’s not really useful, especially if the task has changes every time it’s run that requires you to change in the inputs. It’s like building a default query for data that needs to be rewritten every time the query is run.

You’re probably laughing right now but you also have at least one or two things that would fit this bill. Rather than asking if you should be automating this task you should instead be asking why we’re doing it in the first place. Why are we looking to accomplish this goal if it only needs to be done on occasion? Is it something critical like a configuration backup? Or maybe just a sanity check to see that unused switch ports have been disabled or tagged with some kind of security configuration. Are you trying to do the task for safety or security? Or are you doing it for busy work purposes?

Streamlining the System

In all of those cases we have to ask why the existing system exists. That’s because investing time and resources into automating a system can result in a big overrun in budget when you run into unintended side effects or issues that weren’t documented in the first place. Nothing defeats an automation project faster than hitting roadblocks out of nowhere.

If you shouldn’t invest time in automating something that is already there, what should you do instead? How about reengineering the whole process instead? If you occasionally run configuration backups to make sure you have good copies of the devices why not institute change controls or rolling automatic backups? Instead of solving an existing problem with a script why shouldn’t you change the way you do things that might have other hidden benefits? If you’re scripting changes to ports to verify security status why not have a system in place that creates configuration on those ports when they’re configured and require change controls to enable them?

It feels like extra work. It always seems easier to jump in from the bottom up with both feet and work on a problem until you solve it. Top down means you’re changing the way the system does things instead so the problems either disappear or change to something more manageable. The important question to ask is “where are my resources best spent?” If you see your time as a resource to invest in projects are you better served making something existing work slightly faster? Or would it be better for you to take the time to do something in a different, potentially better way?

If you believe your process is optimized as much as possible and just needs to run on its own that makes for an easy conversation. But if you’re thinking you need to change the way you do things this is a great time to make those changes and use your time investment to do things properly this time around. You may have to knock down a few walls to get there but it’s way better than building a house of cards that is just going to collapse faster.

Tom’s Take

I’m a fan of automation. Batch files and scripting and orchestration systems have a big place in the network to reduce error and multiply the capabilities of teams. Automation isn’t a magic solution. It requires investment of time and effort and a return for the stakeholders to see value. That means you may need to approach the problem from a different perspective to understand what really should be done instead of just doing the same old things a little faster. Future you will thank you for reengineering today.

Networking Is Fast Enough

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Without looking up the specs, can you tell me the PHY differences between Gigabit Ethernet and 10GbE? How about 40GbE and 800GbE? Other than the numbers being different do you know how things change? Do you honestly care? Likewise for Wi-Fi 6, 6E, and 7. Can you tell me how the spectrum changes affect you or why the QAM changes are so important? Or do you want those technologies simply because the numbers are bigger?

The more time I spend in the networking space the more I realize that we’ve come to a comfortable point with our technology. You could call it a wall but that provides negative connotations to things. Most of our end-user Ethernet connectivity is gigabit. Sure, there are the occasional 10GbE cards for desktop workstations that do lots of heavy lifting for video editing or more specialized workflows like medical imaging. The rest of the world has old fashioned 1000Mb connections based on 802.3z ratified in 1998.

Wireless is similar. You’re probably running on a Wi-Fi 5 (802.11ac) or Wi-Fi 6 (802.11ax) access point right now. If you’re running on 11ac you might even be connected using Wi-Fi 4 (802.11n) if you’re running in 2.4GHz. Those technologies, while not quite as old as GigE, are still prevalent. Wi-Fi 6E isn’t really shipping in quantity right now due to FCC restrictions on outdoor use and Wi-Fi 7 is a twinkle in hardware manufacturers’ eye right now. Why aren’t we clamoring for more, faster, better, stronger all the time?

Speedometers

How fast can your car go? You might say you’ve had it up to 100 mph or above. You might take a look at your speedometer and say that it can go as high as 150 mph. But do you know for sure? Have you really driven it that fast? Or are you guessing? Would you be shocked to learn that even in Germany, where the Autobahn has an effectively unlimited speed limit, that cars are often limited to 155 mph?. Even though the speedometer may go higher the cars are limited through an agreement for safety reasons. Many US vehicles are also speed limited between 110 and 140 mph.

Why are we restricting the speeds for these vehicles? Safety is almost always the primary concern, driven by the desire for insurance companies to limit claims and reduce accidents. However, another good reason is also why the Autobahn has a higher effective speed limit: road conditions. My car may go 100 mph but there are very few roads in my part of the US that I would feel comfortable going that fast on. The Autobahn is a much better road surface for driving fast compared to some of the two-lane highways around here. Even if the limit was higher I would probably drive slower for safety reasons. The roads aren’t built for screaming speeds.

That same analogy applies to networking. Sure, you may have a 10GbE connection to your Mac Mini and you may be moving gigs of files back and forth between machines in your local network. What happens if you need to upload it to Youtube or back it up to cloud storage? Are you going to see those 10GbE speeds? Or are you going to be limited to your ISP’s data rates? The fastest engine can only go as fast the pathways will permit. In essence, that hot little car is speed limited because of the pathway the data takes to the destination.

There’s been a lot of discussion in the space about ever-increasing connectivity from 400GbE to 800GbE and soon even into the terabit range. But most of it is specialized for AI workloads or other massive elephant flows that are delivered via a fabric. I doubt an ISP is going to put in an 800GbE cross connect to increase bandwidth for consumers any time soon. They won’t do it because they don’t need to. No consumer is going to be running quite that fast.

Likewise, increasing speeds on wireless APs to more than gigabit speeds is silly unless you want to run multiple cables or install expensive 10GbE cards that will require new expensive switches. Forgetting Multigig stuff for now you’re not going to be able to plug in a 10GbE AP to an older switch and get the same performance levels. And most companies aren’t making 10GbE campus switches. They’re still making 1GbE devices. Clients aren’t topping out their transfer rates over wireless. And even if they did they aren’t going to be going faster than the cable that plugs the AP into the rest of the network.

Innovation Idling

It’s silly, right? Why can’t we make things go faster?!? We need to use these super fast connections to make everything better. Yet somehow our world works just fine today. We’ve learned to work with the system we have. Streaming movies wouldn’t work on a dial-up connection but adding 10GbE connections to the home won’t make Netflix work any faster than it does today. That’s because the system is optimized to deliver content just fast enough to keep your attention. If the caching servers or the network degrades to the point where you have to buffer your experience is poor. But so long as the client is getting streaming data ahead of you consuming it you never know the difference, right?

Our networks are optimized to deliver data to clients running on 1GbE. Without a massive change in the way that workloads are done in the coming years we’re never going to be faster than that. Our software programs might be more optimized to deliver content within that framework but I wouldn’t expect to see 10GbE become a huge demand in client devices. Frankly, we don’t need that much speed. We don’t need to run flat out all the time. Just like a car engine we’re more comfortable running at a certain safe speed that preserves our safety and the life of the equipment.

Tom’s Take

Be honest with yourself. Do you want 10GbE or Wi-Fi 7 because you actually need the performance? Or do you just want to say you have the latest and greatest? Would you pay extra for a v12 engine in a sports car that you never drive over 80 mph? Just to say you have it? Ironically enough, this is the same issue that cloud migrations face today. We buy more than we need and never use it because we don’t know what our workloads require. Instead, we buy the fastest biggest thing we can afford and complain that something is holding it back. Rather than rushing out to upgrade your Wi-Fi or Ethernet, ask yourself what you need, not what you want. I think you’ll realize the network is fast enough for the foreseeable future.

Changing Diapers, Not Lives

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When was the last time you heard a product pitch that included words like paradigm shift or disruptive or even game changing? Odds are good that covers the majority of them. Marketing teams love to sell people on the idea of radically shifting the way that they do something or revolutionizing an industry. How often do you feel that companies make something that accomplishes the goal of their marketing hype? Once a year? Once a decade? Of the things that really have changed the world, did they do it with a big splash? Or was it more of a gradual change?

Repetition and Routine

When children are small they are practically helpless. They need to be fed and held and have their diapers changed. Until they are old enough to move and have the motor functions to feed themselves they require constant care. In fact, potty training is usually one of the last things on that list above. Kids can feed themselves and walk places and still be wearing diapers. It’s just one of those things that we do as parents.

Yet, changing diapers represents a task that we usually have no issue with. Sure it’s not the most glamorous work. But it’s necessary. Children can’t do it themselves. Maybe they can take off a wet or soiled diaper on their own (my kids did on occasion), but they can’t quite put one on. We encourage them to conform to the societal norm of using a bathroom instead of using a disposable diaper.

I use changing diapers as a metaphor for something we do regularly that is thankless but necessary. Kids never thank you for changing their diapers when they get older but it needs to be done. You may not think it’s a life-changing experience at the time but you know it’s one small part of what needs to happen to make them better as people later on. As a company that is trying to change people’s lives with the products you’re selling you often aim toward the sky. You want a utopia of flying cars and automated homes and AI-driven everything. But do your customers want that?

Your customers don’t want self-driving cars. They want to not have to spend their time driving. They don’t want AI-powered dinner ordering. They want to not have to make dinner decisions. Your customers don’t want a magical dashboard that makes automatic configuration changes for them. They want to operate their systems without constant attention to every little detail to keep them from falling apart. They don’t want revolutionary. They want relief.

Aim Small, Miss Small

If your first thought when building a product is “we’re going to change the world!” then you need to stop back because you missed the target. One of smartest things I overheard regarding startups was “Don’t solve a problem. Solve a problem someone has every day.” People are so focused on making an impact a revolutionizing the world they often miss the opportunity to do something that really does change things by simply solving common problems that happen all the time.

When you go back to your vision, think about changing diapers, not lives. Think about solving the problems people have every day. Take network automation, for example. You’re not going to create a paradigm shifting organizational restructuring in a day or a week or even a year. What you can do is automate things like password changes or switch deployments. You can solve that everyday problem so there is more time to work on other things. You can remove errors and create responsiveness where it didn’t exist before. Sure, your Ansible script that provisions a switch isn’t going to get your name etched in stone in Silicon Valley. But it can lead to changes in the organization that create efficiency and make your team happier and more focused on solving other hard problems.

Likewise, if you tell someone your product is going to change their life they will probably laugh at you or shake their head in disbelief. After all, everything promises to change their lives. However, if you tell them your product will solve a specific issue they have then they are very likely to take you up on it. Your target market will identify what you do and respond positively. Rather than trying to boil an ocean with hype you’re providing clear messaging on what you can do and how it can help. People want that clarity over hype.

Tom’s Take

If you try to promise me a life-changing experience with an app or a piece of hardware I’m going to make sure you understand what that means and what it takes. On the other hand, if you come to me with a proposal to change something I dislike doing every day or simplifying it in some way I’m more likely to listen to your pitch. Changing lives is hard. Changing diapers is not fun but it is necessary and repetitive. Focus on the small things and make those easier to do before you take on the rest of the world. Your customers will be happier and you will too.

Mastodon Needs More Brand Support

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As much as I want to move over to Mastodon full time, there’s one thing I feel that is massively holding it back. Yes, you can laud the big things about federations and freedom as much as you want. However, one thing I’ve seen hanging out in the fringes of the Fediverse that will ultimately hold Mastodon back is the hostility toward brands.

Welcoming The Crowd

If you’re already up in arms because of that opening, ask yourself why. What is it about a brand that has you upset? Don’t they have the same right to share on the platform as the rest of us? I will admit that not every person on Mastodon has this outward hostility toward companies. However I can also sense this feeling that brands don’t belong.

It reminds me a lot of the thinly veiled distaste for companies that some Linux proponents have. The “get your dirty binary drivers out of my pristine kernel” crowd. The ones that want the brands to bend to their will and only do things the way they want. If you can’t provide us the drivers and software for free with full code support for us to hack as much as we want then we don’t want you around.

Apply that kind of mentality to brands venturing into the Fediverse. Do you want them to share their message? Share links to content or help people join webinars to learn more about the solutions? Or do you only want the interns and social media professionals to be their authentic selves and pretend they aren’t working for a bigger company?

The fact is that in order to get people to come to Mastodon to consume content you’re going to need more than highly motivated people. You’re going to need people that are focused on sharing a message. You’re really going to want those that are focused on outreach instead of just sharing random things. Does that sound a lot like the early days of Twitter to you? Not much broadcast but lots of meaningless status updates.

That’s the biggest part of what’s holding Mastodon back. There’s no content. Yes, there’s a lot of sharing. There’s lots of blog posts or people clipping articles to put them out there for people to read. But it’s scattered and somewhat unsupported. There’s no driving force to get people to click through to sites with deeper information or other things that brands do to support campaigns.

Tom’s Take

You’re going to disagree with me and I don’t blame you one bit. You may not like my idea about getting more brand support on Mastodon but you can’t deny that the platform needs users with experience to grow things. And if you keep up the hostility you’re going to find people choosing to stay on platforms that support them instead of wading into the pool where they feel unwelcome.

Consuming Content the Way You Want

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One of the true hidden gems of being a part of a big community is the ability to discuss ideas and see different perspectives. It’s one of the reasons why I enjoy working at Tech Field Day and why I’m lamenting the death spiral of Twitter. My move to Mastodon is picking up steam and I’m slowly replicating the way that I consume content and interact there but it’s very much the same way I felt about Twitter thirteen years ago. There’s promise but it needs work.

As I thought about my journey with social media and discussed it with people in the community I realized that a large part of what has me so frustrated is the way in which my experience has been co-opted into a kind of performative mess. Social media is becoming less about idea exchange and more about broadcast.

Give and Take

When I first started out on Twitter I could post things that were interesting to me. I could craft the way I posted those short updates. Did I want to be factual and dry? Or should I be more humorous and snarky? I crafted my own voice as I shared with others. My community grew organically. People that were interested in what I had to say joined up. Others chose to stick with their own circles. The key is that I was allowed to develop what I wanted to present to those around me.

As time went on I realized that I was an aberration in the grand scheme of Twitter. I made content. I offered opinions and analysis. I was a power user. Twitter wasn’t filled with power users. It was filled with passive consumers of content. Twitter wasn’t overly concerned with enabling features that allowed users like me to have an easier time. Instead, it was focused on delivering content to the passive audience. Content that Twitter determined was either interesting enough to keep users coming back to the service or generated enough revenue to keep the lights on.

That shift happens in pretty much every social platform that I’ve been a part of. Facebook moved from reading through other people’s status updates about their dogs or their lunch and into a parade of short form videos about craft projects or memes about Star Wars. Every interaction with those posts just enhanced the algorithm to show me more of them. Facebook only shoves more of what you see into your face. It doesn’t take what you create and build from there.

The algorithms that run these services now don’t care about you. They don’t facilitate the discussions and information exchange that make us all better. Instead, they feed us mindless interaction. They give us 60-word posts about a topic with vapid insights or any one of a number of endless popcorn videos about “life hacks” or people having accidents or, worse yet, very clever advertising that looks like a random person posting about how amazing a t-shirt is.

Does It Ad Up?

If you’re thinking to yourself this is starting to sound a lot like television advertising, you’re not far off the mark. The explosion of content that has been pushed in front of us is all about the advertising. It’s either brands that are looking to have users buy their product or service or it’s services looking to gain tons of users for other reasons.The advertising dollar rules all now.

This isn’t a new thing. Anyone that tries to tell you that invasive advertising is a modern construct has never opened up a copy of Computer Shopper magazine from the 90s or enjoyed hearing the host of a 60s game show shilling for Lucky Strike cigarettes. Advertising has always been a huge part of the content that we consume.

Modern YouTube videos have pre-roll ads and breaks in the middle for more ads. Podcasts have one or two ad reads, either by the hosts or through a slick, produced read. For a society that hates advertising we sure don’t mind taking money from them when they want to place an ad in the content we’re creating. Yet unless we’re willing to bankroll our own platforms completely we’re stuck with the way that those platforms make money.

This all comes together in an insidious way. The algorithms show us things out of order because they want to grab our attention. The system wants to weave in content we might enjoy along with ads that pay for the platform alongside of the content we actually want to see. Unlike broadcast television, which has specific rules about advertising, these systems can flood us with content that is designed to make us stick around or pay for something that someone wanted us to buy.

At no point in that whole process did we see highlighting of blog posts (unless they were boosted with ads) or bringing conversations to the top of the feed because we’ve interacted with those people. Power users and non-sponsored content creators are a drag on the system. Because they’re not interesting enough to draw in the regular users, unless they’re famous, and they don’t pay the platform to prioritize that content.

As the social network matures and relies less and less on users to create the interactions that sustains the user base it flips the model to be more focused on providing for the brands that pay to keep the lights on and the popcorn-style content that keeps the users hanging around. That’s the ultimate reason why the twilight of social media platforms feels so wasteful. What was once a place to grow and expand your horizons becomes the same mindless drivel that we see on TV. A late-stage social network is practically indistinguishable from what The History Channel has turned into.

Tom’s Take

I want Mastodon to succeed. I want the idea exchange to return. There are many on the platform right now that are hostile to brands because they worry about the inevitable slide into the advertising model. That doesn’t happen because of the brands themselves. The move happens when users grow and the platform needs to keep them around. When the costs of running the infrastructure grow past the ability of the users to support it. Here’s hoping the idea exchange and learning continue to be the primary focus for the time being. At least until the next new things comes along.

Why Do YOU Have To Do It?

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One of the things that I’ve seen as a common thread among people in the industry as of late is the subject of burnout. Sure, burnout is a common topic no matter what year we’re in but a lot more of what I’m starting to hear about is self-inflicted burnout. Taking on too many projects, doing more than one job, and even having too many things going on outside of your specific role are all contributors to burnout. How can we keep that from happening?

Atlas and His Burden

For me, one of the biggest reasons why I find myself swimming in frustration is because I am very quick to volunteer to do things. In part it’s because I want to make sure the job is done correctly. In another part it’s because I want to be seen as someone that is always willing to get things done. Add in a dash of people pleasing and you can see how this spirals out of control. I’m sure you’ve even heard that as a career advice at some point. I’ve even railed against it many times on this blog.

How can you overcome the impulse to want to volunteer to do everything? If you’re not in a more senior role it’s going to be hard to tell someone you can’t or won’t do something. As I learned last year from commenters you don’t always have that luxury. If you are in a senior role you also may find yourself quickly volunteering to ensure that the job is done properly. That’s when you need to ask an important question:

Why do I have to do this?

Check your ego at the door and make sure that your Aura of Superiority is suppressed. This isn’t about you being better than the job or task. This is about determining why you are the best person to do this job. Seems easy at first, right? Just explain why this is something you have to do. But when you dig into it things get a little less clear.

Are you the most skilled person at this task in the company? That’s a good reason for you to do it. But could you offer to show someone else how to do the thing instead? Especially if you’re the only one that can do it? Cross training ensures that others know what to do when time is critical. It’s also nice to be able to take a vacation without needing to check your email every ten minutes. Enabling others to do things means you’re not the only phone call every time it needs to be done.

Is this something you’re worried won’t be done correctly if you don’t do it? Why? Is it something very difficult to accomplish? If so, why not have a team work on it? Is this something that you already have an idea of how you want to do it? That’s a recipe for trouble. Because you’ll implement your ideas for the thing and then either get bored or distracted and forget all about it. That leads to others thinking you’ve dropped the ball. It could also lead to people passing you over when you have good ideas because they’re afraid you’re going to take the ball and drop it later. If you think that it won’t be done correctly without your input you should find a way to add your input but not make yourself responsible for the completion of the project.

Are you just taking on the task for the accolades of a job well done? Do you enjoy the feeling of being called out for a successful completion of something? That’s fairly standard. Do you enjoy being chastised when you fail? Does it bother you when you’re called out in front of the team for not delivering something? Again, standard behavior of a normal person. The problem is when the need for the former outweighs the aversion to the latter.

In this excellent Art of Network Engineering episode with Mike Bushong he recounts a story of a manager that pushed back against him when he complained that no one knew how busy he really was. Her response of “everyone just sees you not getting things done” really made him stop and realize that taking the entire world on your shoulders wouldn’t make anything better if you kept failing to deliver.

I could go on and on and belabor the point more but I think you understand why it’s important to ask why the task can’t be reassigned or shared. Rather than just refusing you’re trying to figure out if anyone else should be doing it instead of you. As someone with too many things to do it’s critical you’re able to get those done. Adding more to your plate won’t make anyone’s job any easier.

Tom’s Take

I feel that I will always struggle to keep from taking on too many things at once. It’s not quite a compulsion but it’s also difficult not to want to do something for someone or take on a task that really should be done by someone with more skill or more time. The key for me is to stop and ask myself the question in the title. If I’m not the best person to be doing the job or if there is someone else that I can show so I’m not the only one that knows what to do then I need to do that instead. Sharing knowledge and ensuring others can do the tasks means everyone is involved and you’re not overwhelmed. And that makes for a happier workplace all around.

Friday Networking Field Day Thoughts

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I’m wrapping up Networking Field Day 30 this week and as is always the case there was a lot of great discussion from both the presenters and the delegates outside of the presentations. It’s one of the reasons why I love doing this job even after almost ten years. I get to meet fun people and have an impact on so many things in the tech industry.

  • Network-as-a-Service is coming. We recorded a roundtable discussion about it and I think the impact that it’s going to have on mid-sized businesses is massive. It’s going to be like cloud. Not just in operational capability. It’s also going to be a huge driver for what you can do with your network in support of applications. The snowflakes may melt under the weight of the cookies we make from the cookie cutter deployments.
  • It feels like a lot of companies are trying to find what’s next. Part of that is coming from the ways that organizations are changing their outlook for what an office should be after the pandemic shutdowns. But still others are realizing they can’t use the same revenue stream for the next five years and hope to survive. This isn’t simply a game of trying to find an adjacent market to move into to drive growth to keep shareholders and investors happy. This is more about finding something that needs to be done because the alternative is no longer having a company.
  • Sadly, it looks as though third party Twitter clients are gone for good. This is beyond irritating to me because of the way that I choose to consume Twitter. I’ve seen a lot of chatter in various comment threads about third parties making money from the good graces of Twitter but the fact is that those programs drive a LOT of the way that power users interact with the system. If the exodus wasn’t already accelerating I would imagine you’re going to see a lot more coming very, very soon.

Tom’s Take

Stay tuned for all the great info from Networking Field Day on the Tech Field Day YouTube channel and don’t forget to thank your networking team today. You may not need to call them today to tell them something is down but trust me they will appreciate you calling just to say you appreciate them.