SCaLE Break
To live and die in LA
SCaLE 23x has been the most productive conference yet. A freudian slip, I started writing “concert” there instead of “conference.” Anyway, I’m beginning to see people I recognize, know, or have met before. A cold call becomes a handshake before a relationship. At the outset of this mission, after ATO six months ago, I was simply on a dragnet fishing expedition, trying to dig up anybody loving OSS or running an OSPO on LinkedIn; not to sell anything but to go from knowing nobody to meeting as many people as possible. On Wall Street — well, really, in everything I do — I always know everybody. I’ve known Pat Masson for 35 years. I’m probably the only Goldman derivatives salesman — ever — who had as big a network outside Wall Street as inside it. And, probably the only UC Davis Phi Delt, which is where we met, still in touch with Pat. I’m good that: making a network and staying in touch. And it’s no coincidence I’m in sales. Also, do you know what’s the difference between being a salesman at Goldman Sachs and raising money for an OSS foundation: at Goldman, we had the vacuum cleaners.
The conversations at SCaLE have been more “intentional” (I hate that word just as much as I hate “journey” but anyway), which is not to say driven by some ulterior motive, but to say with time and effort our vision has grown more specific leading to more productive conversations. On Wall Street, they say, “it’s not how many people you know, but who you know.” However, I have also always made it my business to get to know absolutely everybody. That’s both because I enjoy it, and because having a thoroughly complete Rolodex — and I am betraying my vintage with that usage — is an asset unto itself. Plus, the chances that I can create a sick OSS network versus the chances that I will learn to become a kick-butt DevOps engineer frittering away in Kubernetes with pull requests in Rust are so much higher that they are not making odds on that in Vegas.
That said, LA is not a real place. First, I met a dude at the conference yesterday named Scott (my middle name) who also has a PMA tattoo on his forearm.
And, a vanlifer house-sitting in New England for the winter, I cleaned up my act just before getting here. Whereas in Rhode Island having a mustache and shaggy hair give me a certain Old Man and the Sea credibility, in LA, I figured I would probably just look homeless. Accordingly, I gave myself a pre-conference “glow up.”
One who lives in an automobile myself, I keep a pitbull for companionship — a companion who comes with the added bonus of ensuring my personal safety. I like to say “my best friend comes with a car alarm.”
He’s a sweetie, or, to quote Bill Burr, “he doesn’t bite me,” and I miss him dearly. So, yesterday I espied another pittie roaming the grounds of SCaLE and couldn’t help myself but run over to let that single headed Cerberus lick my face at the risk of my cheeks and nose. When the owner appeared, he politely asked what I do for a living and I explained that I work for a nonprofit. “Me too,” he said, before suggesting we continue our conversation with a spin around the block. A normal looking guy, such as myself, I assumed what he meant was he needed to take his dog out for a break. The fact he brought his dog inside the conference didn’t strike me as odd, because, apparently in LA, one can bring their dog anywhere they don’t belong as evidenced by the presence of 20 mutts inside every restaurant.
However, two minutes later I found myself riding shotty in a Honda HR-V stuffed with blankets, beds and stuff. Turns out, what my man meant was he needed to move his home around the block to find a new parking spot. I noted, with approval, that he’s living in a subcompact for fuel efficiency.
Anyway, the moral of the story is, now I see why my best friend keeps telling me: “Dude, you really need to quit telling people that you live in a van!”
