Who's Who In The Zoo
Reading this article means you are likely a regular DevCentralite. Regulars may see some of the DevCentral team-member avatars on articles, get emails directly from us on various updates, perhaps chat with us in private messages around the inter-webs, or <gasp> meet us in person (we are people). There have been lots of changes at DevCentral over the years (DevCentral is older than my 8th grader) but even if you have met some of us in person there is a fair chance you do not know how we contribute to the community or how we, The DevCentral Team, fit into F5. TL;DR - There are seven of us, from around the world, dedicated and passionate about the DevCentral community. We are simultaneously magnificent and humble. Beginning at the head, with our leader, Tony. Tony has been a groundbreaking presence in community management for over 20 years. He is native to the Seattle area and better than any of us at Rock Band (instruments!). He leveled-up at Microsoft (MVP Program) and PopCap (think Zombies) and brought thatto bear at F5 for DevCentral in 2014. He works every day with executive leadership at F5 to realize the true potential of ‘community’ as a force for good for the community. He reminds us at every opportunity that we are all community members and that we get out what we put in. On to the heart of DevCentral, our Content-Meisters: Jason, Chase, John, and Rodrigo. Jason and John live inthe greater St Louis area (home of the 2019 Stanley Cup Champions!!) and interestingly, about 200 miles ENE ofthe mean-center of population in the US. (TIL?!) Jason was the winner of the first-ever iRules contest, as a customer, way back in 2005 and is the resident old guy, having served the DevCentral community the longest. He crossed over from invested customer to passionate customer advocate almost 11 years ago. John agreed to interview for the team back in 2013 when someone mentioned free lodging and skiing wasinvolved. If you are holding Crème Brûlée you will have John’s undivided attention. Both of them absolutely crush one of the more popular segments, Lightboard Lessons, and otherwise research and write about everything from Security and iRules to TMOS and SDKs. Chase, joined F5 the same month as Jason in 2009, and joined DevCentral out of IT in 2014. Seattle hatched (raised, but not born) he recently lived full-time on a boat and says GESUNDHEIT! louder than most people sneeze. Chase has 22 years inIT/technologyand is among the more forceful and passionate agents of change in the company. Now with some growth on the team, you can expect to see more articles, Q&A, cats, and Disney references on the DevCentral site. Based out of our Chertsey office, and a native of Brazil, Rodrigo is our newest Content-Meister. Rodrigo was recruited out ofEngineering Servicesin F5 last winter to level-up DevCentral for DevOps. We only get to meet Rodrigo (personally) a couple times a year but since he is on Greenwich Mean Time he bravely mans the wheel while the rest of us partysleep. If you ever get the chance to hear him sing karaoke it will almost certainly be a 90's British pop hit - and it will be fabulous. And finally, the legs of the operation: Leslie and Lief, DevCentral Program Managers. Leslie manages Offline and Lief was recently hired to manage Online. Sounds like a simple split butcommunity demarcations are not always simple. The idea here is that the community has many ways to engage and F5 wants to make sure and support that engagement, both on the inter-webs and in the field; Leslie and Lief will work together going forward to help align offline and online resources. Leslie is an expert cat herder, has been responsible for Community presence and technical breakouts at the past few F5 Agility conferences, manages the DC MVP program, and has handled other duties as assigned at F5 since 2014. She has livedin Geneva, The Hague, and London, spent the night on topof Kilimanjaro, trained as an opera singer, and dealt poker professionally. Is it any wonder that she manages a TON of intricate, real-world, details with a high-functioning passion for 'the experience' of it all? More than once you will hear ‘We need more Leslies.’ Lief recently came to F5 and the DevCentral team with over 20 years in technology as an analyst, program manager, and people manager responsible for multi-tenant, enterprise, software applications. Another Seattle native he was born within sight of the new F5 Tower. Heis focused on bringing process and technology standards to bear for the DevCentral website in support of the Content-Meisters, our Offline Programs, and (big C) Community at F5. He has a, recently mothballed, lifelong biking habit, a predisposition for run-on sentences, an ongoing affair with oxford commas (and parenthetical remarks), uses a Dvorak keyboard, and is not accustomed to speaking of himself in the third person. Oh, and, we need more Leslies.Agility 2020 - you're invited!
In-person event for Agility 2020 has been cancelled. Please see the Agility Event Page for more details. (Update 2/28/2020) In an abundance of caution for our customers, partners and employees, we have made the tough decision to cancel our in-person event for Agility 2020 due to the escalating travel and safety concerns related to the global COVID-19 (Coronavirus) outbreak. While we are disappointed to miss sharing ideas and solving problems with customers and partners from around the globe in person, we believe this is the best decision for everyone's welfare. We are rapidly developing an alternative to Agility as a virtual experience in the near term to deliver valuable Lab, Break-out Session, Certification and Keynote content to our customers and partners. Check back regularly for more details on the virtual event or email F5Agility@F5.com for additional information. <Professor Farnsworth imitation>Good news, everybody!</Professor Farnsworth imitation> As you know, there was no Agility 2019. This was in part so that we could reset the time of year for the conference from August to March. Agility 2020will be held from March 16-19, 2020 at theSwan & Dolphinin Orlando, Florida. Orlando, and Disney, and putt-putt golfing... That's right, *puts on ears* we're going to Disneyworld - and you are all cordially invited to participate in labs and breakouts, meet fellow F5 users, talk with F5 and partner subject-matter experts, learn to develop and deploy applications in days instead of months, secure your apps at scale in a multi-cloud environment, and hear about our vision for the future of F5 and NGINX. Registration is now open! The DevCentral team will be busy as usual that week. We areallflying over, and will be: hosting our usual booth and giving out swag in the expo hall, hosting a walk-in Nerdery zone next to our booth, where folks can drop in to speak with one of our subject-matter experts, presenting breakout sessions, hanging out at Geekfest, connecting community, enjoying the exclusive community area at the final night party, and of course, spoiling the dev/central MVPs during the joint 2019-20 MVP Summit at Agility with special sessions and activities. If you'd like to do more than pick up all the knowledge being dropped, if you have some cool technical stories or lessons-learned to share, please stay tuned for the open call for proposals which should go live in early December - so please start getting those great breakout, lightening round, and open talk ideas ready. Hope to see you there!2021 DevCentral MVP Announcement
Congratulations to the 2021 DevCentral MVPs! The DevCentral MVP Award is given annually to an exclusive group of expert users in the technical community who go out of their way to engage with the community by sharing their experience and knowledge with others. This is our way of recognizing their significant contributions, because while all of our users collectively make DevCentral one of the top community sites around and a valuable resource for everyone, MVPs regularly go above and beyond in assisting fellow F5 users both on- and offline.We understand that 2020 was difficult for everyone, and we are extra-grateful to this year's MVPs for going out of their ways to help others. MVPs get badges in their DevCentral profiles so everyone can see that they are recognized experts (you'll also see this if you hover over their name in a thread). This year’s MVPs will receive a glass award, certificate, exclusive thank-you gifts, and invitations to exclusive webinars and behind-the-scenes looks at things like roadmaps and new product sneak-previews. The 2021 DevCentral MVPs (by username) are: ·Andy McGrath ·Austin Geraci ·Amine Kadimi ·Boneyard ·Dario Garrido ·EAA ·FrancisD ·Hamish Marson ·Iaine ·Jad Tabbara (JTI) ·jaikumar_f5 ·JG ·JuniorC · Kai Wilke ·Kees van den Bos ·Kevin Davies ·Leonardo Souza ·lidev ·Manthey ·Mayur Sutare ·Nathan Britton ·Niels van Sluis ·Patrik Jonsson ·Philip Jönsson ·Piotr Lewandowski ·Rob_carr ·Samir Jha ·Sebastian Maniak ·TimRiker ·Vijay ·What Lies Beneath ·Yann Desmaret ·Youssef2020 DevCentral MVP Announcement
Congratulations to the 2020 DevCentral MVPs! The DevCentral MVP Award is given annually to an exclusive group of expert users in the technical community who go out of their way to engage with the community by sharing their experience and knowledge with others. This is our way of recognizing their significant contributions, because while all of our users collectively make DevCentral one of the top community sites around and a valuable resource for everyone, MVPs regularly go above and beyond in assisting fellow F5 users both on- and offline. MVPs get badges in their DevCentral profiles so everyone can see that they are recognized experts (you'll also see this if you hover over their name in a thread). This year’s MVPs will receive a glass award, certificate, thank-you gift, and an invitation to attend the MVP Summit at Agility 2020 as guests of F5. The 2020 DevCentral MVPs (by username) are: ·Andy McGrath ·Austin Geraci ·Boneyard ·Dario Garrido ·FrancisD ·Hamish Marson ·Iaine ·Jad Tabbara (JTI) ·jaikumar_f5 ·JG ·Jinshu ·Joel Newton ·Kai Wilke ·Kees van den Bos ·Kevin Davies ·Kevin Worthington ·Lee Sutcliffe ·Leonardo Souza ·Manthey ·Michael Jenkins ·Nathan Britton ·Nicolas Destor ·Niels van Sluis ·Patrik Jonsson ·Philip Jönsson ·Piotr Lewandowski ·Rob_carr ·Samir Jha ·Tim Rupp ·TimRiker ·Vijay ·What Lies Beneath ·Yann Desmaret ·Youssef Make sure to check out theMVP pagefor more info about the program and the MVPs themselves.DevCentral Showcase on LinkedIn
We are excited to share our New LinkedIn Home! We're thrilled to be Showcased under F5's LinkedIn Company Page and look forward to building a fun place to converse, ask questions and get inside advice on BIG-IP tips and tricks. LinkedIn Showcase pages are extensions of our LinkedIn company page and allows us to highlight some of the cool stuff happening on DevCentral. You can also find the F5 Labs showcase page in the same area. This allows you, if interested, to follow the specific F5 entities that you are interested in. And, the content is tailored for your interests. Like our community, we'll be sharing How-to articles, checking out interesting codeshares and provide a sounding board for your BIG-IP adventures. We'd love to hear from you...all the goods and not so goods...and we're here to help. If you're following the F5 DevCentral Group on LinkedIn, we'd love if you'd also follow the Showcase page since we'll be focusing on growing & engaging with that community. Plus, the DevCentral Group page is linked on our Showcase so you won't miss anything. Please come join our Showcase page and let us know how we can help. Thanks! The DevCentral Team.The DevCentral Chronicles July Edition 1(7)
July is my favorite month due to it being both the middle of summer and I was born in July. This month I’ll drip of perspiration and celebrate another twist in the odometer of life. It’s also time for our monthly Chronicles where we keep you updated on DevCentral happenings and highlight some of the cool content you may have missed since the last issue. You can always catch up with the links at the bottom. Welcome! With #F5Agility18 right around the corner August 13-16, 2018, let’s kick off this edition with John Wagnon‘s Capture The Flag at Agility 2018. Happening Tuesday night Aug 14, block your calendar for our #Geekfest event, Hack to the Future! This year, for the first time ever during our Agility conference, we will host a Capture The Flag game. The game is designed for eight teams (4 people per team) to compete against one another to see who can capture the most flags, earn the most virtual money, and keep their web application safe from attack. The teams will be chosen prior to the event, so if you want to be included in one of the teams, make sure you reach out to your SE and get the invitation. DevCentral MVP’s Kai, Stan, Leonardo & Nathan with Bart as Pit Boss will also participate. The entire evening will be themed with tons of cool 80s stuff related to the classic movie series. Next, we’d like to recognize F5 Systems Engineer, Steve Lyons for his prowess over the last month. First, Steve is one of our most engaged SE’s amplifying our social channel at every tweet; he published three, in-depth articles Configuring the BIG-IP as an SSH Jump Server using Smart Card Authentication and WebSSH Client, Configuring Certificate Based Authentication and Kerberos Constrained Delegation in F5 Access Policy Manager (APM) and Configuring Endpoint Security (Client-Side) Using F5 Access Policy Manager (APM); in addition to answering 5 questions from members. He’s highly active and has the technical know-how to help. Follow Steve @SteveLyonsF5 Jason Rahm and his infinite knowledge continued his python series with Getting started with the python SDK part 5: request parameters revisited and also replied to a twitter question from @CISCO_World with a full article about Duplicating BIG-IP Objects about how to copy a virtual server. For the developer crowd, ENE Satoshi Toyosawa added his iControl REST Cookbook - Virtual Server Profile (LTM Virtual Profiles). For cloud folks, Chase Abbott shows off Application Auto Scaling Through BIG-IP Cloud Edition and for security, John lit up Introducing F5 DataSafe in his #LightboardLesson. And in closing, Rhazi Youssef from e-xpert Solutions is our Featured Member for July and is the third engineer we've featured from e-Xpert Solutions SA. We look forward to seeing you in Boston for Agility and as always, you can stay engaged with @DevCentral by following us on Twitter, joining our new LinkedIn Showcase page or subscribing to our YouTube Channel. Look forward to hearing about your BIG-IP adventures. The Chronicles: Volume 1, Issue 1 Volume 1, Issue 2 Volume 1, Issue 3 Volume 1, Issue 4 Volume 1, Issue 5Calling All Conversations!
Is what I wrote almost 10 years ago when F5 was rolling out some of our early social media channels as the medium started to explode. Back then, we listed our MySpace, Facebook, Twitter and YouTube channels - the four big ones at the time. A decade later, Social has become one of the primary megaphones for folks not only to share but also receive content and information from a variety of sources. Today, DevCentral has a number of social outlets to engage with you wherever you like. You can follow us on twitter, subscribe and watch videos on our YouTube Channel, ask questions on Reddit, get Code on Github, follow BIG-IP discussions on Stack overflow, participate on the F5 Facebook page and follow articles on the F5 DevCentral LinkedIn Group. And, while the paint still wet, we are excited to announce our New LinkedIn Home! We're thrilled to be Showcased under F5's LinkedIn Company Page and look forward to building a fun place to converse, ask questions and get inside scoops on BIG-IP tips and tricks. Please follow and let us know how we can help. When DevCentral started back in 2003, it was one of the original ‘social’ community sites when social media was still in its infancy. F5’s DevCentral community is your guide into F5's community of coders and where you can get into the guts of F5 technologies and solutions. Members range from beginning to advanced devs, industry thought leaders, and F5 MVPs. Let us know where else you like to technically hang out and where should we be more active? Hit us up with the hash, #whereisdevcentral and we'll meet you there ps Related: Get Social with DevCentral Calling all Conversations (The Original)F5 DevCentral Asks, ‘How Can We Help in 2017?’
Back in 2003, DevCentral was one of the early/first corporate social media sites dedicated to serving, sharing, supporting and engaging our user community. Some 14 years later, we have MVPs, Featured Members and You all contributing to a lively, engaged community. We have some cool stuff planned for 2017 and we recently asked a few of our Featured Members what they’d like help with in 2017. They share their time, knowledge & tips with the community and we thought, what can we (the collective DevCentral ‘we’) offer back. The question was: What do you think will be some of your biggest IT challenges in the coming year and how can the DevCentral community help you achieve your goals in 2017? Here’s what they said: Yann Desmarest (Innovation Center Manager, e-Xpert Solutions SA): My biggest IT challenges for the coming year will be API security, Oauth and OpenID Connect integration, Data Loss Prevention and CASB (Cloud Access Security Brokers). Through DevCentral, I hope to get resources, code and articles that guide me in the right direction to solve those challenges. I would love to get more dissections of known attacks (DDoS, ransomware, etc.) by security researchers. Some BIG-IP ASM and APM hands-on virtual labs on tricky features along with some tutorials to integrate F5 products with Microsoft Office suite. One request is chat capabilities with DevCentral members to ask questions or interact for sharing feedback. Koman Vijay Emarose (Network Architect, Rackspace): My team would like an article series from F5 Engineers sharing interesting support cases & solutions on how they resolved it. We’d also like some information around F5’s place within the world of network virtualization and public cloud. Some guidance on F5 supported and recommended automation platform (Ansible, Python, TCL, etc.) examples around usage would be great. Some of the automation works great for certain code versions yet not so much for other versions. F5’s stance on a specific automation tool would be helpful for us to devote our time and resource to master the automation tool. Lastly, some articles on new technologies including but not limited to, Network Virtualization, 5G, IoT and public cloud integration. Joel Newton (Senior DevOps System Engineer, SpringCM): We'd like to start thinking about architecting a solution that utilizes Windows containers, so I’d like to understand how best to configure and utilize our BIG-IP LTM devices in a container-based architecture. Maybe publish some research and/or examples from the F5 lab of what F5 folks have done with Windows containers would be cool. I know the DevCentral team has some ideas and if you’d like to engage with Joel, Vijay or Yann, please reach out to them…or post a comment here. Finally, we’re conducting a site survey on DevCentral and would appreciate your feedback. If you get a pop-up that looks like: Please give your feedback on 8 simple questions. Should easily take less than 5 minutes and helps us, help you. Thanks! The DevCentral TeamA Different Kind of Spamalot
Those familiar with Monty Python might appreciate this dialog in song from the musical... Customer: What have you got? Waitress: Well, there's egg and bacon, egg sausage and bacon Egg and spam Egg, bacon and spam Egg, bacon, sausage and spam Spam, bacon, sausage and spam Spam, egg, spam, spam, bacon and spam Spam, sausage, spam, spam, spam, bacon, spam tomato and spam Spam, spam, spam, egg and spam Spam, spam, spam, spam, spam, spam, baked beans, spam, spam, spam and spam. Customer's Wife: Have you got anything without spam? Waitress: Well, the spam, eggs, sausage and spam That's not got much spam in it Customer's Wife: I don’t want any spam! Lots of spam, that undesirable, loathsome spam. I think we all sympathize with the wife here. Certainly the DevCentral team does, as we’ve been dealing with a very persistent spammer over the last month. It’s nothing new, every site that promotes and encourages community (and many that don’t) has to deal with the lunatic fringe of the marketing world. To that end, we’d like to offer our sincerest apologies for the unsightly commentary in the Q&A section of our community, and the unfortunate side effect of your subscriptions resulting in the spam reaching your inboxes. No one wants to receive that mess, and we are grieved to have been a vessel for this distasteful marketing. But enough words, let’s talk actions. It’s a lot like chess. Matching wits with spammers, countering the queen’s gambit with albin or QG declined. But rest assured that we are not sitting idly by. We have enhanced and added several countermeasures that have extremely dampened the spirits of the evil devil spawn, to the point where his efforts now are but a mere trickle. We’ll continue to monitor, learn, adapt, and grow. In addition to the work we’ve done on our end, there is something you can do as well to help. You can flag posts that are clearly spam (or offensive or inappropriate) as shown in the image below. Given the new counter measures, there is a slight risk that a false positive will occur and something you post might be flagged as spam. If this happens, please notify us immediately at devcentral@f5.com and we’ll work diligently to resolve the issue. Thanks for all you do to make this community great and for seeing us through this spam issue.Agility 2014–Lab Day and the Inaugural Geekfest!
This year’s kick off for the labs was amazing. Customers and partners arrived Monday morning for a day and half of technical training, ranging from iRules and other programmability exercises to hard core deep dives into Secure Web Gateway, Application Policy Manager, Viprion, and more. The week started far earlier for most of the tech team. John and I arrived Sunday afternoon, but the core team that made this year such a rousing success arrived Friday and spent the bulk of the weekend prepping gear and rooms and then testing everything to ensure Monday was spent on the important stuff—equipping attendees. I can’t say enough good things about the team simply willing this toward excellence, and all the feedback I’ve received has been fantastic. I had the privilege of sharing teaching duties in the iRules 201 class with several of F5’s finest sales engineers, as did John in the iRules 101 class. The classes were packed across the board. For the iRules courses, all material (lab exercises, presentations, etc) is in the DevCentral downloads section, linked below for your convenience. I’ll add the other labs as the teams share their documents. Agility 2014 iRules 101 Agility 2014 iRules 201 Agility 2014 iRules 301 After training, John emceed a couple hours of invite-only tech goodness we’re calling geekfest. John came prepared to sing, dance, and read emo poetry as ice breakers, but it turns out this community likes to talk. Quite a few people stepped forward to share what they learned or loved about F5. It was a little tough to hear at times, so I won’t claim direct quotes here, but to share the paraphrases: - “I had no idea you could use the iControl REST API to configure an LTM…it’s amazing to know how fast and efficient it is” - ”I learned more in one day attending the Agility labs than I have in 5 years of trying all this on my own” - ”We run several web applications and it’s awesome that we can use GTM to show the outside world one IP address for them all…it makes things so much simpler” - ”I’m brand new to F5 technology and I’m already in love with DevCentral…what a huge differentiator and great resource for all my technical questions!” - ”F5 is the swiss army knife of network appliances…it can do ANYTHING!” - ”You can literally do anything with an iRule…the flexibility and power is amazing” Agility is one of my favorite events for a couple reasons. First, it’s an opportunity to mingle with a ton of people, exchanging ideas, networking, building relationships, etc. Second, customers and partners get a broad spectrum of technical resources in a short amount of time. Whether it’s lab day training classes or break out sessions, the quality content and interaction is an unstoppable force. If you haven’t been to an Agility event, I highly recommend you make the trip next year to Washington, DC. I promise a 5 minute dance video by John that you will not be disappointed! Oh, and for all you members out there that swung by the DevCentral booth to say hi (still have a shot 5-7 tonight!) we'll float you 25 devpoints!
