As the leaves start to change color and fall, you can’t help but notice the changes in the air. Our family is no exception.

First, I am so excited and happy for my wife, Michelle, who accepted the Stark Professor Endowed Chair here at IUSM. If you’re not familiar with academia positions, this is a really big deal! In addition, it’s at the same institute she’s already at, so no moving this time. Super proud of you, Michelle! She’ll be starting her new position on November 1st.

Second, I am changing jobs. I just celebrated my last day at AT&T, where I spent almost 15 years. It was a great ride, but sometimes you need a change. I’m gonna miss y’all! Next week, I start my new job at athenahealth. Like my previous one, this is full time remote and I will go to the Boston office a few times a year. I’m super excited about this change, it’s my first completely new job since 2004 and it’s in an new industry. This change should also give me more time to work on Puppet and the blog, which is great since I have some really great ideas following Puppetize PDX. However, I’m taking the week off between jobs to relax and avoid doing work-like things – and we’re redoing the floor in the guest bathroom to help me avoid temptation.

There’s also some other stuff in the works that we don’t want to jinx, but you’ll hear more soon. Tune in on Twitter if you want to be the first to get the deets.

Fall is always an exciting time, and I hope yours is as exciting as ours!

In my 2015 Goals, I originally had a goal of submitting a talk to VMworld. As the year went on, it became clear that a Puppet-oriented talk was more fitting and I submitted an abstract to the PuppetConf Call For Papers. I’ve very proud to announce that my abstract was accepted and that I’ll be presenting at PuppetConf 2015 this October in Portland, OR! My talk is tentatively titled Puppetizing your Organization: Taking Puppet from a Proof of Concept to the Configuration Management Tool of Choice (PyO:TPfaPoCttCMToC will probably be shortened!) and aims to help you move from buy-off on your proof of concept toward buy-in from your entire organization.

PuppetConf’s call for papers works is similar to many other conferences: you present an abstract and if accepted, you have a few months to flesh the abstract out into a full presentation. One of the concepts in my abstract is to share with and learn from others, and this talk is no different. I need your help to make sure I include multiple perspectives and lessons, not just mine. Please take a look at the abstract and let me know both what you’d like to see me cover, and any tips you have to share with others. You can leave your comments here or on twitter. I’ll make sure to acknowledge you during my presentation, unless you let me know otherwise.

I’m eagerly looking forward to meeting everyone in the Puppet community this fall! Make your reservation now using this 35% off link and be sure to attend my presentation!