Phillip Sellers will be a new delegate at Tech Field Day 22! Phillip is a Director of Engineering who started writing his first code without tape on a hand-me-down Commodore 64. He enjoys big challenges while at work and a little bit of plane watching when he’s not. Check Phillip out on Twitter at @PBSellers, on the Tech Field Day Website, or his website. Let’s learn a little more about Phillip!
How did you get into technology and IT?
I got a reputation as a fixer back in high school for my teachers and was lucky to find something I was both good at and loved to do. From there, I made it a career.
What do you do now? Tell us a little about your current role.
I am the Director of Engineering for AmWINS Group, Inc., leading a team of 20+ technical staff focused on internal IT for the firm. AmWINS is an interesting B2B company that focuses on wholesale specialty insurance brokerage.
What are your biggest challenges?
COVID-19 has been a major challenge over the last six months. It takes a lot of intentional effort to stay connected while everyone is working remotely, but the time is well worth it – even when we aren’t talking about technology. I’ve found it has been important to spend time talking about hobbies and families during this time.
Where do you see IT going in the next 3-5 years?
From an infrastructure perspective, automation of services has become mainstream. Container orchestration and refactoring of applications will be over the tipping point and will have become mainstream. I expect memory technologies to make a massive leap again, allowing for faster access and new ways of working with our memory pools. Analysis of existing data sets to glean more value through AI and ML will mature and become easier to accomplish, taking less time and configuration to get value. Mainframes and client-server applications persist. People will finally stop talking about cloud and consume the capability needed rather than the location. The ability to migrate data sets or share datasets between providers is finally easy with ample bandwidth.
What was your first computer? What was great about it? What is your go-to computer now?
My first computer was a hand-me-down Commodore 64, where I wrote my first lines of code and hoped the power didn’t blink since I didn’t have a tape to save anything on. But the Tandy 1000 became the computer that really allowed me to explore and learn and build skills about how computers worked. These days, I am an Apple geek, and the Mac has been my go-to for home, with the iPad playing a major role at work as a complement to my work-issued PC.
How do you manage your work/life balance?
This is not a question I’m qualified to advise on!! I’m not good at it. When your hobby and your work are the same thing, it’s tough to find balance. Fortunately, my family helps to remind me to focus on them and have some fun.
If you weren’t working in IT, what would you be doing instead?
This is a really tough question. It’s hard for me to imagine doing anything except IT, but I’d likely be in some sort of business or finance role. But I also like sharing what I know, so perhaps I’d have been a teacher. I’ve talked about this with friends a lot over the years, and I count myself lucky to be born when I was born and found this as my calling.
What do you do in your spare time? Do you have any hobbies?
I really enjoy trains, planes, and travel. One of my favorite places is the overlook park near the airport, watching planes take-off and land. I also enjoy any chance to find a nostalgic railroad excursion.
What are you most excited about seeing at the event?
I’m looking forward to Red Hat and OpenShift around their development of Kubernetes and the ecosystem around it – I am hoping to hear more about how they differentiate their distribution and supporting technologies. I’m very curious if Veeam will be giving us continuous data protection, finally? More protection for Kubernetes? Capabilities around DR? What’s up their sleeve?
What is the coolest thing you’re working on right now?
My team just completed a new DR method for one of our in-house applications. The entire process is automated across several tools using APIs to create an environment in a couple of hours, start to ready for testing. I’m very proud of the way my team collaborated with other teams to make this happen.
Who inspires you?
My father is my inspiration. Not formally educated, but he has had the most impact on my career. He was a mechanic and jack-of-all-trades. Most of my troubleshooting skills that helped me build my career come from working beside him on the farm, fixing problems, and using creative solutions. He instilled in me important lessons – like fulfilling your promises, doing the right thing when no one is watching, taking pride in the work you do, and taking responsibility for your actions.
What superhero movie character would you like to be and why?
Even though the movies in the DC Universe haven’t been great, Batman is the superhero I’d like to be. Batman makes his own advantage, his own super capabilities, but he is normal underneath. Plus, I like how he works behind the scenes a lot of time – hidden and working behind the scene – but getting things done.
What is your favorite thing about what you do?
I love being able to tackle a seemingly unattainable goal – taking on a big, complex problem and breaking it down into small attainable parts and then making it happen. I also love building into others – sharing what I know and helping to develop others in their career and technical knowledge.
If you won the lottery and could retire, what would you do with your time?
I really enjoy helping people be their best selves, helping them develop and succeed. I’d love to coach and help others, maybe be an investor or benefactor [if I won big money].
Phillip, we hope you win the “big money” so you can do just that! Until then, we’re so pleased to have you joining the Tech Field Day community! We appreciate you taking the time to share your experiences with us and are looking forward to seeing what you have to offer as a delegate at the upcoming event!
Now that you’ve had a chance to read a little about Phillip, come to see him as a delegate at Tech Field Day 22, December 9th-11th!
