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Meet Field Day Delegate – Chris Cummings

  1. Meet Field Day Delegate – Chris Arceneaux
  2. Meet Field Day Delegate – David Ball
  3. Meet Field Day Delegate – Alex Neihaus
  4. Meet Field Day Delegate – Denny Cherry
  5. Meet Field Day Delegate – Keith Townsend
  6. Meet Field Day Delegate – Brian Gleason
  7. Meet Field Day Delegate – Adam Post
  8. Meet Field Day Delegate: Nico Stein
  9. Meet Field Day Delegate – Tricia Howard
  10. Meet Field Day Delegate – Evan Mintzer
  11. Meet Field Day Delegate – Stephanie Ihezukwu
  12. Meet Field Day Delegate – Wes Milliron
  13. Meet Field Day Delegate – Shaun Bender
  14. Meet Field Day Delegate – Michael Davis
  15. Meet Field Day Delegate – Matt Callaway
  16. Meet Field Day Delegate – Scott Driver
  17. Meet Field Day Delegate – Dave Benham
  18. Meet Field Day Delegate – Manon (“Mae”) Lessard
  19. Meet Field Day Delegate – Haydn Andrews
  20. Meet Field Day Delegate – Timothy Dennehy
  21. Meet Field Day Delegate – François Vergès
  22. Meet Field Day Delegate – Jennifer (“JJ”) Minella
  23. Meet Field Day Delegate – Wences Michel
  24. Meet Field Day Delegate – Josh Fidel
  25. Meet Field Day Delegate – Chris Williams
  26. Meet Field Day Delegate – Kati Lehmuskoski
  27. Meet Field Day Delegate – A.J. Murray
  28. Meet Field Day Delegate – Josh Warcop
  29. Meet Field Day Delegate – Jeremy Schulman
  30. Meet Field Day Delegate – Micheline Murphy
  31. Meet Field Day Delegate – Scott Morris
  32. Meet Field Day Delegate – Remington Loose
  33. Meet Field Day Delegate – Stefan Fouant
  34. Meet Field Day Delegate – Bart Heungens
  35. Meet Field Day Delegate – Markus Leinonen
  36. Meet Field Day Delegate – Greg Ferro
  37. Meet Field Day Delegate – Gina Rosenthal
  38. Meet Field Day Delegate – Vuong Pham
  39. Meet Field Day Delegate – Ruairi McBride
  40. Meet Field Day Delegate – David Samuel Penaloza Seijas
  41. Meet Field Day Delegate – Faisal Khan
  42. Meet Field Day Delegate – Mary Fasang
  43. Meet Field Day Delegate – Kim Pedersen
  44. Meet Field Day Delegate – Tony Efantis
  45. Meet Field Day Delegate – Robb Boyd
  46. Meet Field Day Delegate – Jason Beshara
  47. Meet Field Day Delegate – Glenda Canfield
  48. Meet Field Day Delegate – Ben Mason
  49. Meet Field Day Delegate – Pieter-Jan Nefkens
  50. Meet Field Day Delegate – Tony Bradley
  51. Meet Field Day Delegate – Jim Jones
  52. Meet Field Day Delegate – Neil Anderson
  53. Meet Field Day Delegate – John Deegan
  54. Meet Field Day Delegate – Andy Thurai
  55. Meet Field Day Delegate – Calvin Hendryx-Parker
  56. Meet Field Day Delegate – Lariana Luy
  57. Meet Field Day Delegate – Kyle Jenner
  58. Meet Field Day Delegate – Dr. Avril Salter
  59. Meet Field Day Delegate – Shala Denise
  60. Meet Field Day Delegate – Jerod Santo
  61. Meet Field Day Delegate – Ben Story
  62. Meet Field Day Delegate – Chris Hildebrandt
  63. Meet Field Day Delegate – Scott Bollinger
  64. Meet Field Day Delegate – Phillip Sellers
  65. Meet Field Day Delegate – Steven Cortez
  66. Meet Field Day Delegate – Jason Collier
  67. Meet Field Day Delegate – Deirra Footman
  68. Meet Field Day Delegate – Jason Gintert
  69. Meet Field Day Delegate – Jamie Phillips
  70. Meet Field Day Delegate – Wolfgang Stief
  71. Meet Field Day Delegate – David Klee
  72. Meet Field Day Delegate – Chris Cummings
  73. Meet Field Day Delegate – Bryton Herdes
  74. Meet Field Day Delegate – Kerstin Stief
  75. Meet Field Day Delegate – Marc Staimer
  76. Meet Field Day Delegate – Demetrios Brinkmann
  77. Meet Field Day Delegate – Dan Jones
  78. Meet Field Day Delegate – Peter Mackenzie
  79. Meet Field Day Delegate – Mike Wade
  80. Meet Field Day Delegate – Rocky Gregory
  81. Meet Field Day Delegate – Landon Foster
  82. Meet Field Day Delegate – Firas Shaari
  83. Meet Field Day Delegate – Girard Kavelines
  84. Meet Field Day Delegate – Betty DuBois
  85. Meet Field Day Delegate – Craig Rodgers
  86. Meet Field Day Delegate – Tim Bertino
  87. Meet Field Day Delegate – Rati Jokhadze
  88. Meet Field Day Delegate – Vince Schuele
  89. Meet Field Day Delegate – Brian Knudtson
  90. Meet Field Day Delegate – Jim Czuprynski
  91. Meet Field Day Delegate – Lexie Cooper
  92. Meet Field Day Delegate – Martin Duggan
  93. Meet Field Day Delegate – Jordan Villarreal
  94. Meet Field Day Delegate – Dan Kelcher
  95. Meet Field Day Delegate – Paul Braren
  96. Meet Field Day Delegate – Chris Hayner
  97. Meet Field Day Delegate – Troy Martin
  98. Meet Field Day Delegate – Falko Banaszak
  99. Meet Field Day Delegate – Chris Reed
  100. Meet Field Day Delegate – Jay Stewart
  101. Meet Field Day Delegate – Charles Uneze
  102. Meet Field Day Delegate – Eric Stewart
  103. Meet the Field Day Delegate – Greg Grimes
  104. Meet Field Day Delegate – Kerry Kulp, Founding Partner at Velaspan
  105. Meet Field Day Delegate – Roy Chua, Founder and Principal at AvidThink
  106. Meet Matt Tyrer, Founder and Chief Analyst at the Competitive Corner
  107. Meet Mikael Korsgaard Jensen, Technology Specialists Team Lead at Kamstrup
  108. Meet W. Curtis Preston, aka Mr. Backup
  109. Meet Mike Bolitho, Wireless Engineer
  110. Meet Jon Hildebrand, Senior Product Architect at 11:11 Systems

We’re welcoming a new delegate to the Tech Field Day community at our next event: Chris Cummings! Chris is a lover of the outdoors, camping, and backpacking and has a passion for automation. He took some time to tell us about his experiences and thoughts on the IT world ahead of his debut at Networking Field Day 25.

Check Chris out on Twitter @CrankyNetMan, on the Tech Field Day Website, or on his website. Tell us what’s going on, Chris!

How did you get into technology and IT?

I started at a young age fiddling with computers just because I thought they were cool and I didn’t have much else to do. I soon learned that they had an endless number of possibilities and decided to learn all that I could about them.

What do you do now? Tell us a little about your current role.

Currently, I am a network engineer at a large US-based Research and Education network. I spend most of my time playing with service provider technologies and network automation.

What are your biggest challenges?

One of my biggest professional challenges currently is working with equipment that still has kludgy automation interfaces—Making these devices work with modern automation and orchestration tools is always an adventure!

Where do you see IT going in the next 3-5 years?

I think that IT is going to require a greater level of cross-functional work. With containerization, network automation, cloud technologies, and all of the latest tools, everyone needs to know more about the entire technology stack—I think that the days of throwing a ticket over the fence with “not a network issue” or “runs on my machine” is going the way of the Dodo. Now that IT has become so much more accessible and organizations can more easily skirt around difficult IT teams, IT professionals will need to adapt to collaboratively working across the entire stack.

What was your first computer? What was great about it? What is your go-to computer now?

I don’t remember the exact model of the computer, but I recall that it ran Windows 95. I think it even had a turbo button!

How do you manage your work/life balance?

I think the best way to manage this is by working for an organization that values and respects this balance—I am very thankful to work somewhere that understands this! I think that setting clear boundaries is very important and helps ensure that expectations are matched on both sides.

If you weren’t working in IT, what would you be doing instead?

I would likely be doing some form of Audio Engineering. I love working with audio/video equipment and running front of house for events.

What do you do in your spare time? Do you have any hobbies?

Currently, I am building an 8-bit breadboard computer out of 74 series logic chips. Otherwise, I am out backpacking, hiking, and camping.

What are you most excited about seeing at the event?

I think the most exciting thing is getting to collaborate with other network engineers and discuss the solutions presented with people who are much smarter than me! I’m most interested in service provider technology and network automation tooling, so I hope that there are some presentations in these areas.

What is the coolest thing you’re working on right now?

I can’t talk too much about specifics, but I’ve been putting a lot of work into python libraries for internal network automation tools. The general idea is to make easily consumable libraries that handle all of the API work to talk to our tools. These libraries present those APIs as standardized objects to a network engineer so that they can get straight to the data without mucking about in the specifics of RESTCONF, NETCONF, REST, SOAP, etc.

Who inspires you?

Vint Cerf. He seems to be one of the kindest, gentlest, and most humble souls in tech, despite having a lifetime of accomplishment under his belt.

As a child, what did you want to do when you “grew up”?

I’m still trying to figure this one out, I don’t think I have or ever will fully grow up! At a young age, I would have wanted to be an astronaut.

What movie character would you like to be and why?

Either Iron Man or Batman. They’re both normal people that get to play with high-tech toys all day!

What is your favorite thing about what you do?

It’s the people I work with, both at my job and in the general field of networking. There are so many great people who are just willing to help you learn and better yourself, which is utterly priceless!

If you won the lottery and could retire, what would you do with your time?

I would travel, camp, and volunteer my technology skills for a good cause.

Thanks, Chris! We’re excited to have you join us as a delegate and share your experience! I don’t think there are any Turbo buttons being shown off at Networking Field Day, but we’re sure there will still be some other pretty cool stuff.

Be sure to tune in at the upcoming Networking Field Day on May 12-14, 2021 to see Chris in action!

About the author

Matt Garvin

Matt Garvin is an Event Coordinator and brings five years of event support and logistics experience to Tech Field Day for Gestalt IT. When not at work, Matt is probably playing some sort of game: most commonly board games, video games, or sports. Matt is also a Dad of 3, Cleveland sports enthusiast, and wannabe movie buff. Check out his super boring twitter at @MrMattGarvin.

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