Chris Hildebrandt will be a new delegate at Tech Field Day Extra at VMworld 2020! When he’s not working as a Technical Architect at a large healthcare company, Chris spends his time with his family and finding projects in the community to donate time to. Check Chris out on Twitter at @CHildebrandt42, on the Tech Field Day Website, or on his blog. Let’s learn a little more about Chris!
How did you get into technology and IT?
As a kid I was always interested in computers, I spent a good portion of my childhood playing with technology, when electronics broke in the house I would take them apart and find out what resistor or capacitor broke, take it out of something else and put it back together and test it out. This then later on evolved into to scoring a job in a helpdesk role, then an Administrator role, and now still at it.
What do you do now? Tell us a little about your current role.
Technical Architect for large medical devices / healthcare company. Been here for 5 years, my day to day roles have evolved over the years. I started off as System Engineer and worked on all systems, then migrated to managing VMware Horizon environment. Now the role has evolved to Designing our systems of the future IT landscape, and helping the company align with its future goals.
What are your biggest challenges?
The biggest issue that I think everyone has is that there never seems to be enough time for Work/Life balance and for you to keep up your skill sets. And I always seem to find a community project to give my remaining time away to. It also seems at every turn I seem to lack some skill or knowledge, and now I’m driven to learn something new, and now compounding problem one with no time.
Where do you see IT going in the next 3-5 years?
I really don’t see things changing much. It seems we have been making huge leaps and bounds but really instead of going up in the technology stack we seem to be spreading it wider. Getting into my things adding new things into the mix. So I don’t see it evolving that much but excited to see what’s next.
How do you manage your work/life balance?
Short answer: Really badly! I tend to work too many hours, and then spend a few hours with the family and as soon as they start to settle into bed, start writing PowerShell for either something that I want to do for work, or some community project like the AsBuiltReport project.
What was your first computer? What was great about it? What is your go-to computer now?
Tandy 1400 LT, was fun laptop that would never fit in my lap. It did its job and got me hooked into technology. Today I have a Surface Pro 4. I enjoy the form factor of the surface pro laptops and this has been a rock-solid laptop/tablet for me over the last few years. Even though I think I have stretched the limits of age of this thing are are in the market for a new laptop.
If you weren’t working in IT, what would you be doing instead?
Heavy Equipment Operator, in my early years I had the pleasure of working for a few John Deere dealers and had the ability to drive random equipment all day long was always a good fun day out of the norm IT work. Or a professional fisherman.
What do you do in your spare time? Do you have any hobbies?
Spare time? What is that? In what time I do have I enjoy going hiking in the woods or anywhere I can. Fishing or about anything outdoors. And in the last few years I have found the new passion for automation of things. From writing PowerShell to 2am to finding some way to automate something in the house to make my life easy.
What are you most excited about seeing at the event?
I’m excited to be a first-time Delegate and see the process from this side. Also gaining the opportunity to learn more about the products being presented.
Who inspires you?
I don’t think I can narrow it down to any one person. My Father and Grandfather for their work ethic. From a technology side of things, don’t think really had an inspiration till one day seeing Steve Wozniak at the KCVMUG UserCon. His story of how he innovated the personal computer from spare parts from work has given me some drive.
As a child, what did you want to do when you “grew up”?
As a child I always wanted to be an Architect, and design buildings but my ambitions fell short and my love for computers out weighed that.
What superhero movie character would you like to be and why?
Iron Man, yes we can debate if he is a superhero or just a rich smart guy, but the ability to build and create something as the Iron Man suit is amazing. And having that kind of technology, skill, and passion is a great asset to have and I would love to have that.
If you won the lottery and could retire, what would you do with your time?
This depends on who you ask, me or my wife. But from me, I would try to spend every bit of time out in the world. Seeing things, hiking trails, fishing lakes, rivers, and oceans. Just enjoying nature.
Well, thanks for sharing Chris! We are excited to have you on board as a delegate and we appreciate you admitting that Iron Man is just a “rich smart guy.”
Tech Field Day Extra at VMworld 2020 is on October 6th, we’ll see you there!
