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Reflections on a Journey of Transformation: My 2025 at IBM and the Path Ahead

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My tenure at IBM has come to an end, but the narrative I’ve spent two decades building is far from over. As I close this chapter, I find myself looking toward the next—searching for an organization ready to leverage twenty years of experience in global training strategy and digital transformation. The past year was defined by a singular mission: overseeing the deployment of AI-driven tools to accelerate learning content development. I witnessed the immediate, complex results of those efforts firsthand. Now, I am eager to carry that momentum forward. But before I step into the future, I must reflect on the remarkable, often unpredictable, year that was 2025. Leadership in a Time of Transition The year began in the wake of 2024’s reorganizations. I found myself leading a new team, positioned as the primary subject matter expert for our portfolio. With a deep understanding of our clients’ needs and our go-to-market strategy, I possessed a clear vision for aligning our curriculum with the ...
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IBM TechXchange Conference in Las Vegas 2024

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I will be there next week and I'm very excited about it! This conference is different than others in that it's really geared towards education and skill enablement - getting you to the next level with products, technologies, etc. As I write this, it begins in 6 days, but it's not too late to register:  https://www.ibm.com/community/ibm-techxchange-conference/   I am co-leading 3 learning sessions on IBM Liberty, and I will also be in the Sandbox (expo area), so if you see me there, please say hello!
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Troubleshooting Kubernetes: "zombie pods"

I recently ran into a mysterious problem as I was developing and testing a lab exercise to teach about Kubernetes resiliency. I sort of caused the problem myself, because I had run through several scenarios with the example application, and I wanted to blow it all away and start over...so I just started deleting things. That, my friends, is a sure-fire way to break something. If you are dealing with Deployments and ReplicaSets, merely deleting a pod is just going to cause K8s to try and redeploy it. I ended up with a handful of pods that were stuck in a state of "Terminating," and they would not die. For days. So, I asked around, tried researching the problem. A google search of "pods stuck in terminating" gave many hits, with many different possible causes and solutions. Some issues mentioned kubelet and a hostname mismatch - that was not it.  I tried doing a drain, cordon, and shutdown of the node. When I started it back up, the pods were still there, stil...
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Badges now available for IBM Microservices Specialization on Coursera!

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You can now earn a badge for completing each course in the IBM Microservices Specialization on Coursera.org. More information on each badge is here: Microservices Fundamentals Developing and Deploying Microservices with Microclimate Deploying Microservices with Kubernetes IBM Cloud Private: Deploying Microservices with Kubernetes
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IBM Microservices Specialization on Coursera

The  IBM Microservices Specialization just launched on Coursera! This series of self-paced online courses takes you through microservices fundamentals, microservices application development, and deployment of microservices to IBM Cloud and IBM Cloud private. In this course, you get hands-on experience with: Docker and containerized applications Kubernetes - a container orchestrator Helm - the Kubernetes package manager Microclimate - an end-to-end development environment for microservices Jenkins, and other tools used for DevOps IBM Cloud (formerly known as Bluemix), and  IBM Cloud Private - an application platform for developing and managing on-premises, containerized applications.  You can audit this series at no charge, or enroll for a nominal fee and earn a completion certificate. 
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Microservices and Kubernetes education on Coursera.org

I recently developed and launched a new course on Coursera.org - IBM Cloud: Deploying Microservices with Kubernetes About this course: In this course, you learn how to install the Kubernetes command-line interface (CLI), and create a Kubernetes cluster on which to run applications. Hands-on tutorials show you how to deploy microservices to a Kubernetes cluster. You also learn about securing and managing a Kubernetes cluster, and how to plan your Kubernetes cluster for deployment on IBM Cloud. You can audit this course at no charge, or pay a nominal fee to receive the badge/certificate after completing it. This course is part of a specialization on Microservices. If you complete all courses in the specialization, you get a special badge. Another course in the specialization,  Microservices Fundamentals , also recently launched, and two more courses in the specialization are targeted for release later this year. Coursera is a an education-focused technology company that o...
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Teaching mobile developers in Africa

This article is getting a replay on the IBM Mobile Business Insights blog: http://mobilebusinessinsights.com/2017/07/sowing-the-seeds-for-tomorrows-mobile-developers-in-africa/ A bunch of my articles from that time period have been archived, and are no longer available online, but this one, I think, is worth revisiting. It was one of the most interesting and successful experiences that I had while teaching abroad.
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