A Pioneer’s Adventures in Telecoms (Part 1)
Well — Due to the fact that both titles “The Hitch-Hiker’s Guide to DevOps” and “The Hitch-Hiker’s guide to the Cloud” have been taken, I needed to come up with a new title for my reflections on 23+ years in the commercial Internet space.
Bottom line: It’s been a roller coaster experience, from great success and market leader in Germany, and Europe to steady decline — which has largely been shaped by the Telecoms carrier sector, after our Internet Service Provider (ISP) start-up from 1984 founded by the Usenix group members at the University of Dortmund, became a commercial operation in December 1992, and the first ISP in Germany.
You have probably never heard of European Unix Networks, or EUnet for short. [Ed.: The sticker on the Chromebook picture above was produced for CebIT in 1994.] In 1996 we got wholly owned by UUNET Technologies, the first US ISP, which then got owned by MFS, got owned by WorldCom, which merged with MCI to MCI WorldCom, and then re-emerged as the new MCI in 2004, after the infamous WorldCom bankruptcy. Subsequently MCI got owned by Verizon in 2006.
So, 18 years of my tenure at the “same company with changing names”, are shaped by a typical command and control Telecoms environment, while the early commercial years 1993–1999 were characterized by an easy-going start-up mentality and culture, very much of what Google, Facebook, and other unicorns of today’s Internet were like, when they got started.
After the merger with WorldCom, the IP geeks had to adjust to the Telecoms environment and its command and control mindset. The clash of cultures: IP geeks vs Telco heads went on for many years. Which made quite a few people pretty unhappy, or leave the company. Or they still hang-out at the Telco-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named, so let’s call it “the_big1" and give it a nice logo:
Note: This is part 1 of a series of loosely coupled stories on my personal adventures in the Telecoms industry. More is going to be published on Medium. Stay tuned.
Pioneers, Settlers and Town Planners
A couple of years ago, I started listening extensively to Podcasts, especially those from the former and current members of the CCC (Chaos Computer Club). Tim Pritlove is a pioneer and master-mind of the German Tech podcast scene, devised the Podlove publisher framework and managed to form the field in a way, he could make a living from podcasting — this is very unusual outside the US, where podcasters like Leo Laporte are doing this for many years —
Tim is a former speaker of the CCC and one of his first podcasts was Chaos Radio (a format invented for public FM radio, and still broadcast live from Berlin on every last Thursday of a month on Radio Fritz, Berlin). Tim later added Chaos Radio Express, which features a 1-to-1 interview with an expert in a field on whatever subject, most of them of technical nature, but sometimes outside the tech sphere.
I remember, I listened to Chaos Radio Express #176 on Cloud Computing in 2011, and on the CRE website, I read a comment by someone who pointed to an OSCON 2009 talk by Simon Wardley: “Cloud Computing-Why IT matters?”. I watched the talk on YouTube and got blown away. I searched for more “Simon Wardley” talks and found the one from OSCON 2010: “Situation Normal, Everything must change”, and got even more blown away.
“How could so many great ideas fit into a single talk?”
I had the sensation that this witty, brilliant guy on stage, had finally found the light switch, hidden for many years in some dark corner in the back of my mind. He helped me understand why so many things that go awfully wrong in IT exist. And why it was so hard to spot them. And that it wasn’t only me to never understand why IT needs advice from consultants, and he discrepancy formula:
“Consultancy company X told us to do Y, but then Z is what really happened”.
And most of all, finally many of my own observations in the Telecoms vs Internet culture clash made perfect sense:
“I felt immediate enlightenment. And reassurance. I wasn’t stupid.”
Since that day, I have been following Simon Wardley on Twitter (@swardley), read large parts of his original “Bits or Pieces?” blog, watched most of his talks on YouTube and started to experiment with “Wardley Maps” and further ideas he meanwhile added to his body of research at LEF (Leading Edge Forum, UK). You can find his book “Wardley maps-Topographical intelligence in business” here on Medium and read it “for free”, since it is all Open Source.
Admittedly, all this may sound a bit like Douglas Adams famous methodology of “Zen Navigation”, he invented for his famous detective Dirk Gently. For those of you, too young to know Douglas Adams or his Dirk Gently Detective stories, here is a proper definition:
“Zen Navigation is a form of navigation created by Dirk Gently. The technique used, rather than consulting a map, is to find someone who looks like they know where they’re going and follow them. It very rarely gets you where you wanted to go, but always where you needed to be.”
Seems that most CIOs operate in “Zen Navigation” mode. But that’s a different story, for another day.
To be continued…
