This is officially my first post on myITforum. I’m entering the world of putting myself “out there” and what better place to do it. I grew-up reading and learning with myITforum, it’s now my turn to give something back.
A bit about me. It’s 2012, I’m a 33 year old father of one (4 year old beautiful daughter) and living in Sydney, Australia. I originally started out in IT in 1994 when I was 16 (started a small dial-up ISP business with a friend). I spent a few years doing typical low-level IT help-desk and IT support for a larger ISP and then moved into Government. For the past 15 years I’ve been an independent consultant, at the same time building and juggling a growing number of IT-related business ventures.
I really fell into the IT industry by sheer accident, but in hindsight it was meant to be. I’m so passionate about IT. I’m always chasing the next IT challenge and I’m constantly reinvesting in my own development and technical knowledge and there aren’t too many nights I don’t spend until 2:00am working on something. My core background leading up to where I am today is: I spent about 5 – 6 years in the Application Packaging space and this proved to be excellent experience as it gave me a deep understanding of Windows (I would recommend it to anyone). From there I progressed into Windows SOE/Desktop engineering and the Systems Management space. From there I gradually moved towards being focused on designing and delivering Configuration Manager solutions (usually coupled with Windows SOE projects).
I’ve dabbled in a range of development projects over the years in VBS/VBA/VB6, VB.NET, ASP.NET, C#, WPF, Silverlight, HTML, CSS, PHP and JavaScript. These skills have come in exceptionally handy. I’ve developed countless numbers of tools, scripts and odds and ends as well as released a few commercial products.
These days I have an insatiable appetite for thinking outside the box, learning new things and exploring the unknown. I’m completely unafraid of change, if anything I’m more afraid of becoming bored through remaining stagnant and constant. I would not be able to go back to working for a single “company”, let alone stay in a “job” for more than a few months. I love the dynamic nature of projects and for me personally, the day I start to feel comfortable or complacent (part of the furniture as they say) I know is the day it’s time to move on and find the next challenge.
I love to get out there and get amongst as many different things as I can. As a consultant I get paid to travel all around Australia and visit a lot of different places. I get exposed to a breadth of other people’s experience and knowledge and I’ve had the opportunity to meet and work with many talented people at all sorts of organisations. I have been able to see how different people go about achieving ultimately the same goals and I’m constantly amazed how many times the round wheel can be reinvented. I am constantly amazed a how little I know and how much new stuff there is to learn.
I have to admit I’ve lost track of all the organisations I’ve been to but to summarise/categorise them, they include major food wholesalers, banks, investment firms, financial services providers, law firms, State, Federal and Local Governments, healthcare providers as well as Hospitals, manufacturing, mining and energy companies and local, national and global IT outsourcing providers. Currently one of my companies is a preferred supplier of on-demand/temp consultants to a large IT outsourcing firm, specialising in Systems Management and Application Packaging.
The amount of excitement, opportunity and activity surrounding the release of Windows 7, System Center 2012 Configuration Manager and now Windows 8 and Windows Server 2012, the demand has been incredible, the niche are of the industry has been rejuvenated. On the back of this, I decided the time was right to start posting some of my stuff and what better place than myITforum. I’m hoping it will become a half-decent searchable database of my field works and learning’s as I regularly face new things and I’m constantly having a hard time tracking down old things when I need to refer to them. Some of what I post will no doubt be covered elsewhere on other sites, perhaps even by other people posting on myITforum, but as you start to read my posts and get to know me and how I go about things, you’ll get an understanding of why I go about doing things the way I do.
Most of all, I hope my posts will go towards helping others and become useful for anyone who happens to stumble across them.
If you want, you can follow me on twitter at http://twitter.com/ben__fisher or join my System Center 2012 LinkedIn Group (http://www.linkedin.com/groups?gid=3752127)
Now comes the hard decision, what do I post first/next….
