The Early Years

Workforce

• Amusement park ride operations ( aka, 16 year old's power trip)
• Pizza Chef... ( Chef might be a bit much )
• Retail in major electronics ( Went out of business, NOT my fault... )
• Car Stereo installer ( actually a pretty awesome gig )
• Grunt in an oil field ( actually a pretty terrible gig )
• Shop Manager at transportation company ( mostly washed cars )

Schooling

• Graduated from high school in 2003
• Started community college in 2004
• Manged to turn a 2 year degree into a 10 year almost degree

Digital Arts and Animation

so you want to work in games!?

Enter The Open Cloud Academy from stage left...

What I heard

• Career ready in 8 weeks
• Created by Rackspace (everyone wants to work there!)
• Move out of my parent's house!

Problems...

• What does Rackspace do?
• What the hell is Linux?

Motivation??

Got my buns in gear!

• Quit my job... (I'm only a little crazy)
• Took 2 weeks to get CompTIA A+ Certified
• Took 3 weeks to get CompTIA Network+ Certified
• Started with the OCA in the next 2 weeks

I'm in! Now what?

Pilot Program is just a friendly way to say "lab rats"

• Drinking from the fire-hose...
• 8am - 5pm training ( read as 7am - 9pm )
• I've never been more successful 

What I got...

And then?...

Worst. Sysad. Ever.

Working at Rackspace

• For the first 6 months I kept waiting for someone to figure out I didn't know what I was doing...
• They still haven't figured it out...

So Mr Bigshot, what's it take to be a sysad?!

The skillz to pay the billz

• Linux
• Apache
• Mysql

• Networking
• PEOPLE!

Linux

• Package Management
• Command Line Tools

• LVM/Partitioning
• PEOPLE!

Apache

• Installation
• Reading Logs

• vHosts
• PEOPLE!

MySQL

• Installation
• Reading Logs

• Replication
• PEOPLE!

Networking

• Configuring IPs / Routes
• DNS

• iptables
• PEOPLE!

PEOPLE!

DID YOU GET THAT YOU HAVE TO BE ABLE TO SPEAK PEOPLE!?

Thinking Open Cloud Academy might be right for you?

Phase 1: Self Study!

• This is where you decide if this is right for you
• The OCA offers advice on which books to buy, what videos to watch free on youtube, and even free instructor lead classes at the facility open to anyone.
• The goal is to get your CompTIA Network+, this will cost you around $250

Phase 2: Instructor Lead Class

• Monday - Friday, 8-5 
• 8 weeks
• Test voucher for RHCSA
• Phone screening with Rackspace
• $3500 ( Possible Financial Assistance )

Potent Notables

• Older than 18, younger than over 9000
• Network Track Also Available
• Over 300 people have been through, just over 40% hired on at Rackspace, over 70% employed in their field of training.
• Enrollment is done on the 1st and 3rd Tuesday of each month on location at the Open Cloud Academy

OCA!? We don't need no stinking OCA!

Find your motivation!