Nearly thirty years of asking what's actually going on here.

Infrastructure and cloud, from the physical layer up to owning the platform. What's next is AI, and I'm already in it.

Who I am

It's always been curiosity.

My mom still tells the story about tying me to a tree. There was heavy equipment working in the neighbour's yard and I kept getting over there to watch it, so she tied me up in ours. I don't remember any of it. I recognize it completely.

That's what put me into technology, and it's still the same pull. The equipment just stopped being something you can stand next to: servers and cable, then estates of them across three continents, then platforms where none of it is physical at all. It's why I still build things on my own time. Reading about how something works has never been enough for me, I want to watch it run.

Outside work the subjects of my curiosity have been diverse. It's landed on a jazz band good enough to play the Lionel Hampton Jazz Festival, on motocross and later karts, working up the classes and onto the podium with my own engine rebuilds, suspension and setup along the way, on a car I did the bodywork and paint on myself and a truck I swapped the engine in and rebuilt the transfer case on, and on flight training as far as being ready for the private pilot tests.

The pattern is the same every time. One thing, for as long as it takes to get properly good, until there's something real to show for it. Then something else catches. Some of it crosses straight back into my own field. The flying club's website got rebuilt on WordPress and published while I was a member there, and the club has built on it since. 3D printing started as a printer I assembled at home and ended with me making the case for rapid prototyping to a room of engineers at work.

The rest crosses back in ways that are harder to show than a podium and worth more at work. Going deep in one field gives you a map, and the deeper you go the more you trust it. That's what makes experts fast, and it's also what makes the map hard to question when a problem doesn't fit it. I have a map like that for my own field. I've also been a beginner in enough others to know what a wrong map feels like, and to have seen the shape of most problems somewhere else first. So when a room has run out of options, I usually have one that didn't come from inside the room. Gallup's word for that is Ideation, and it's further down this page.

The best days at work are the days when I help make someone else's day better.

Sometimes that's untangling a hard technical problem. Sometimes it's giving a leader what they need to make a decision they can defend. Sometimes it's just taking something off someone's plate on a bad week. It's the part of this job I'd miss.

Putting words to any of this came late. A CliftonStrengths assessment in January 2024 put names to five things I'd been doing for most of my career. None of them were news. It's just easier to be deliberate about something once it has a name.

CliftonStrengths · Top 5

This is the part that doesn't change.

These five are mine, in the order they came out. They're a fair description of how I solve problems, and a fairer one of how I work with the people who report to me.

Responsibility

Executing

Responsibility is ownership you take on yourself rather than ownership that gets handed to you. It runs on thoroughness first, working through the angles before committing instead of after, and on real discomfort when something you own turns out badly. That second half is the one I feel most, and it's why I put my hand up early.

The fuller version

“You take psychological ownership of your commitments. You are dependable and embrace values such as honesty and loyalty.”

Gallup’s definition of Responsibility

The part of my report I recognize most isn't the dependability, it's the thoroughness that sits in front of it. I explore a lot of angles before I act, which is probably why people hand me the plan, the schedule and the thing that has to land.

The other half is less comfortable. I genuinely regret producing a poor result, and that feeling does a lot of the driving. I learn from my first mistake, not my third one, and I'd rather tell you the day it happens than manage it quietly.

Ideation

Strategic Thinking

Ideation is a fascination with ideas and with the links between them, the connections between facts, people and problems that aren't obviously related. It tends to arrive as options rather than an answer, several of them, each with what it costs. Mine show up about the time somebody finishes describing the problem.

The fuller version

“You are fascinated by ideas. You see connections that others don't and can view the world from different perspectives.”

Gallup’s definition of Ideation

I've worked in enough places to have seen most problems solved a different way, so I draw links between facts, people and solutions that don't look related at first. What that produces is options, several of them, each with what it actually costs.

I hold them loosely. You'll get my recommendation, and if the decision goes the other way I'll back it and help make it work. I only get loud about a technology when it elegantly solves a real problem.

Relator

Relationship Building

Relator is usually described as a pull toward close working relationships. The version in my own report is the question-asking one: filling your head by asking, listening and picking up the background from whoever you're working with, until you understand what they're trying to get done and why they work the way they do. Most of what I know about any system, I learned that way.

The fuller version

“You enjoy close relationships. You find deep satisfaction in working hard with friends to achieve a goal.”

Gallup’s definition of Relator

The short definition is about close relationships, but my own report is closer to what I actually do: I fill my head by asking questions, listening, and picking up the background from whoever I'm working with.

What I'm after is what someone is trying to accomplish over the next few weeks or the next few years. That explains why they behave the way they do in a room, and it's usually the fastest route to the real problem. It's also where the coaching starts, because once I know something I want to hand it on.

Maximizer

Influencing

Maximizer is a bias toward strength over repair: build on what someone is already good at instead of grinding away at what they're not. It points inward and outward at once, at yourself and at the people you lead, and it shows up as noticing good work specifically rather than generally. It's the fastest way I know to raise a team's ceiling.

The fuller version

“You consistently ask, ‘How can we make this better?’ You don't settle for ‘good enough,’ but push for excellence.”

Gallup’s definition of Maximizer

I know what I'm good at and I'd rather spend my effort there than patch every limitation, and I manage the same way. Notice what someone is doing well, tell them specifically instead of generally, then hand them more of the work they're best at. That compounds. Grinding on weaknesses mostly doesn't.

It's the same instinct behind caring about the last ten percent, the documentation and the operational readiness, because that's where good work either sticks or quietly falls over.

Futuristic

Strategic Thinking

Futuristic is seeing the finished thing in detail before it exists, months or years out, and being the person others rely on to describe it for them. It comes with a cost built in: today can look ordinary next to the picture. It's also why what's coming usually interests me more than what's behind.

The fuller version

“You vividly imagine the future. You inspire and energize others with your vision of what could be.”

Gallup’s definition of Futuristic

I think in vivid pictures about where something is going, months or years out, and a lot of my career has been being the person asked to paint that picture for everyone else. The honest cost is that today can feel ordinary next to it.

Once I can see what's possible I want to start, and I'll work hard to breathe life into it. Right now that picture is AI, which is why I'm not content to read about it.

CliftonStrengths® is a registered trademark of Gallup, Inc.; the theme definitions quoted above are Gallup’s. Assessment taken January 2024. Everything else on this page is mine.

The arc

How I got here.

1997

The physical layer

Electronics school, then servers, cabling, and the first messaging migrations. The habits come from being the person who gets called when it stops.

2006

Estates, not machines

Fourteen hundred systems across three continents brought under one platform, the first team of my own, and data centre moves measured in tens of terabytes with no outage allowed.

2014

Hand-built to orchestrated

A private cloud across four data centres, and the realization that the interesting work was automating the build rather than doing it.

2017

Public cloud, for real

An account foundation built from nothing that let seven data centres close, and then the guardrails to keep a hundred and fifty accounts honest.

2022

Every chair

The consultant side. An enterprise data centre emptied into the cloud in about a year with near-zero downtime, and the migration practice written down so the next one didn't need me in the room.

2024

Owning the platform

Global accountability for the platforms behind regulated financial products, a small team spread across time zones, and the governance that keeps auditors satisfied.

Now

AI in the daily work

I use it every day. I built the system that runs my team's board, documentation and weekly reporting, and I spend personal time on multi-agent systems.

Where the curiosity is pointing.

The same pull that took me toward running machinery as a kid now points at AI. Not as a topic to have opinions about, but as something to use every day until I know where it genuinely changes the work and where it quietly doesn't.

I get enthusiastic about a technology when it elegantly solves a real problem, and not before. That's a test AI has been passing, in specific places, for a while now.

Thirty years of watching technology arrive hasn't made me a sceptic or a believer. It's made me useful at telling the two apart.

Contact

Let's talk.

If you've got something complex that needs untangling, a migration that has stalled, or a platform nobody quite understands any more, I'd like to hear about it. That's the work I'm best at and it's the work I enjoy most.

The full record, the roles, the dates and the things I've shipped, lives on LinkedIn.

LinkedIn hello@evannadeau.ca