Ouroboros is an ancient symbol comprised of a dragon or serpent eating its own tail. The image – which represents an endless cycle of something which is the process of being simultaneously created and being destroyed – is the perfect metaphor for technology.
Greg Shamieh is the creator of Ouroboros. He is a technologist, strategist and big picture thinker that has worked with computers, networking and IT infrastructure for long enough that he has seen the snake eat itself and become a completely new snake at least four times during his career. Greg has worked with information technologies starting with mainframes and punched cards, ranging through some of the very first rack mounted Compaq ProLiant servers, through Gigascale High Performance Computing clusters, to the current highly virtualized, scale-on-demand cloud offerings. As an Infrastructure Engineer and Architect, he has seen first hand as new technologies pass from being the latest-and-greatest to being tools no-one even remembers occurring in a continuous, unbroken blur. Attempting to maintain any kind of technical currency in the Information Technology or IT Servcies Business means being willing and able to continuously eat ones own tail and learn new tools but also to be able to accept when hard fought expertise is no longer valuable or relevant.
Ourboros will discuss big picture strategies – fundamental changes to the landscape of technology and technology services. We will not only discuss Emerging Techologies, but will also talk about how to make informed decisions about how to use them in business, including the make-or-buy process where, increasingly, it makes sense to entrust IT Services to specialist providers, rather that do everything inside your business. We’ll also talk some about how to evaluate technologies to see if their interaction with human beings really represents progress. Too many times human being use themselves as live-fire psychology experiments when it comes to new technology and implement products without first considering if they bring value or create destruction, when viewed in human terms.
Finally, we’ll sometimes discuss how technology bleeds over into the transportation and energy sectors. Computer, communications and electric drive technolgies are radically altering everything we thought we understood about cars, trucks and motorcycles. These developments also occur faster than the process of understanding whether or not they are really desirable.
We hope you find these discussions entertaining and thought provoking.
Ouroboros Image Diana Morningstar – http://www.MirageArts.com – Copyright 2014
Ouroboros 