LIU022: Chris Grundemann – From Pulling Cable to Network Automation Forum

Kevin (0:05)

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Welcome to Life in Uptime, the show where we talk with the people behind the networks that keep our world connected. I'm Kevin, joined by Alexis, and every week we sit down with engineers, leaders, and builders in tech to uncover the stories behind their careers. How they started, what they've learned, and where they're headed next. Our goal is simple, to help you see how far tech can take you, no matter where you start from.

Alexis (1:09)

All right, guys, today we've got it. Really?

I don't know if you all have been with us since the start. I would love to do a comparison of Kevin's intro from episode 1 to, I think this is episode 22, 23 Something like that.

Kevin (1:26)

We're getting up there.

Alexis (1:27)

It's crazy.

Anyways, we have a very exciting guest for y'all today. One of our dear friends, Chris. Now, Chris has had a myriad of different roles in IT. Everything from you were pulling cable, I believe, to start, and now he runs his own technology consulting company and is the co-founder of the Network Automation Forum. So, Chris, welcome to the show.

Chris Grundemann (1:54)

Hi, thanks for having me on. I'm excited.

Alexis (1:57)

Absolutely. Now, could you walk us through, I'd like to start with NAF or Network Automation Forum. Number one, it's top of mind for me because I was just at y'all's event. But two, I feel like programmability is such a big topic today in the industry.

Chris Grundemann (2:14)

Yeah, definitely. So, the Network Automation Forum is a organization that Scott Robon and I started about three years ago. And it's exactly what it sounds like, right? It's a forum for network automation and forum meaning like a salon, like a watering hole, like a drinking fountain. It's a place to come and talk, right? And the organization itself, our main purpose right now anyway is to hold the Autocon series of events. As you said, you just came and spoke at Autocon 5, which was actually the sixth Autocon because of course we indexed to zero, which was in Munich this spring.

And yeah, it's been amazing. It's just been this kind of wildfire that blew up. I like to say that I think Scott and I, we like started a campfire in the dark.

And as the light like washed out, we were like, oh, there's all these people standing out here in the dark. And they've kind of come and gathered around because it's just been an enormous response, right? We had something like 340 people show up at the first one. And then now we're pushing 700, 800 people showing up every time 3 years later. This was definitely a group of people that wanted to get together and talk. Yeah.

Alexis (3:24)

Which kudos to you for starting something like that. I feel like sometimes having the courage to put yourself out there first, to bring people together is always scary, especially around something as, I mean, it seems complicated to me, network automation. I was never really big in programmability, like learning anything related to computer science or software engineering. Every time I open a terminal, I'm like, am I going to break it? Where's the semicolon going? And so taking something like that and applying it to infrastructure, at least for me, seems very intimidating.

Chris Grundemann (4:08)

Yeah, absolutely. I think that's been part of the resistance.

One of the things we set out to do, we set the theme of the first event was, why haven't we seen full adoption of network automation yet? And I think you're touching on one of the answers there, which is you're taking two very complex fields. So networking, obviously, there's a ton that goes on there. There's tons of protocols. Then there's all these vendor differences and network differences. There's different types of networks with different types of protocols, with different types of vendors, and it gets really complicated really fast. And then you add in software development and systems engineering on top of that.

And you say, here, go have fun. And of course, people are intimidated. And of course, people need to come together and share those war stories, both for comfort and confidence, but also to move the industry forward.