I am the principal product manager of a small team of experts dedicated to technology strategy assessment within the CTO office of Ipsos, a global leader in market research. My area of expertise is data access, analytics, and "last-mile" data delivery.
Three years ago, I had the opportunity to turn my attention to cloud strategy and deployment in data delivery innovation and, more recently, in the form of application modernization.
Laying out the Plan to Address Challenges
In working on this new endeavor, the first challenge I had to overcome was the technical gap in my skill set. For years I was too comfortable with the traditional "on-premise" static infrastructure world. I realized that to create and capture value with a dynamic infrastructure, I had to change my mental models around governance, security, application architecture, networking, data engineering, and more.
I immediately reached out to all my professional networks inside and outside Ipsos to seek guidance and build the best path forward. I was interested in training recommendations and connecting with my networks' collective knowledge on cloud journey strategies.
After decades of experience in my field, I have come to appreciate professional networks as lifelong resources and valuable assets that can help any individual build a competitive edge in any industry.
Leaning on my Network to Be More Effective in My Role
At the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), we learn to recognize the power of networking to solve leadership challenges by observing how other companies or professionals have solved similar problems and are sparking new ideas. The more diverse our networks are (by industry, by profession or education, by organization type, by nationality, etc.), they can produce more insightful advice and be more powerful.
My professional networks are daily resources to gain new insights about the challenges I need to solve in my work. The questions I get from my networks after describing a challenge are usually surprising, uncomfortable, and generative, meaning if I decide to seek answers to the questions, I will generate a better solution to my challenge.
Being part of the C2C community is the next milestone in my journey to master all things Google Cloud and to connect with everyday Google Cloud Platform practitioners all over the world. C2C allows me to escape my industry's echo chamber and learn how other industries are solving similar challenges.
I recognize the value I can extract from the C2C community is proportional to the time investment and effort I am willing to put into it. I am looking forward to sharing my GCP journey, being a connector within the community, and an overall active member. In a nutshell, if you are looking to nerd out on weird data pipeline challenges or are looking for an unbiased opinion on a design challenge, please don't hesitate to join with me in this new, independent Google Cloud community.
Learn more about C2C, the independent Google Cloud Community.