What is EverySaturday?
Mark Boyd here, an ICT Professional based in Melbourne, Australia. This blog is a personal reflection on the happenings of the ICT industry, with the sole purpose of connecting ICT Professionals to their peers, and giving youth a go.
I’ve been lucky enough to recieve mentorship from some amazing people in my career, so it is time to give back. My career ethos has been “say yes to everything”. This ethos got me to where I am today.
I’m a believer in the quote – “Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid”. This quote is the very foundation of this website and the ideas I’ll share through this, and other blog posts. We must all learn to teach. We must all learn an empathetic, compassionate, and respectful lens.
We can only judge someone’s actions in business based on whether they’ve fully understood the directive they’ve been given, and the consequences of the choices they will make. We owe it to young professionals to guide them through their career and pay back the privilege we have all had in our careers so far.
Why did I start this blog?
I started this blog to repay the favour my mentors gave me, to train and mentor.
I’ve recently undertaken my Masters of IT Leadership at Deakin University, a professional practice/credential-based degree that is heavy on reflection and developing a sense of self-awareness to carry my career forward. It became clear in the first few weeks of taking on the Masters that I’d need to maintain an active connection with the industry beyond my LinkedIn profile.
This blog, and the EverySaturday business is an attempt to give young ICT professionals the advice I both received and wished I received as I was growing up in this industry. The mission is to connect young ICT professionals to the industry and provide independent advice to them through their careers.
Let’s start with a reflection on the my career
I’ve been in the industry for over a decade now. I’ve been a Desktop Support Technician, a Network Engineer, a Systems Engineer (Wintel), a Police Officer (long story), Managed Services Engineer, a Service Desk Manager, a Service Delivery Manager, a General Manager in a consultancy firm and now, a Project & Services Director at a Melbourne based Managed Services Provider.
I have been lucky to hold these positions and honoured to have met amazing people that have shaped my career along the way. I’ll talk at length about these roles in coming blog posts.
So what do I specialise in?
My core strength and specialty is ICT Managed Services. You’ll see me talk about this a lot on this blog. The ICT Managed Services sector in Australia is fast paced, diverse, and full of amazing people. I also believe the Managed Services sector is the fastest way to build a career in technology if you’re starting out as a technician or support engineer.
So we want to connect people, and mentor youth. What is my first piece of advice to those starting in the industry?
Find a mentor. The lessons a good mentor will teach you, directly, or indirectly, will carry with you for the rest of your career.
Some things my mentors have taught me.
Don’t be afraid to show your passion. You’re a human, not a robot. Do and pursue, only what you love. Pursue your passions relentlessly, unapologetically.
Understand what you do and don’t stand for. As a conscientious worker, your output will often outpace your peers. Don’t let this get you down. You aren’t there to “clip the ticket” – you are there to change the world.
Learn conviction. If your gut tells you something is bad, it probably is. You don’t owe your employer your mental health. Take care of your mental health.
Seek to change the world. Leave the industry in a better place than it was when you started in it.
Try to understand your industry’s pressures, try to understand your employer’s pressures. This will give you objectivity.
You will rightly want to be critical about issues your business faces. Learn empathy, learn to articulate problems coherently, succinctly so you can help your business overcome these issues.
When you do raise any issues, do it with conviction, and harness your emotional energy. Be positive. Your negative energy will rub off on your peers. Your managers are watching.
You will want to scream some days. Temper this propensity to the right place, right time. It takes 10 years to build a reputation, 10 minutes to destroy one.
Again, you are being watched. Your manager is noticing your turns of phrase, the way you dress, the way you speak, your positive or negative attitudes, your ability to self manage, your digital literacy, your communication skills, how you act under pressure, and how you work as a team player.
Your manager does not want to micromanage.
Your manager wants you to ask “What’s next?” when you run out of things to do – there is always more to do.
Learn to say no – this is hard, this will take time, and you will fail at this before you get good at it. Talk to your mentor about how to do this, they’ve likely spent years perfecting the art of saying no.
Don’t be afraid to make mistakes, and when you look back on them, don’t regret them. Share your mistakes with your peers. You will make a change on a customer’s environment and bring something down. We all do it. It is a rite of passage in this industry.
So what can you expect from this blog?
Most of this blog will be technology focused. Some of this blog will be your traditional “propeller-head” stuff, you can take the tech out of the ICT professional (when you get into management roles), but you should never take the ICT professional out of the tech.
And there will be business technology articles. I’ll post about technology risk, governance, finance, budgeting. I’ll be drawing from many sources of information. Sometimes, posts will be a regurgitation of a position taken in an article that I’ve read and adopted in my own practice. I will frequently link to my mentors, and those in the industry I follow.
People have asked, where did the “EverySaturday” name come from? The name came about because my aim was simple – post a new blog every Saturday. The domain was registered in 2015; my first blog post is in July 2019. Here’s to hoping new material is published each week from here on in.
So what’s next?
In the coming weeks, I’m hoping to get a few dozen articles up. I’m looking at posting a few reflection pieces first up. What roles I’ve taken on, what I learnt from them, the challenges, the good, the bad, and the sometimes downright ugly.
There will be a few “businesses I support” series of posts.
I’ll get technical at times. I’m looking forward to writing articles on technical troubleshooting. I’ve noticed a lack of troubleshooting ability as a failure of universities around the country – we aren’t teaching young technical people to troubleshoot. We teach them to build systems, not administer them.
I plan on hosting question and answer sessions on Saturday mornings around Melbourne as this blog matures and bringing guest speakers in to talk to young folk about navigating this broad church of an industry we all operate in.
Lastly, because this has come up already, any business or industry professional I write about I have both permission to do so, and I have not been paid to write the content (except where explicitly stated)
So, here’s a question to my exactly zero follows (right now, let’s grow this!) What do you want to see out of this blog? Is there a technology or topic you’d like me to explore? Is there any advice you’re seeking in the industry? Reach out at advice@everysaturday.com.au. Questions asked will be responded to individually and disseminated as a blog post for the benefit of the followers of this blog.
Happy reading, I hope we all learn something along the way.
Regards, Mark.