Want to spin up a Linux server?  There’s an app for that….

Recently, a good number of Rackers attended the Red Hat Summit in Boston, MA.  Rob Collazo, Robert Taylor and myself were attending on behalf of Talent Acquisition (aka Racker Talent) in an effort to recruit potential future Rackers, as well as help spread our brand (and I think Rob may have encountered few new clients as well).

This year, we decided to do a “guerilla” approach instead of our traditional convention set up of manning a full booth and passing out Rackspace swag.

So what did we do to create a buzz?

Well… by spinning up Red Hat Servers on demand from our nifty iPads.   It was an interesting approach to say the least, but one that we all feel left a substantial impact.  With our t-shirts on that read, “Red Hat Now…Ask Me How” we made our way around the Expo floor showing/demoing/wowing folks with our CloudPro iPad application (Thanks Mike Mayo!!!).

The typical reaction……”Whoa, that is sooo cool!”  Many of the techs wanted to time us to see how long it took to actually spin up the servers.  I found it interesting to see how many “Linux geeks” were spinning up Windows servers… just an observation.

Events of the Summit included a #140 Tweet-up that was sponsored by Jeff Pulver (co-founder of Vonage).  It was great to meet a VERY influential individual in the VoIP space as well as a huge influence in the social media realm.  As we made our way over to the Seaport Hotel, we were just in time to meet and speak to Jeff directly about what’s going on in his world.  Robert Taylor and Rob Collazo took the lead in the discussion, while I just listened and learned.

Second day in Boston, Rob Collazo had made plans to attend an event at the Bocoup (current Rackspace client) Loft.  At this event, they were filming a show called Pokin’ Holes, which is a live, web-casted show that highlights young start-up companies trying to get their name out there.  This episode featured a company called Editingg (yes with 2 g’s).  Editingg is a company started by two college students (Chris Gallello & John Gesimondo) that specializes in online home photo editing.  Before the show started, the Bocoup folks gave a shout out to Rackspace, which was nice and welcoming.  Thank you guys!

On the last day, we were taking a break from the Expo floor and on our way back to the Seaport Hotel when this young woman walked up and asked us if we had any extra t-shirts.  She said she loved the design and wanted to “give one to her boss.”  She also handed us her business card at the same time and it turns out, she was the Executive Assistant to Jim Whitehurst (CEO of Red Hat).  Hopefully Jim liked the shirt as much as she did!

Results from the Summit are still being worked out and we have high hopes that we attracted some great talent to Rackspace.  If anything else, we made a lot of new friends, met with possible clients and rubbed shoulders with a lot of great and influential people along the way.

Up next, OSCON…

Scott McCamish is a Sr. Technical Recruiter based out of San Antonio, TX.  Scott has over 9 years of Recruiting experience and originally joined Rackspace in 2008.  Since then, he has dedicated his efforts toward recruiting top-tier candidates for The Rackspace Cloud.  Specifically, Scott supports Engineering and Operations, Product and Support for the Cloud.

In his spare time, Scott enjoys hunting down the best cuisine in San Antonio and Austin (as well as many other citites) – and, of course, enjoys the music scene in Austin.  Scott particularly has an ear for indie rock. I guess you could say he is a Food, Wine and Music Fanatic!  Connect with Scott on Twitter by clicking here.

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