I’m super excited that I’ve finally talked the Rackspace co-founder and my good friend Dirk Elmendorf into coming out to visit the Rackspace Developer Offices in my new home here in Blacksburg VA.
Dirk is part of the reason that I started working at Rackspace some 14 years ago and really represents the early spirit of Rackspace that still lives on today. A spirit that encourages innovative, out of the box problem solving. servant leadership and empowering their employees to go above and beyond for the customer regularly. The whole Hawaiian shirt, flip-flops (or bare foot) style that Dirk is famous for, and Rackspace’s renowned work-hard/party-hard atmosphere; are just fringe benefits or secondary effects of the empowerment-spirit of this company that he and all early Rackers cultivated.
Anyway, Dirk moved on from Rackspace back in 2009, partly to get back to his Dev-start-up grass roots. This time the venture he’s started is a SaaS (Software as a Service) company called www.r26d.com . With Dirk back in his Developer happy-place, he still makes time to mentor tech-savvy entrepreneurs (through geekdom.com), new upcoming Rackers (through monthly Rackspace “Rookie-O” orientation sessions), as well as the occasional entrepreneurs/dev lecture around the globe.
This brings us to his talk here in Blacksburg! Dirk’s Technologist/Developer oriented presentation is:
“Dev Lessons I Learned the Hard Way”, By Rackspace Co-Founder Dirk Elmendorf
Location: http://tinyurl.com/bcb-rackspace
Date: Sept 18th
Time: Doors Open/Food 6pm, Talk from 6:30-7:30ish + Q&A time
There will be food and drink from opening until 6:30, and then Dirk will go over the various dev-related insights that he has gleaned over the years of growing small, tightly knit dev shops as well as billion dollar behemoths like Rackspace.
So if you want to have the chance to meet the man who helped start it all at Rackspace, c’mon out and shake his hands. Shoes ARE optional. 
————-
About Dirk Elmendorf:
Dirk Elmendorf moved to San Antonio to attend Trinity University. He graduated with a BA in Economics in 1997. After helping to start a very small computer consulting company, he stumbled onto the idea that would change his life. Along with two other Trinity students, Dirk co-founded Rackspace Managed Hosting in 1999. Rackspace is currently the world’s largest hosting and cloud company with a market cap of over 7 billion dollars. Dirk left Rackspace in 2009 to get back to his start up roots. He is currently a partner and lead architect for r26D – a company specializing in cloud based software for small business. Their first product is TruckingOffice.com – a trucking company management system. He is also focused on organizing and energizing San Antonio’s entrepreneur community.
