the past few weeks I had the great opportunity to participate in a #syschat via twitter and a webinar with three awesome SME’s on 2015 Converged, Cloud, SDx Predictions. Those three SME’s were:

• Christopher Kusek. Chief Technology Officer of Xiologix, LLC. Christopher is an EMC^® Elect, a VMware^® vExpert, and an accomplished speaker, and an author with five books published.
  Blog: http://pkguild.com
  Twitter: @cxi
• John Troyer. Founder of TechReckoning, an independent IT community. He is the co-host of the Geek Whisperers Podcast and consults with technology vendors on how to work better with geeks.
  Blog: http://techreckoning.com
  Twitter: @jtroyer
• Kong Yang. Currently the SolarWinds virtualization Head Geek. Previously Kong was the cloud practice leader at Gravitant and held various roles while at Dell.
  Blog: http://konglyang.com or SolarWinds Geek Speak
  Twitter: @KongYang

Kong posted a blog on the Thwack community about the three E’s for cloud, containers, converged, and SDDC. I’d like to take some time and focus in on one of the “E’s” Kong mentioned; Evolution. With the pace that technology is continually advancing there are a few things I think IT pros must do to evolve and adapt: learn, connect, and give back.

Learn
I can only assume that the reason most of us got into this profession was our curiosity for how things worked and how we can make them better/more efficient. To keep that passion alive you must be willing to put aside some time to catch up with the latest technology. Hopefully you have a job with a manager that understands this and lets you set aside some time during the workday, but if not then you have to find time somewhere. You can do this by setting your own home lab or taking advantage of opportunities like the VMware HOL online.

Connect
It’s also helps fuel that passion when you are around like-minded individuals. I encourage IT pros to take part in local user groups, meet new people at industry conferences, or take advantage of the many social media channels. This is where you will find people that have been in your shoes before and can help advance to the next level. The best thing you can do is get involved and ask questions, within this tech community there are tons of people who are willing and very capable of helping.

Give Back
This could quite possibly the most important one because if no one wants to give back it makes the first two extremely difficult. There are dozens of online communities out there to join where you can share your expertise and help others. This is your chance to pay it forward without expecting anything in return. The success of a solution is dependent on the IT pro and these communities are there to help both!

Enough of what I think, I would love to hear your thoughts on the evolution of the IT Pro.