SoftLayer is in a constant state of change … It’s not that bad change we all fear; it’s the type of change that allows you to stretch the boundaries of your normal experience and run like a penguin … Because I got some strange looks when coworkers read “run like a penguin,” I should explain that I recently visited Moody Gardens in Galveston and saw penguins get crazy excited when they were about to get fed, so that’s the best visual I could come up with. Since I enjoy a challenge (and enjoy running around like a penguin), when I was asked to design the new version of SLDN, I was excited.

The goal was simple: Take our already amazing documentation software infrastructure and make it better. A large part of this was to collapse our multi-site approach down into a single unified user experience. Somewhere along the way, “When is the proposal going to be ready?” became “When is the site going to be ready?”, at this point I realized that all of the hurdles I had been trampling over in my cerebral site building were now still there, standing, waiting for me on my second lap.

I recently had the honor to present our ideas, philosophy and share some insight into the technical details of the site at OSCON 2011, and KHazzy had the forethought to record it for all of you!

It’s a difficult balance to provide details and not bore the audience with tech specs, so I tried to keep the presentation relatively light to encourage attendees (and now viewers) to ask questions about areas they want a little more information about. If you’re looking at a similar project in the future, feel free to bounce ideas off me, and I’ll steer you clear of a few land mines I happened upon.

-Phil