About Me

My name is William Bell and I am the UC Gorilla Guerrilla. I have been working in the IT field for over 15 years. But that isn't necessarily who I am as much as what I do. I am married to a very talented and incredibly brilliant photographer. I am a "father" to three cats -- yeah, I'm that dude. I am an avid hiker and an on-again/off-again geocacher. I also collect 1/6th scale Hot Toys dolls action figures like these. I am an amateur chef, but who isn't nowadays. To round things out, I am a coffee snob and a Unibroue fan.

OK, now back to what I do.  I am the UC and Collaboration practice lead for Chesapeake NetCraftsmen. I have had the good fortune of working with various technologies and on many interesting projects. For the past 10 years my focus has been on Cisco Unified Communications and Collaboration technologies. In my work life, I use my experience with voice, video, virtualization, back office systems, application development, routing/switching,  and protocol analysis to design, deploy, and support end-to-end solutions.

What's with UC Guerrilla {dot} com?


I trolled through many different names and combinations before settling on the "gorilla". I primarily work with Cisco UC and Collaboration solutions. So, no brainer - Cisco's UC solutions will be a central theme. However, using something like Cisco UC Expert or Cisco Collaboration MacDaddy weren't that appealing. I don't like making claims like "expert" because that just isn't my style. Not too mention, I didn't want to deal with the legal arm of the boys in 'frisco (well, near 'frisco, anyway).

I knew I wanted a blog site name and a DNS domain name that married up nicely. My wife (who is the best) and I brain stormed a bunch. I did some "mind-mapping" type stuff (shout out to my colleague Terry Slattery) and while there were some good ideas, they didn't "click". 

Then one day, while pondering a design question at my home office, I spotted my Curious George lunch box (yeah, that's right I am also that dude), a half-dozen flying monkeys I got from some conference, a two foot tall stuffed monkey I got from Vegas after a night of heavy drinking socializing, and a stuffed gorilla I have had for who knows how long. 
Take your stinking paws off me, you damned dirty ape!
Then it clicked for me. I am a goal-oriented person and when I set my sites on something, I can be somewhat, shall we say - focused (read - OCD). I typically take an unconventional approach to thinking through a problem. I don't allow "best practices" and other industry or vendor provided material (no matter how useful) dictate how I do things. I treat them as data points, part of a whole. I form my own opinion and sometimes it lines up with what big daddy says and sometimes it takes me down a different path. 

So, I do "UC" and I am a guerrilla (...without the beret, camo, lethal weapons, or other army surplus gear). 

My goal with this blog is to share not only some techie "how-to" but to bring my point of view on what it takes to design, deploy, and maintain a sustainable solution. That's key: a solution starts with the problem, the situation you are trying to solve - not the technology. Technology is a means to an end. You often need to bring some unconventional thinking to the party in order to build a sustainable solution. RTFM is fine and I actually am one who enjoys TFM, but I believe that sometimes you have to color outside the lines to get the complete picture.

Contact Me!


Participation within tech communities and interacting with my fellow techies is always something I enjoy. So, please feel free to engage me in conversation. My opinion on community participation and knowledge sharing is laid out in this interview on the Cisco Support Community.

The best way to contact me is through the blog comments. I always try to respond to comments in one or two days.. 

You may also be able to reach me using email: "bill {at} ucguerrilla {dot} com"

You can also follow me on Twitter @ucguerrilla




6 comments:

  1. Bill
    I really enjoy your post , They are very informative and relevant . I was trying to subscribe by email but couldn't find anywhere
    Sachin Rajgire
    UC Lead

    ReplyDelete
  2. Sachin,

    Thanks for the feedback. Will remedy that oversight shortly!

    -Bill

    ReplyDelete
  3. Sachin,

    OK. Added the option to subscribe via email. Thanks again for pointing out the oversight!

    -Bill

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  4. Bill, Many times on my search for a solution I am led to your site and promptly forget what I was searching for. Your blogs are insightful, thoughtful and most of all useful. Thanks for sharing. Much appreciated

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  5. Hello William

    I have a question: If i want to run a sql from CLI on a cucm 9.1 how to i export a sql querry to a file? :)

    Thank you

    ReplyDelete
  6. Nice blog William, keep posting :)

    ReplyDelete