What You Will Find Here

Welcome to the personal blog of Nick Korte. The content you’ll find here blends what I’ve learned from tinkering with specific technology products / solutions and the simulataneous study of career progression in the tech industry and related disciplines. Some posts will be deeply technical, while others are focused on technical careers and influenced by my experience as co-host and co-producer of the Nerd Journey Podcast from 2018 to 2026.

A Little Background

My professional career began as a high school math teacher in 2004 after sudying applied mathematics. Somehow there’s been an element of teaching in every job I’ve held since. My love for learning followed me as I stepped out of the classroom in 2007 and 6 months later fell into IT at a manufacturing company. The role began as a hybrid analyst and IT role, but as the company insourced its IT support function and continued to grow, I progressed from novice IT Help Desk worker to full-blown Systems Administrator. Somewhere along the way I fell in love with virtualization.

After gaining experience as a part-time VOIP consultant, in 2016 I transitioned to Network and Systems Engineer at a HR services firm to help rebuild the server infrastructure. It was one year later in December 2017 when I joined VMware as a field sales engineer. You can read the story of how that dream found me here. After gaining experience as a sales engineer, I was blessed to participate in VMware’s Office of the CTO program for multiple years before the acquisition. Since then, I have remained in a field-facing sales engineer role serving a variety of customers ranging from small and medium businesses to some of the largest global corporations on the planet.

I’m a Christian, a husband, a father, and a lover of learning.

Community Participation

I owe much of my career progression and success to those friends and industry peers I met and was blessed to learn from through participation in different technical community groups. Don’t overlook The Power of Finding Your Community.

• It all began with the Spiceworks Community (where the NetworkNerd name was born). I began participating in the online community forums and would later become the co-leader of the Dallas / Fort Worth Spicecorps user group (2013 - 2022).
• Many Spiceworks community members also joined the MangoLassi (now Republic of IT) community. I was an active participant there for a time also.
• I’ve been part of VMware User Group (or VMUG) since 2014 or so. It’s where I heard about the VCP certification and was encouraged to purue it. I’ve continued to support the Dallas / Fort Worth VMUG chapter over time through attending meetings and doing presentations.
• During my time as a podcaster, I attended several meetings of the Dallas Area Podcasters group. At some point this group dissovled because the leader relocated, but it was a great place to meet and learn from other podcasters. This was the first non-technical community I ended up joining, and it eventually led me to attend Podcast Movement in 2025 when it came to Dallas / Fort Worth.

Certifications and Awards

Disclaimer

The views and opinions expressed here are my own and do not reflect the opinions of my employer or any other organization referenced herein.