Whitney Lee's career path has been all over the place, from artist, wedding photographer, waiter, and now world-renowned devrel in the cloud native world. Relevant Material: Whitney mentions the book Rest. Whitney's in YouTube channel, including links to all of her other YouTube projects, conference talks, etc. Whitney's LinkedIn. Whitney's wedding…

We discuss compensation, particularly how people in the IT department ("developers," etc.) are so disconnected from the actual business that compensating them based on business performance is near impossible. Not good if you're an IT person and like money. There's other types of comp. then money, obviously, and those are fine t…

People in large organizations avoid improving for improving's sake. They're very rarely proactive in transforming. Instead, it seems that management in most large organizations only act, and change, when they fear competition and failure. "Everyone" knows this is a bad strategy, and yet "everyone" does it. Perhaps we …

We discuss outsourcing IT.由Software Defined Talk

Journey Through the Business Bottleneck, part 1. Join Rick and I as we try to find this elusive thing called "The Business." We lay out a theory we've been talking about: while IT has been improving or, at least, can improve, the business side of the house isn't showing up to do anything with CLOUD and AGILE and THE DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION. W…

Large organization are desperate to become “tech companies.” They drool at these tech companies ability to grow and change quickly. Despite mastering agile over the past 20 years, IT as a whole is too slow and unreliable. “It’s the culture,” everyone says. Changing culture for a team of 10 people is easy - changing a department of 20,000 develop…

Chris Aniszczyk is the CTO of the CNCF. We discuss how he got into open source, what it's like to work at Twitter and how he helped start the CNCF. Plus, Chris gives us an overview of the different kinds of CNCF projects and offers advice on how to get started with Kubernetes. Show links: Hatching Twitter GORILLA.BAS IBM Extreme Blue Eclipse Market…

Matt and Brandon interview Adam Jacob the co-founder of Chef. We discuss Adam's career, what led him to start Chef and Chef's recent decision to open source 100% of its Software. Plus, Adam give us some tips on Dungeons & Dragons and transitioning from being a founder to an executive. Links Goodbye Open Core — Good Riddance to Bad Rubbish We need S…

Jeff Meyerson is the host of Software Engineering Daily. We talk about his career and what led him to start a daily tech podcast for software engineers. We also talk about current trends in cloud computing and Jeff recounts his career as professional poker player. Topics: Darknet Diaries Chartbreakers Episode Who Is Michael Ovitz? Where to find Jef…

Version control has changed a lot over the past 15 years: we’ve moved from a centralized to a distributed model at the basic level. But the practices people follow have changed and grown as new methodologies like DevOps and continuous delivery have relied on version control for operational stability and reliability. In this interview, Coté talks wi…

Brandon interviews Umair Khan about his experience working in AI Ops and Cloud Security. Umair recently joned Scytale and he explains how the SPIFFE open soruce project can help secure communication between cloud services. Contact Umiar: LinkedIn @UmairMoheet Why I joined Scytale Special Guest: Umair Khan.…

Jake Moilanen started and sold two companies and is now joining the ranks of Venture Capital. We discuss his career, his approach to investing and he explains what it is like to bringup the Linux Kernel on a supercomputer for the first time. Connect with Jake: @moilanen LinkedIn Special Guest: Jake Moilanen.…

Zane Rockenbaugh specializes in working with early stage startups. Most of the time his clients are boostrapping their new compnay and need someone technical who can help build version 1.0. In this episode, we talk about Zane's career and what it's like to be a "Startup CTO." Most importantly, we talk about his experience of taking raw ideas and tu…

Coté talks about his job being an "evangelist," a word people no longer seem to use but everyone understands. Brandon interviews Coté about what the job is, what the work's like, and some examples (other than himself) of people who do it well. Call it "developer advocacy," "developer relations," being a "thought leader," or just a straight up hustl…

When Coté says he doesn’t know how numbers work, he actually means it. To help out, he talks with Rachel Stephens, from RedMonk, who not only explains ratios, but also finance numbers. Fine more from Rachel on her RedMonk blog, and in Twitter. Special Guest: Rachel Stephens. Links: Five Minute Finance — Have you ever felt utterly out of your elemen…

Dustin Kirkland joins us to discuss Linux, Cloud Computing and making wine. We talk about Dustin’s career journey from entry-level developer to Google Product Manager. He shares his experience working at IBM, Canonical and now Google. Plus, he tells the story of how working on his own open source project helped him land a job at startup. Links: Dus…

How do you implement IT Automation best practices at a large company? What's the best approach to convince stakeholders that IT Automation is worth the effort? In this interview with Acxiom's Chris Donaldson we talk all about the good, the bad and ugly of IT Automation.. We discuss his career and how his previous experiences shaped his view of IT A…

Brandon speaks with Matthew Brutsché from 500 Rockets Marketing. Matt gives us his bold predications based on his recent shopping experience at the Amazon Go store in Seattle. Plus, we talk about the evolution of digital marketing and what it means to launch a product into the market. Links: Amazon Go Store 500 Rockets Marketing Quick Concall iPhon…

Brandon interviews Satish Kodukula about product management. We compare product management at large companies and startups, discuss how to validate your next startup idea and when to build your minimum viable product (MVP). Notes: Marc Andreessen on Product/Market Fit More about Satish: Chief Winning Officer Austin Software Consulting All Star Pick…

Getting familiar with analyst relations is a key component of an enterprise software business. “Analyst relations” is sort of like PR, but actually pretty different. You want to, of course, drive influence with the analysts, but also consume the content and advise they’re putting out. And while there’s two major firms in the tech world - Gartner an…

This is a great conversation with John Mitchell about Duke Energy improving it’s software capabilities, doing “digital transformation,” as the kids like to call it. We start from the beginning of what kicked the company off, a shift from COTS software to mobile apps and analytics. We then discuss a couple initial projects that Duke transformed, inc…

Security, security, security! Everyone wants security, at least they say so. How it’s actually managed and even conceptualized in organizations is a lot more than just patching software and using CAPTCHA’s. In this discussion, Coté talks with Javvad Malik who’s been in the security business for countless years. In addition to talking about how secu…

If you only followed the daily headlines, AI and machine learning seem like a magical technologies that will either solve all our problems or put everyone out of work. In reality, there’s little to know AI and machine learning, though complex, has many practical uses. While they’re often delightful, there’re not mystical. Coté discusses how to thin…

How do you implement Agile? Why does Agile matter? How has Agile changed in the last decade? Where do you get a beer in Austin? Walter Bodwell answers all of these questions and more in this episode. Plus, we hear the story of how Evity was sold for $100 Million. More Planigle www.walterbodwell.com Agile Austin Keep Austin Agile 2018 Image Credit S…

Why does kubernetes even exist, why don’t existing things work just as well for it? And then what kind of applications can you run on it, at least following the original intentions. Once we sort that out, we talk about the same for Istio. We also discuss hospital IT and how large companies like IBM decide which open source projects to work on. More…

JJ Asghar from Chef explains how he found his way into DevOps and why DevOps makes Christmas better. We also discuss the latest news about Uber's security breach and how it could have been prevented. Finally, we find time to talk about gas grills, building Linux from scratch and what it takes to be an Eagle Scout. One more thing, we also explain ho…

This is a really fun and great episode with Nancy Gohring on monitoring, log management, DevOps, M&A in the space, and tech journalism. Also, we finally get the most concise analysts of the $3.7bn Cisco/AppDynamics deal that I’ve ever heard. If you’re the type of person who knows the words “observiblity,” “The Big 4,” SNMP, or even just DevOps, you…

“It’s quite good to see GDPR as an evolution, not a revolution.” The EU is rolling out a huge privacy data regulation policy this Spring, the General Data Protection Regulation, or GDPR. If you do anything with “customer data,” you should probably at least take a look at it. Companies like Facebook and others who use customer data to work with thir…

What do these financial, equity analyst types do? Well, if the stock market was rational, we could probably tell you. This week, we look at one PDF reporting on cloud and try to make sense of it. Also, we discuss enterprise software pricing, THE DANCE! More detailed show notes, including the charts, are available.…

Everyone’s freaking out about tech companies. What they mean by “tech companies,” of course is the combination of Facebook, Google, Twitter, Amazon, and maybe Netflix. They (mostly) mean companies who are using tech to disrupt their industries (media, retail, entertainment) and using the business models of tech companies. The line is, to be sure, f…

With Cotê and Matt Ray away on vacation, Brandon takes over the feed to talk all about security. Andy Land from the CISO Exec Network joins us to breakdown what CISOs are worried about and what developers should know about security.由Software Defined Talk

In this episode we look at two tech world artifacts: weekly, curated links in email newsletters and the trends and predictions presentation. Ben Evans does both of these and provides great pieces to do some deep reading. If you're not a man, make sure you take the listener survey. (We got plenty of male-responses.) See the detailed show notes.…

This week, we look at the tech editorial page, columns that people like Matt Asay and Coté write. First we discuss if this is even a category, and then go over three columns Coté has written recently. (Slightly) more detailed show notes over in paper.由Software Defined Talk

Community surveys are a handy tool for tracking momentum, proving legitimacy, and, of course, understanding the state of the community. “Community” doesn’t have to be all rainbows and sandals - open source - but it often does. This week we look at the most recent OpenStack Community Survey. See more detailed show notes.…

Murder and comedy podcasts are all fun and dandy, but they’re strategically used by tech companies as well as marketing. This week, we look at some common formats, how they’re done, and how to consume them. Detailed show notes: https://paper.dropbox.com/doc/The-Corporate-Podcast-EBCing-azErWSniyTIDSTn8cQn1U…

This week, we look at one of the new analyst models, and what they do, by way of Ben Thompson. Horace Dediu and RedMonk are other examples of this model, but Ben Thompson is the highest flying, most interesting practicer now. Ben’s business model is pretty straight-forward: a partial paywall around his some of his weekly content, podcast sponsorshi…

This week we look at The Four. Coté had high hopes. More importantly, we look at the medium and mechanics of a business book. More detailed show notes and such.由Software Defined Talk

The big fluffy, leather chair interview is a staple of the tech world now. A big named executive (usually) comes up on the stage with a big name journalist and is interviewed in a “wide ranging” discussion. In addition to videos of these being broadcast, tech outlets often write summaries - news stories even - based on the interviews, and others so…

This week, we look at an article from Susan Hall at The New Stack. Susan is a solid reporter, so looking at her piece allows us to discuss the world and machination of the tech press, what it’s like to brief them, and our imagination of what it’s like to be a tech reporter. See the detailed notes for more. This episode was made free since we haven'…

Press releases are a high art in our trade. There’s certain formats to follow, the audiences are always precise, and making a good one is a sign of a cunning PR pro. This week, we look at a funding announcement from Heptio. It follows the classic form fairly well, so you’ll see how general press releases are done and some attributes of the funding …

In part two of our cloud-native enterprise architect talk, we discuss the more technical functions of the EA. We think of these as the "southbound" functions. Special Guest: Matt Walburn.由Software Defined Talk

We discuss a recent Forrester Wave: “The Forrester Wave: Continuous Delivery And Release Automation, Q3 2017.” See more detailed notes here.由Software Defined Talk

On the DevOps question: sure they do, but there are many variations depending on the company. Links: Tommy's Margarita Anthony Lee and David Brock talk platform operations — The Pivotal Conversations episode mentioned.由Software Defined Talk

This week, we talk about two PDFs setting out to briefly describe the kubernetes and great container orchestration landscapes. See [the usual more detailed write-up and analysis elsewhere](https://paper.dropbox.com/doc/WP006-Kubernetes-container-landscapes-from-Forrester-Gartner-pnTuTycrvQribNjWNB7tE). This episode was also made free in the regular…

This week’s paper is sent in by Matt Ray: “Continuous Automation for the Continuous Enterprise.” See detailed, typed analysis in the show-notes, find the paper attached, and enjoy the podcast in your members only RSS feed.由Software Defined Talk

We look at the 2017 Gartner PaaS Hype Cycle, just released. See more show notes, though not very detailed here. As always, thanks for being a supporter!由Software Defined Talk

It’s another in the Matt Curry discussions sub-series! We discuss how enterprise are shifting over to a microservices approach, or not. As Matt explains: “A lot of enterprise are trying to figure out how to do microservices…but what they’re actually trying to figure out how to do is small, empowered teams that can independently release.”…

We discuss what the deal is with Canadian whiskey and then talk about why we like The Economist. Your pals, @cowboyd & @cote.由Software Defined Talk

IoT will be big by 2035, a trillion devices driving a $1tn of spend/year, according to this paper. How does one come to that figure, and what exactly is IoT. Even better, how would you put together the business case to justify doing an IoT project? Well, you’ll get an average of 5x returns, the paper says, so that’s a compelling start. Also, you sh…

This week, Brandon and Coté talk analyze Coté's 2016 stump-speech, Not a DevOps Talk. We talk about the process of putting together a talk like this, how it flows, and the desired effect and rhetoric behind it all. See the extensive show notes and much more detail in the attached PDF or online. There's also a bonus write-up about two of Coté's Regi…