Venturi's Voice: Technology | Leadership | Staffing | Career | Innovation

Chris Samiullah is Technical Lead at Babylon Health, an online course author, conference speaker and writer. Chris has been writing code for 8 years, and for the past three years has focused on scaling machine learning applications. He has done this at fintech and health-tech companies in London, where he has worked on and grown production machine learning applications used by hundreds of thousands of people. And currently works on systems for predicting health risks for patients around the world at Babylon Health. Babylon Health is a health service provider that provides remote consultations with doctors and health care professionals via text and video messaging through its mobile application. In this podcast episode, Chris explains the importance of self-promotion and personal branding to get ahead in the tech industry. In today's modern age, a good CV isn't enough to rely on to make your next big career move. Chris explains the different ways you can contribute to the tech industry in your own time, and

Ashley Firth built and leads the Front-end department at Octopus Energy, crafting sites and internal tools, building new products and campaigns, and expanding into other countries. Their aim is to combat climate change, use technology to build a better standard of energy supplier, and make renewable energy more affordable for everyone. In May 2020, Octopus Energy became the 15th UK tech “unicorn” after achieving a valuation of over £1 billion. Ashley has also written a book: 'Practical Web Inclusion & Accessibility', a new book, designed as a practical guide to access needs, which is a huge passion for Ashley. Showtimes 0:30 - Ashley's unconventional route into Coding 3:40 - The finer details of coding and willingness to learn 5:00 - The skills Ashley and the team at Octopus look for when hiring 9:20 - Not losing sight of the brand's core values 11:28 - Where Octopus Energy fits into the world of energy & technology 16:30 - Preparing for such rapid and dramatic scale in success at Octopus 19:

Megan Sun has an impressive career history from a data strategy consultant at BCG, to a Data Science Consultant at IBM, before moving to Berlin last year to start a new role as Senior Program Manager at OLX Group. The OLX marketplace is a platform for buying and selling services and goods such as electronics, fashion items, furniture, household goods, cars and bikes. In 2014, the platform reportedly had 11 billion page views, 200 million monthly active users, 25 million listings, and 8.5 million transactions per month. OLX Group Berlin is an inspirational environment for top notch engineers, data scientists, designers and product managers looking to make a difference. It works to a horizontal structure, with 40+ nationalities collaborating on global projects, and using cutting edge tech stack to build the very best products. We spoke about Megan’s experience working in various different cultures around the globe. After being elected as “40 under 40 Girls in Tech” we also spoke about how to get more women i

Natalia Baltazar is Head of Engineering at Lantum. Lantum is a health tech startup, working on solving the issues around scheduling and rotas within healthcare. Natalia has a very unconventional journey into tech, beginning her working life as a teenager running her own fashion design business in Canada, before moving to the UK and managing a boutique clothing shop in Shoreditch. The transition into tech came from learning how to code on her own and helping to create a coding Bootcamp - founders and coders, a free code camp based in London. We spoke about how to create an autonomous engineering culture, and why you'd want one. The difficulties of running a team remotely, managing communication, and remote collaboration. Showtimes 0:55 - The background of Lantum  2:28 - Natalias unconventional pathway into tech  4:35 - The correlation between making software and making clothing  6:04 - The motivation behind starting Lantum 10:15 - Managing a team remotely  14:25 - The remote hiring strategy at Lantum

David DeRemer is Founder and President of Very Good Ventures, a Flutter development consultancy with offices in New York, Chicago, and teammates around the world. Very Good Ventures is the World’s leading Flutter development team. They have been working with Flutter longer than anyone and on the biggest Flutter apps, including the first commercial app outside of Google in 2017 — the Hamilton app. Flutter is a UI toolkit created by Google for building beautiful, natively compiled applications for mobile, web, and desktop from a single codebase. In prior roles at Posse, Chobani, frog design, and Accenture, David has developed innovative products and solutions for companies such as: Chobani, The Rock Clock, Jet.com, Sixpoint Brewery, Shoptiques, Spring, Gatorade + Smart Design, Best Buy, Staples, GE, AT&T, Bloomberg, TouchTunes, Humana, Alcatel-Lucent, Bell Mobility, CNN.com, Crocs, Estée Lauder Companies, ETS, GE Healthcare, GE Money, IMAX, KLA Tencor, Nokia, Philip Morris, WalMart, Accenture, Sony, an

David Ives is VP Engineering at Pollen, an international marketplace scale-up, changing the game in live music, youth culture and travel. Following several successful acquisitions in the travel space, they are already the market leader across North America, which has allowed them to tap into an increasingly larger share of a $12 billion market. As a service that’s core is dependant on group activities and experiences, we hear how Pollen.co is managing to grow in an industry that's rapidly shrinking. The travel industry has been hit hard by COVID, but David and his team have managed to pivot quickly during lockdown to ensure the company develops, rather than diminishes.

Martin Rosinski is Founder & Chief of Tech at The World's Online Festival, with an impressive previous technical history having created Palringo, which was the first ever chat app to launch on the Apple App Store (2008), and then became the first mobile app to introduce chatbots – and the first to introduce sticker packs (2011). Building on its proven heritage of world-first innovation, and leveraging its state-of-the-art technology platform, Palringo has now introduced a breakthrough market offering – the World's Online Festival, which is an incredible user-created world filled with Group Chat, Live Audio Shows, Friendship and Entertainment. WOLF has over 35 million downloads and more than 350,000 user-created social groups. Gary Knight is CEO of WOLF, building a user-created world filled with group chat, live audio shows, friendship and entertainment. The app delivers the festival experience to your pocket – users can interact with the people on stage, create their own audio shows and experience the ma

Erik Christiansen is Head of AI and Data Science at Datadrivers GmbH, a consulting company for business intelligence, big data, data-driven infrastructures, data analytics and technology consulting. We spoke about some of the pitfalls to be aware of when integrating a Data Science team into an organisation, and how to avoid these common issues. Keeping up with the ever-evolving technology and trends within Data Science and AI, and what some of these trends are, as well as what works and what doesn’t work when integrating data to scale.

Pete Casson is CTO of Collctiv, the group payments app, designed to take the hassle out of collecting money for a group purchase or booking.  With over 15 years of transforming technology within business, removing complications, and pioneering new products Pete is a sought-after expert and speaker. Having launched a World's First Multiplayer Augmented Reality app for Education and featured as 'App of the Day' on the App Store, Pete has built a reputation for tackling seemingly impossible tasks. As a trusted expert in Technology he often speaks at events, such as Google Next '19, discussing how technology is shaping our lives, what to expect in the future and how businesses need to place technology first when developing strategies. As CTO & Co-founder of Collctiv, Pete has developed a new simple and seamless way of allowing people to collect money from a group. In an industry that's typically slow to change Pete developed a solution from an idea to live in 8 weeks. Already Collctiv has managed hundreds

Modern Cloud Data Platforms: How using such platforms and innovations in the cloud can help you create insights faster with less risk and less cost. We caught up with David Rice, CEO and Co-founder and Tom Bruce, Delivery Lead and Co-founder of Snap Analytics. Snap Analytics deliver solutions that simplify and accelerate data projects, focusing on ensuring that technology and data helps you to clearly achieve your strategic goals whatever they may be. Never before has the power of data and analytics been greater, however there is also an ever-increasing amount of data being created. The key for businesses is being able to unlock the power of their data to gain a competitive advantage. We discussed common pitfalls to be aware of when implementing a new data strategy into your business, and with Gartner estimating that 60% of Big Data projects failing, what’s going wrong?

David Minarsch holds a PhD in Applied Game Theory from the University of Cambridge, is a researcher at Fetch.AI where he researches and prototypes consensus mechanisms and smart markets, combining game theory expertise with engineering and product experience in machine learning and blockchain. He has conducted cutting-edge research on the Economics of Networks, strategy of conflict and political competition and is a co-founder of Panopy. Fetch.ai is building an open access, tokenized, decentralized machine learning network to enable smart infrastructure built around a decentralized digital economy.

Cindy Gordon is Chief People Officer at Policygenius, and Nadia Danford, who is Senior Director of People at www.policygenius.com Policygenius is America's leading online insurance marketplace. Their mission is to help people get insurance right by making it easy for them to understand their options, compare quotes, and buy a policy, all in one place. Since 2014, they've placed $35 billion in coverage and helped over 100,000 families get the financial protection they need. We hear about their unique "partnership" model of recruiting, and how the recruitment strategy has changed with the challenge of remote working and how Policygenius has quickly adapted to remotely hiring new people into the business.

Lisa Allen is Head of Data and Analytical Services at Ordnance Survey. Ordnance Survey is Britain's mapping agency. We make the most up-to-date and accurate maps of the country. They're also a digital business, and use their content to help governments, companies and individuals to be more effective both here and around the world. Lisa is a data leader and data expert and has gained experience across many data disciplines from data strategy, data governance, open data, data quality to data protection to name a few. We hear how Ordnance Survey has developed from when it was founded in 1751, and how location-based data is more important in society than it ever has been before.

Anna Derinova-Hartmann is Charter Tech Domain Lead at FlixBus. Anna is an M.A. educated Programme Manager, Project Manager and Change Manager with a track record of achievement within International Relations and Global Politics. We spoke about the importance of leveraging tech in society and the impact this can have. Anna shares advice on how it's best to attract talent as an aspiring entrepreneur, and advice for developers looking to put together a pitch to potential investors, along with some of the common pitfalls to be aware of.

Chris Bolin serves as the VP of Engineering for Formidable Denver and is an accomplished speaker and instructor. Prior to joining Formidable, Chris was the first engineer at Jumpshell, the lead data scientist at Autotegrity, and an engineer at National Instruments. Chris serves as technical lead on high-profile projects while also directing the Formidable Denver office. Chris holds a Master’s in Computational Engineering from MIT, and loves teaching, mentoring, and presenting. He has taught at MIT, University of Denver, Girl Develop It, and Startup Institute, tutored high school students in mathematics and environmental studies, and is the Founding Editor of The Disconnect. In addition, his projects have been featured in Vice, Lifehacker, the CBC, CJR, Le Monde, and The Next Web. We discussed how to build a good engineering culture and how to keep the joy of software engineering.

Sanket Agarwal has an impressive career history working with Google in Silicon Valley followed by a stint at a start-up and now finds himself as an Engineering Manager at Postmates. Founded in 2011, Postmates was one of the first to let customers in the U.S. order meal delivery using a mobile app. In the latest development, Uber has announced that it has acquired Postmates in a $2.65 billion, all-stock deal. We spoke about what the company was like in its early stages and how the app has developed into what it is today. We also spoke about the cultural differences of Tech Giants and small, intense Tech startups, and how these differences can impact a person's mental health, and how burnout in the Tech industry is a very common reality.

We were joined by Dan Cryer and Amelia Carey from Gear4Music to hear how the UK's No. 1 online music store has transitioned to remote working and how they have overcome some of the unforeseen issues that have arisen whilst still taking on new employees. Dan Cryer is a web development and technology specialist who helps manage the technical team at Gear4music.com as the Head of Technical Operations. He is a full stack developer with a focus on PHP, MySQL and related technologies, with primary interest  in back-end development, server management, APIs and PHP optimisation. Amelia Carey is Operations Manager at Gear4Music and the glue that holds the wider team together, responsible for people, operations and strategy. During the difficult time of lockdown, we hear what strategies were put in place to ensure this was a smooth transition to remote working in a business of such a vast amount of employees.

Phaedra Marshall is Vice President of Technology at Critical Mass, a digital experience design agency with a particular focus on the customer. For more than two decades, Critical Mass has been designing meaningful customer experiences in the digital space that transform clients’ businesses through interactions that are convenient, useful, simple, and entertaining. Their expertise spans Strategy Consulting, Experience Design, Marketing Communications, Implementation, and Marketing Science, and has been recognized as a leader in digital experience design with agency rankings from Advertising Age, Warc 100 and Gartner, among others. With over 17 years of experience in developing software, architecting solutions, and managing technical projects, Phaedra is a subject matter expert in speaking engagements, industry events, and thought leadership ideas and publications. We discussed how technology and creative people collaborate and how to lead them effectively.

Pete Reis-Campbell is the CEO and Founder of the award-winning Kaizen. He has worked with global brands including River Island, Symantec and 888.com on innovative content marketing campaigns. He built his first website at 11, pretends to not be totally addicted to video games, and is a regular speaker at digital marketing conferences including SMX, BrightonSEO and SASCon. Kaizen's work for TotallyMoney.com won a 2016 Drum Content Award for the best financial content marketing campaign and Pete previously won a Travolution award for his SEO strategies for travel brands. Kaizen was also named one of the Top 50 UK Startups by Startups.co.uk in 2017. 1:00 - Where Kaizen fits into the growth marketing space 1:40 - Pete's career journey, building websites for fun at age 11 2:40- The transition from £0 investment to £1.5mil revenue at Kaizen 4:40 - Responding to problems when building a business 8:38 - The motivation for starting the business 10:06 - How Pete has created a successful working culture at Kaizen

Andy sits down with Daljeet, Compass’ Director of Engineering. On the show, the pair discuss transitioning from a hands-on role to engineering management, diversity in India and more. Daljeet has several years of experience providing Technical Architect Solutions for Business Applications (J2EE Applications) which includes designing, development, building Frameworks. With extensive experience leading Development teams across geographic locations and delivering high-quality code. Also representing Dev Teams while working with product owners, clients, stakeholders and vendors on regular basis.