Screaming In The Cloud

Pete Cheslock is an advisor and consultant who helps startups with product strategy, messaging, and other go-to-market needs. Prior to going out on his own, he worked at a slew of tech companies, holding positions such as VP of Products at CHAOSSEARCH, VP of Technical Operations at Threat Stack, Inc., Director of DevTools at Dyn, and Director of Technical and Cloud Operations at Sonian. Pete holds a master's in business administration from Babson and a bachelor's in communications from Michigan State University. Join Corey and Pete as they discuss the differences between CHAOSSEARCH and Elasticsearch, proper etiquette for the conference badge-scanning experience, how tech can be a bubble and not everyone might know the tools you do, the increasingly prominent roles artificial intelligence and machine learning play in the AWS ecosystem, why the re:Invent experience is like a marathon, what it’s like listening to a talk on a pair of headphones, which re:Invent announcement made the least waves, why diversity

Chloe Condon is a senior cloud advocate at Microsoft, where she evangelizes on behalf of Azure. Prior to that, she held developer evangelist roles at companies like Sentry and Codefresh. She’s also a freelance writer and has performed in over 30 musicals in the Bay Area, in theaters large and small (50 seats to 4,000 seats). Chloe, who holds a degree in theatre performance from San Francisco State University, is also a graduate of Hackbright Academy, a highly selective accelerated software development program. Join Corey and Chloe as they discuss what it’s like to be a developer advocate, why Chloe built a fake boyfriend alert and how she got a retweet from Smash Mouth, the importance of making the cloud “fun,” what it was like to leave an industry dominated by women and join one dominated by men, how the tech industry stands to benefit from outside perspectives (e.g., stage managers and sommeliers), the role Chloe played in the resurgence of Clippy, and more.

Cody Ogden is the founder of Killed by Google, an open source project that tracks the life and death of Google’s product portfolio. He’s also a software engineer at CannabizMedia and a founding partner at Rocket Squirrel, a company that specializes in delivering exemplary user experiences. Join Corey and Cody as they explore everything there is to know about the life and death of products like Google Reader and Hire by Google, why companies might want to think twice about relying on the G Suite platform, how “long-term” means different things to different people, the fate of Fitbit, what happens when Google and AWS decide to decommission products, the rise of Alphabet and what it means for certain Google brands, how Google and Amazon’s customer service offerings stack up, and more.

Russ Savage is the product manager at InfluxData, makers of InfluxDB, the open source time series database. Prior to holding that position, Russ wore many hats in the tech industry, including working as an application engineering team lead at Cask Data, a systems architect at Elastic, a marketing engineer at Box, and a product manager at Orbitz. Join Corey and Russ as they discuss how the evolution of computing power is rendering Hadoop irrelevant, what it’s like selling open source software, what it means to be a “true” open source company, the important role community engagement plays in open source projects, the pros and cons of mutli-cloud, why you might want to monitor events at the nanosecond level, the best use cases for time series data, how time series databases have evolved over time, and more.

Since 1996, Tiffany Farriss has been one of the driving forces behind Palantir.net, an open-source powered web design and development firm she co-owns and currently serves as CEO. From 2009 to 2017, she also sat on the Board of Directors of Drupal, a popular open-source content management system. Prior to that, Tiffany held similar advisory roles at AIGA Chicago and Northwestern Student Holdings. Join Corey and Tiffany as they discuss how to build stronger open source communities; Tolkien, Snow Crash, and Ender’s Game; why companies have several different levels of obligations for giving back to open source projects; why it’s hard for companies that build products on top of open-source tools to be incentivized to give back; the history of Drupal; Usenet and rise of Eternal September; Slack vs. IRC and losing the open-source mentality; succession planning in open source projects; and more.

Sasha Rosenbaum began her career working as an IT systems administrator for the Israel Air Force. Shen then took a position as an R&D software engineer at Elbit Systems, an Israeli-based aerospace company, before joining 10th Magnitude, an IT services company based in Chicago. Over the last four years, she’s held several positions at Microsoft. Currently, she’s the senior program manager for the Azure DevOps engineering team. Join Corey and Sasha as they explore what being a senior program manager for the Azure DevOps engineering team entails, what the relationship become Azure DevOps and GitHub looks like, what happens when a company sells two competing products, how building Azure DevOps on Azure DevOps results in a stronger product, the pros and cons of open-source software, when to use SaaS tools and when to build from scratch, how attending conferences strategically can eliminate many life expenses, and more.

Tanya Janca began her career as a software developer at Canadian Bank Note before holding the same role for the Canadian government for nearly 10 years. She then shifted her focus to application and IT security for the government before joining Microsoft as a senior cloud advocate specializing in application security. Today, she’s the CEO and co-founder of Security Sidekick, a company that helps developers create secure applications. Join Corey and Tanya as they discuss what it’s like to work at Microsoft and how putting in two years there is like putting in 1,000 years somewhere else, how Security Sidekick takes 48 hours to do what a consultant does in a year or more, the challenges that stem from multi-cloud environments, how SaaS tools are improving everything—including the massage space, how Superman inspires Tanya, effective altruism, and more.

For 15 years, Josh Doody held several different software engineering roles at companies like Raytheon, ADP, and Appirio. Today, he owns a consultancy called Fearless Salary Negotiation and helps software developers get paid what the market commands. Join Corey and Josh as they discuss how software developers can get paid more, what the current tech job market looks like, when devs should start thinking about compensation in their next roles, when salary negotiations actually begin, why the goal of a negotiation isn’t always about getting more money, the biggest mistakes people make in negotiations, and more.

Paul Dix is the cofounder and CTO at InfluxDB, makers of an open source time-series database. Over the last 20-plus years, he’s held technology, consultant, and leadership positions at companies like Microsoft, McAfee, Google, and Thomson Reuters. Join Corey and Paul as they discuss everything there is to discuss about time-series databases, the two different kinds of time-series events, the importance of timing when launching a product, how to build applications on top of time-series data, creating a new programming language (Flux), why you should create new programming languages when it makes sense, and more.

Paul Chin Jr. grew up using egg rolls to gauge profitability at his parents’ Chinese restaurant in Norfolk, Va. Today, he’s a cloud solutions architect at Cloudreach and a strong proponent of cloud, serverless, and open source technologies—and also a prophet of Nicolas Cage, a national treasure. Join Corey and Paul as they face off with plenty of time to kill and cover many topics related to severless and cloud technologies, including how software can be an army of one for any business; how popular tools can be gone in 60 seconds as new solutions emerge while slower-moving businesses are left behind with legacy systems; how Paul solves customer problems through understanding and adaptation; and how severless means everyone can build computer programs—without computer science training, either. Don’t think so? It happened to Paul. It could happen to you—and even the weather man—too.

Paul Johnston cares a great deal about climate change and believes the tech world needs to do more. He’s the interim CTO for cloud and serverless consulting and technology strategy services at Roundabout Labs, a company he founded and served as CEO for eight years before joining AWS as a senior developer advocate for serverless. Join Corey and Paul as they discuss the early days of being a developer advocate for AWS for serverless, how data centers and cloud computing are impacting climate change, why you shouldn’t run workloads in us-east-1, why cryptocurrency is bad for the environment, and more.

Nicole Forsgren grew up in a small farm town in Idaho. After working as a programmer, a software engineer, and a systems administrator at IBM, she went back to school to get her PhD in Management Information Systems. Now, she leads research and strategy at Google and oversees the production of the annual State of DevOps Report. Join Corey and Nicole as they discuss what the cloud is, how people define it and why we need a common definition for it, which organizations benefit from the cloud, why it’s largely time to ditch in-house tools, and more.

Andrew Peterson launched his career working in sales at North Face. After stints at Google, the Clinton Foundation, and Etsy, he launched his own company—Signal Sciences—makers of a next-gen WAF and RASP web application protection solution that detects and stops attacks wherever applications run. Join Corey and Andrew as they explore why Signal Sciences is an “accidental” security vendor, why security is no longer solely about preventing breaches but increasingly about responding to them quickly and effectively, how organizations are taking a more proactive approach to security and privacy in the GDPR era, and more.

AJ Stuyvenberg began his career writing software for St. Jude Medical. Today, he’s a senior software engineer at Serverless, Inc., makers of the increasingly popular open source Serverless framework designed to make it easier to deploy applications across cloud vendors. Join Corey and AJ as they discuss what a day in the life of an engineer at Serverless looks like, what the Serverless framework actually is and how it helps developers, how an open source company makes money, how Serverless differentiated itself from AWS, the differences between Serverless plugins and components, what’s in the company’s future, and more.

Cloud security makes Josh Stella tick. In 2013, he founded Fugue, a company that brings native security and simplified operations to cloud architecture. Join Corey and Josh as they discuss why Fugue is called Fugue, how the approach hackers take has changed in recent years, why cloud security is actually more of a physics and biology problem than a technology problem, the recent Capital One data breach, how it likely happened, why the bank didn’t necessarily do anything wrong, why cloud security should be automated, and more.

For the last five years, Matt Broberg has worn many different developer advocate hats. These days, his developer hat looks a bit … red ... as he’s an advocate, writer, and editor for opensource.com at Red Hat. Join Corey and Matt as they discuss IBM’s recent acquisition of Red Hat, open source culture and how to contribute without submitting code, the rise of developer relations and whether the term “DevRel” will stick, what developer relations actually is, what its future looks like, and more.

Nicole Forsgren grew up in a small farm town in Idaho. After working as a programmer, a software engineer, and a systems administrator at IBM, she went back to school to get her PhD in Management Information Systems. Now, she leads research and strategy at Google and oversees the production of the annual State of DevOps Report. Join Corey and Nicole as they discuss what it’s like to put together said reports, why people are so passionate about their DevOps team’s unique approach, the four metrics you can use to grade DevOps teams, how to scale DevOps teams, and more.

Be honest: How many people decide to launch a weekly podcast actually end up publishing hundreds upon hundreds of episodes? Richard Campbell, founder and chairman of the Humanitarian Toolbox and host of RunAsRadio podcast, is someone who actually did. Join Corey and Richard as they talk about what it’s like to host 1,650-plus podcast episodes, building open source tools for disaster relief, moving away from legacy tech, the power of admitting you don’t understand something, how snarkiness often gets lost in translation, the thanklessness of good IT, and more.

Supercomputers used to be gigantic monstrosities that would take up enormous rooms. Now, you can run them in the cloud. Just ask Mike Warren, CTO and co-founder of Descartes Labs, a company that provides Earth imagery to help folks understand planetary changes—like deforestation, water cycles, agriculture, and more. Join Corey and Mike as they discuss what it’s like to build supercomputers on top of AWS and how “easy” it is, the power of Amazon’s Spot blocks, building Beowulf clusters in the ‘90s, what Descartes Labs’ platform-agnostic infrastructure looks like (spoiler alert: nothing is on-prem), how AWS accelerates the development process, petaflop machines, the evolution of high-performance computing over the last few decades, and more.

Another week, another high-profile data breach. Well, that’s what it seems like anyway. As Director of Cyber Risk Research at UpGuard, Chris Vickery knows a thing or two about why these breaches are occurring—and what organizations can do to minimize the likelihood they do. Join Corey and Chris as they talk about why so many companies leave S3 buckets publicly exposed, raising the bar of low-hanging fruit for data security, why organizations can’t blame third parties for breaches, why AWS isn’t liable for everything that goes wrong in the cloud, the recent Capital One breach, and more.