Insightful conversations. Less snark.

This week Chloe Condon, Senior Cloud Advocate for Microsoft, is back again! Which is surprising because between her last episode and now she and Corey have hung out plenty. Chloe is now working on the Next Generation Experiences team at Microsoft, but that is perhaps the least interesting thing she's been up to lately! Chloe has a lot of great insight on how to navigate the interest as well! Chloe recently started the Master Creep Theatre (yes, with the British spelling) which is a project to bring some more creative and artistic efforts into the tech world! Given Chloe’s non-traditional background she’s able to bring a lot of great perspective to weaving these two worlds together. Chloe also discusses the politics of navigating DMs as a woman on the internet, fun. Her and Corey discuss internet culture in general and how to make the most of it, in spite of all the baggage. Tune in for Chloe's take!

Nick Heudecker, who leads Market Strategy and Competitive Intelligence at Cribl, joins Corey who, as it turns out, has some similarities with Corey. Nick also spent some time in Maine, as a cryptologist for the Navy, and also spent the months of deep winter sitting at the computer. That set the stage for Nick to move into work as a industry analyst where he was able to bring forth their worth to the tech industry. Nick breaks down what exactly is an analyst firm, and why companies should care. Nick has some worthwhile insights into what an analyst can bring to the table for companies. Nick’s perspectives are certainly well founded and offer a lot on how to navigate that space successfully. Nick and Corey also go down the kaleidoscopic nature of observability, how Nick ended up at Cribl, and how Cribl is bringing forth some serious innovations in regards to observability. Tune in for Nick’s perspectives!

Abby Kearns, CTO at Puppet, and former CEO of the Cloud Foundry Foundation, joins Corey this week to talk about the importance of learning how to work well with others. Abby’s background allows an expertise on enterprise infrastructure to bring a wide view of some of the hang-ups some companies may experience, but also how to synthesize the potential tensions of people when it comes to technology. Abby and Corey discuss their respective work in configuration management. They also dive into how sometimes companies don’t always get to where they need to as quickly as they should, especially when it comes to cloud migration. Turns out, people are an important part of solving these transitional issues! Abby offers her take on how to smooth out the people part of tech and how she makes it a focus of her work because, as it turns out, it is the hardest work out there! Check out this week's conversation for the rest.

This week Corey is joined by Ewere Diagboya, Head of Cloud at Mycloudseries, and multifaceted blogger and author, and the first AWS Hero from Africa. Ewere’s book on CloudWatch is the first of its kind, and certainly a valuable asset to the community. Ewere’s passion for passing on lessons learned is very prevalent in his writing, and a core ethos in his drive to write. Ewere goes into the background of how his book, Infrastructure Monitoring with Amazon Cloudwatch, came to be. It starts with setting up memory, then building from there. Ewere talks about integrating Cloudwatch with EKS, Kubernetes clusters, containers and more AWS services. Ewere also talks about his future writing plans and passion to pass on the lessons he has learned. Whats more, there are other books he wants to write that will follow up Infrastructure. Tune in for the rest!

Tim Banks is back again! Now on board here at The Duckbill Group as a Principal Cloud Economist, Tim joins Corey for the rare third time around. Despite the unusual interview process via “Screaming” appearances, Tim is here to tell us what exactly a Principal Cloud Economist does and is. Tim’s insights are very useful, thus why he is back as a team member! Check them out. Tim and Corey go into the detais of Tim’s new job title, and how a background in engineering is fundamental to working well in that role. They also discuss Tim’s slightly diverging philosophy building out resilience, security, and costs on “the whiteboard.” By doing so Tim discusses how this can help you from accruing debt that needs to be paid later on and the importance that practice can have on cost optimization, observability, and more. Tune in for the details!

This week Corey is joined by Emma Bostian, a Software Engineer at Spotify in Sockholm, but it doesn’t stop there. Emma is also an author and a co-host of the Ladybug Podcast and Emma also has a strong following on Twitter to boot. Where, it turns out, her thoughts and opinions are quite valuable and worth sharing! Emma goes into the details on her podcast and the varied nature of her and her co-hosts, she also discusses her book Decoding the Technical Interview Process, in which she breaks down the seemingly esoteric nature of interviewing for these highly technical jobs—but her focus is on the frontend. She and Corey discuss the general banality of these interviews and the direction they can, and should, go in to improve. Emma also loves to teach, to add even more to her portfolio! She goes into the five w’s of her work with LinkedIn Learning and Frontend Masters. Emma also has some excellent insights into her sizable Twitter presence. Tune in for Emma’s variegated offerings!

This week Corey is joined by Jason Warner, who is here to tell us how to “Git” on it. Jason’s time at GitHub has given him the expertise to inform folks about all the exciting things GitHub has going on. He tells us what they’ve been up to, and offer some insight into GitHub’s successes which have led to their acquisition by Microsoft. Jason breaks down his own history at GitHub and its vision to become the “worlds most important software company.” Jason dives into some of the details of GitHub acquisition and the possibilities for what they want to achieve, and where they expect to go within Microsoft. Jason and Corey discuss how to talk about the cloud for its current, and importantly, future clients. Jason talks about what GitHub will bring to Microsoft, and perhaps how it’ll be for the better. Tune in, because the getting is about to “git” good.

Corey is joned by Lauren Hasson, Fonder of DevelopHer, to discuss whats its like to not be a just another whtie dude in tech and her own work in tech and advocacy for everyone in their careers. Lauren stays busy with her multifaceted interaction with the tech world, least of which is DevelopHer. Lauren talks about DevelopHer and her story about its creation. From taking a different direction into tech Lauren had to fight her ways upwards, and despite the adversity, such as the pay gap, she excelled. She created DevelopHer is order to help others make similar successes in their own careers, but through more conducive paths. Check out this episode for Lauren’s valuable insight!

What does an Internet Incident Librarian do? Courtney Nash is here to tell us. It turns out when websites don’t fly, it isn’t widely advertised. Courtney is here to keep track of those incidents for the edification of the rest of us. These incidents impact us all, in so many ways, and it is something that Courtney wants to share with the rest of us! From the overwhelming volume of dependency on AWS, to the parallels in the airline industry, to the growing importance of stuff simply having to work in our day to day lives, Courtney’s conversation shows us a lot. Not only are these dependencies becoming more prevalent every day, but building in systems to cover down on these outages. Be they at the hand backhoes in the woods, or--beavers. She discussed VOID, what it is and how it works, and more!

This week Corey is joined by the inspiring Jackie Singh, who most recently was a senior cybersecurity staffer at the Biden campaign. But her venerated career is considerably more than that alone. Jackie’s time spent in the Army, at the DoD, and eventually at work in the commercial world allows her to bring an adroit sensibility to her work and to this episode. Jackie goes into detail on her time spent at the Biden campaign and the intricacies of working in such highly politicized, and short term, environment. The cyber security threats she faced there were paramount, to downplay it, and have given Jackie a rich and constantly developing perspective on security. That in combination with her career has helped her develop a perspective that she has kindly discussed in detail during this episode! Tune in for the whole story.

From logstash to conference talks this week Corey is joined by Jordan Sissel, who folks know as the guy that put the “L” in ELK stack. At Jordan’s conference talk at SCALE in 2012 where he and Corey first crossed paths, and where Jordan made an impression with his talk and lead to their own unique history together. Corey and Jordan talk about his past and how Jordan helped to solve the problems that drove him as the original creator of logstash. They also discuss Corey’s inadvertent contribution! Jordan gives us the story of his journey about building logstash and he goes into the details on how that opened various doors for him. They also talk about the importance of developing empathy and humanity and bringing that into the cultural milieu of engineering. Tune in for the full story!

This week Corey is joined by Jesse Vincent, Co-founder and CTO of Keyboardio, and the master of the keyboards. Jesse and his company are revolutionizing mechanical keyboards, and have made it their mission to make them more than noisy office nuances. Jesse and Keyboardio take their place at the forefront of the emergence of a new mechanical keyboard revolution. Jesse and Corey discuss both of their pasts with keyboards and how it shaped the way Jesse thinks about, builds, and continues to innovate how to think about them. Jesse’s past has helped to reinforce the things he does, and equally important, does not like about mechanical keyboards. From making choices on the kind of wood, to the general mess of supply chains in 2020, to legal battles in China! Tune in for the rest!