Insightful conversations. Less snark.

Angela Andrews is a solutions architect at Red Hat and a teaching assistant at The University of Pennsylvania Cybersecurity Bootcamp. She’s also an AWS Certified Solutions Architect and an AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner. Angela brings 20 years of IT experience to her current roles, having previously served as a system admin at Swarthmore College, a systems admin at The University of the Arts, and a network admin at Stonemor Partners. Join Corey and Angela as they discuss Angela’s transition from a system admin in higher ed to a solutions architect for a software company, one of the main reasons Angela stayed in higher ed for 15 years, how COVID-19 is disrupting education and why that’s a good thing, how the current college model is broken for many and why that needs to change, how Twitter is a great platform for learning in public, why Angela thinks everyone should go to re:Invent at least once in their lives (whenever it returns), and more.

Spencer Viernes is the founder and managing member of Viernes ESQ, which provides general counsel services on digital infrastructure issues. He’s also the Chief Operating Officer and Chief Legal Officer at Virtual Power Systems, which helps data center and cloud providers optimize power capacity, and a co-founder and partner of Salt Lake City Partners LLC, a growth firm specializing in e-commerce enterprises. Before these roles, Spencer was eBay’s chief counsel of mission-critical infrastructure and real estate. Join Corey and Spencer as they discuss what it’s like to negotiate cloud contracts, how large organizations have much more leverage than startups in this arena, why numbers are the only thing that matter at the end of the day, how the cloud industry differs from the commercial real estate industry, how the cloud is pay-for-what-you-use but most people don’t turn things off, how COVID-19 has impacted cloud contract negotiation, Spencer’s advice on how to prepare for a cloud contract negotiation, signs it might be time to engage with an attorney during contract negotiations, and more.

Ev Kontsevoy is the co-founder and CEO of Gravitational, a company that builds open source tools to help developers securely deliver cloud-native apps to restricted and regulated environments. Ev has more than two decades of experience in tech. Over the years, he’s worked as the director of product and strategy at Rackspace, a lead engineer at GE Security, and a software engineer at National Instruments. He also co-founded Mailgun, an API-based email delivery service acquired by Rackspace. Join Corey and Ev as they talk about how Gravitational helps developers secure production environments and deploy apps anywhere in the world, how engineers tend to be able to access systems from companies they no longer work for, the semantics of the cloud and how some definitions are still fluid, how open source products are sometimes unpolished and why that’s not necessarily a bad thing, what it was like when Mailgun was acquired by Rackspace, how Gravitational is bringing simplicity back to software development, why Ev’s ideal version of any software product is “unmanaged,” and more.

Fredrick Lee is the Chief Security Officer at Gusto, a platform that helps businesses administer payroll and employee benefits. Before joining Gusto, Fredrick served as Head of Information Security at Square, Director of Security at NetSuite, Lead Security Engineer at Twilio, and VP at Bank of America, among other positions. He has a bachelor of science degree in computer engineering from the University of Oklahoma. Join Corey and Flee as they discuss the differences between CSOs and CISOs, how Gusto thinks about security, the difference between data owners and data custodians, how security is different at companies like Bank of America, Gusto, and Twilio, how the average employee thinks about security, how successful security teams are able to drive behavioral change at their organizations, what major conferences on security get wrong, why Flee believes security should be by default and not an add-on, how more secure products can drive adoption, why providers should help customers make the right security choices by default, and more.

Corey Sanders is the Corporate Vice President of Microsoft Solutions who leads strategy and technical sales. Corey has spent the bulk of his 16-year career at Microsoft, beginning as a software developer and serving as a principal program manager lead and head of product for Azure Computer, among other roles. He also served as the Vice President of the Board at the Seattle Community Law Center for eight years. Corey earned a bachelor’s degree in computer science from Princeton. Join two Coreys as they discuss what Corey’s role is at Microsoft, what it’s like to have a child born during the COVID-19 pandemic, how Teams has helped organizations learn how to work remotely and build entirely new work cultures, how platforms like Teams help people be heard in a way they otherwise might not have been, why low-code is an incredible development and shouldn’t be thought of as something that will replace engineers, how Corey interacts with the Xbox team at Microsoft, how Microsoft is helping customers get to the next level of transformation, and more.

Charity Majors is the cofounder and CTO at Honeycomb.io, makers of an observability platform for engineers and DevOps teams. Before Honeycomb, Charity worked as a production engineering manager at Facebook, an infrastructure tech lead at Parse, and senior systems engineer at Cloudmark, and a systems engineer at shopkick, among other positions. She’s also the co-author of Database Reliability Engineering: Designing and Operating Resilient Database Systems. Join Corey and Charity as they discuss how to manage teams effectively, how humans want autonomy and why managers need to understand that dynamic, how a manager’s job is more like curating a team than actually managing people, why Charity believes companies don’t actually exist but instead are created every day, why managers should be less like King George and more like the articles in the Constitution, why technology companies should focus on letting people do what they love instead of automatically encouraging them to climb the ladder and get into management, and more.

Stephanie Stimac is a program manager and design technologist at Microsoft, where she focuses on Microsoft Edge Developer Experiences and The Web We Want initiative. She brings more than 10 years of design experience to the role, having served as an experience and production designer at WE Communications, a graphic designer at Lina Zeineddine, and a graphic and UI designer at Point Inside, among other positions. She’s also lead UX designer for the open source tool webhint. Join Corey and Stephanie as they discuss the evolution of Microsoft Edge and how it’s different from Internet Explorer, how websites should render on all browsers in 2020, what Stephanie focuses on in her role as a program manager at Microsoft, how Stephanie’s career evolved from a graphic designer to front-end web designer, why it’s impossible to learn everything about the web and you should just focus on your niche instead, The Web We Want initiative and Stephanie’s role in it, how Stephanie prepared for her first public speaking opportunity, and more.

Mark Nunnikhoven is the Vice President of Cloud Research at Trend Micro, a cybersecurity firm. He’s also an AWS Community Hero. Mark brings more than 20 years of IT experience to his current role. Over the years, he’s served as a network security specialist, a principal engineer, and a senior research scientist, among other positions. Join Corey and Mark as they talk about the ever-evolving nature of cybersecurity, what it was like for Mark to work for the Canadian government on nation state-level security stuff for a decade, what’s nice about working on the research side of things vs. the product side, why Mark is focused on cloud cybersecurity today, why the two worst words in the AWS IAM console are “full access,” the struggle of “nerd me” vs. “I’ve-seen-some-things me,” what it’s like to be a “volunteer” for a trillion-dollar company, why Mark participates in the AWS Community Heroes program, how difficult it is to name a company, service, or program, and more.

Adithya Reddy is a software developer at Branch Insurance, a serverless insurance startup that sells bundled home and auto insurance products. In this role, he does it all—web, mobile, and backend architecture. After being hired as the company’s first frontend developer, Adithya expanded across the stack. Adithya graduated from Visvesvaraya Technological University with a bachelor of engineering degree in computer science in 2018. Join Corey and Adithya as they discuss what it’s like to build a startup that operates in a heavily regulated industry on serverless architecture, Adithya’s experience as being hired as the first developer at Branch Insurance, how serverless helps remove all sorts of tasks from the average developer’s plate and reduces the barrier of entry, how going serverless locks you into the AWS ecosystem at least for the near term and why that’s not necessarily a bad thing, why the Branch Insurance team uses CloudFormation instead of Terraform, and more.

For the last three years, Christina Warren has worked as a Senior Cloud Advocate at Microsoft. Before joining Microsoft, Christina published bylines all over the place, working as a senior writer at Gizmodo and a senior tech correspondent at Mashable. She’s also appeared as a commentator practically everywhere, including ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN, CNBC, Fox News, and Fox Business. In her spare time, she co-hosts the Overtired and Rocket: Accelerated Geek Conversation podcasts. Join Corey and Christina as they discuss how a senior cloud advocate does more than say “I’m for the cloud,” the success of Microsoft’s virtual Build event and what it was like to pull it off, how Christina hopes that the current pandemic will improve the perception of virtual conferences moving forward, why Corey thinks the opportunity costs of attending conferences might hurt attendance whenever in-person events start back up, how giving a talk in front of an audience and giving a talk in from of a camera are different skill sets, the different things you need to consider for successful recorded vs. in-person talks, Christina’s tips for using a teleprompter, how everyone has been forced to become an AV experts overnight, and more.

Charles Fitzgerald is a Seattle-based angel investor with more than three decades of experience in tech who’s the managing director at Platformonomics, a consultancy that helps early-stage tech startups succeed. Prior to this position, Charles worked as a platform consiglieri at VMware and a VP of product management at Mozy. He also did a 19-year stint at Microsoft, where he ended up as general manager of platform strategy, and has served on the board of several tech startups, including buuteeq, Shippable, and Rec Room. Join Corey and Charles as they discuss what Charles worked on during his 19 years at Microsoft, including 16-bit Windows, 32-bit Windows, OLE, ActiveX, and .NET; what Charles invests in these days; how the big cloud players are so big that you’d struggle to catch them if someone gave you $100 billion; the three arguments IBM people made to Charles after he predicted they wouldn’t have a successful cloud transition in 2013; why Charles expects there to be more niche cloud offerings in the future; why no one will challenge the hyperscale cloud providers; how the COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated the deglobalization trend; and more.

Bill Staples is the Chief Product Officer at New Relic who’s responsible for driving the company’s platform strategy and leading its product management, engineering, and design functions. Bill has more than 20 years of experience in technology, coming to New Relic after a three-year stint as Adobe’s Vice President of Experience Cloud and a 17-year stint at a little company called Microsoft, where he ended up as a Corporate Vice President of the Azure Application Platform. Join Corey and Bill as they discuss the New Relic One platform that’s designed to make it easier for companies to adopt observability; what the difference between monitoring and observability is; New Relic’s free tier, which Bill says is 10x more generous than any other vendor; why Bill believes New Relic lives its values more than the other company’s he’s worked at; Corey’s complicated relationship with usage-based pricing models; why Bill thinks observability should be part of the basic engineering process; and more.