Insightful conversations. Less snark.

Ceora Ford is an instructor and learner advocate at egghead.io, a web development screencasting platform. She’s also a technical writer at DigitalOcean and an advisee at BUILT BY GIRLS, an organization that prepares the next generation of female leaders in tech. Join Corey and Ceora as they talk about why Ceora enjoys learning in public, why people who enjoy mastering topics might want to steer clear of AWS, how AWS is so big that even people who work there don’t know much about what’s happening at AWS, what it’s like to give a conference talk on a subject you’re not familiar in, how learning in public also helps other people learn the material at the same time, project-based learning and why Ceora finds it particularly helpful in certain situations, why Ceora believes there’s a misperception about how difficult front-end development is, and more.

Tim Banks is a technical account manager at Mission Cloud, an AWS Premier Consulting Partner. Tim brings more than 20 years of experience to the role, having worked as a technical account manager at AWS, a site reliability engineer at Elastic, a DevOps engineer at ObjectRocket, a senior database administrator at TEKsystems, and a LAMP systems architect at Charles Schwab, among other positions. Prior to launching a career in tech, Tim enlisted in the U.S. Marine Corps as a musician before being reassigned to avionics. Join Corey and Tim as they discuss what a technical account manager does, how not all TAMs are the same and why that might be, how small businesses are more able to do the things they think are right compared to large businesses, how tech has come a long way with respect to diversity and inclusion over the last 20 years and how there’s still a long way to go, what the tech industry means for Tim’s legacy, why it’s important to have compassion, how we can iterate our personalities much like our software, the importance of action against racism and bigotry, and more.

Alex is a software developer at Wellcome Collection, a museum in London that explores the history of human health and medicine. Their role primarily focuses on preservation and building systems to store the museum’s digital archive. Alex also helps run the annual PyCon UK conference, with a particular interest in the event’s diversity and inclusion initiatives. Join Corey and Alex as they discuss how Alex built a calculator using DynamoDB, the role Corey played in inspiring Alex to do that, what Corey means when he calls someone a “code terrorist,” the features that are packed into Alex’s calculator, why Corey thinks the Wellcome Collection would be a great acquisition for AWS, why the museum always likes to keep two copies of things, how Glacier Deep Archive is great for long-term storage, the challenges museums face in the 21st century vs. the challenges they faced in the 18th century, what it’s like to digitize Betamax, VHS, and CD-ROMs, how to find items in a vast digital archive, and more.

Jason McKay is the CTO/SVP at Logicworks, a provider of cloud migration and managed cloud services for AWS and Azure customers. After stints in technical support and system administration, he joined Logicworks in 2006 as a senior engineer and moved through the ranks there, ascending to director of engineering and VP of engineering before assuming his current role. Join Corey and Jason as they discuss Jason’s impressive career trajectory, what exactly a managed service provider does, how Logicworks is different than the run-of-the-mill MSP, how Jason believes MSPs should work as the R&D arm of their clients, what to look for in an MSP that you might actually want to work with, how there aren’t really any public cloud-to-public cloud migrations but there are customers running in multiple clouds, how one of Logicworks’ apps that runs on AWS and Azure is architected, how much that extra nine of uptime costs, what a terrible client for Logicworks looks like, and more.

Veliswa Boya is a twice-certified AWS Cloud Engineer and an AWS Community Hero who’s currently working as a cloud migration specialist at a financial services company headquartered in South Africa. She brings more than two decades worth of tech experience to the role, having served as a software developer at a number of different financial services companies over the years. Join Corey and Veliswa as they discuss what being an AWS Community Hero means to Veliswa, what the process of becoming a Community Hero was like, why Veliswa thinks cloud adoption in Africa is on the rise, how being named a Community Hero has enabled Veliswa to meet all kinds of incredible people throughout Africa, what the emergence of the Cape Town region means for developers in Africa, why Veliswa feels more overwhelmed with AWS today than when she started learning it three years ago, Veliswa’s tips for getting familiar with AWS, and more.

Stuart Miniman is a senior analyst, co-host of theCUBE, and general manager of content at SiliconANGLE and theCUBE, an online media company based in Palo Alto, with offices in Massachusetts, too. He’s also a principal research contributor at Wikibon and an advisor at TechReckoning, an independent community of enterprise technology professionals. Prior to these roles, Stuart worked as a technologist in the corporate CTO office at Dell EMC and an account executive at Lucent Technologies. Join Corey and Stu as they discuss theCUBE and what Stu’s role is there, how the company was forced to transition from physical events to online interviews due to COVID-19, what Stu looks for when he books guests, why technology practitioners shouldn’t always be mesmerized by the latest shiny thing, how Stu ended up becoming an analyst in the first place, how lots of companies don’t actually use phrases like “hybrid cloud” and “multi-cloud” to talk about their own infrastructure, the top reason companies run Kubernetes, Stu’s secrets for conducting great interviews, how there’s always more stuff to pay attention to in tech than anyone can keep up with, and more.

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.