Insightful conversations. Less snark.

Conrad Heiney is a principal cloud engineer at Glidewell Dental, a company that distributes high-quality dental lab products to dentists and laboratory professionals around the world. Conrad has more than 20 years of experience as a system administrator, working for companies like Fox Sports, Buzznet, DIRECTV, Tierzero, and ZestFinance along the way. He specializes in Unix system administration, AWS cloud services, Opscode Chef management, MySQL DBA management, and a host of other areas. Join Corey and Conrad as they discuss the path that led Conrad to the world of computers, what it was like to be part of the generation that was essentially inventing the modern internet, how great it is to work alongside a developer who knows ops, what it was like to work at a newspaper in the 1980s (hint: everyone hated each other), why in the age of containers and serverless it’s still important for companies to understand what’s going on in the proverbial black box, why Conrad thinks tech workers aren’t more special than anyone else, the role empathy and humility should play in tech, and more.

Jessy Irwin is the Founder at Amulet. Prior to this role, she ran her own consultancy, Jessysaurusrex LLC, for seven years, worked as a vice president of privacy and security at a privately owned public affairs firm, and was a security empress advocating for password managers at AgileBits, Inc. Join Corey and Jessy as they discuss the best job title in the world, how majoring in art history was the best life decision Jessy made, why security needs to be as mundane as vacuuming the house, what Jessy is doing to make security more enjoyable, the role consumer branding plays in the adoption of security tools and practices, why Jessy thinks security problems are akin to lifestyle choices, why security practitioners should be focused on raising the cost of an attack, one of Jessy’s endless frustrations about working in blockchain, why Jessy generally avoids using the b word, and more.

Dwayne Monroe is a senior cloud architect at Cloudreach, an organization that helps enterprises maximize their cloud investments, who’s focused on Azure. Prior to joining Cloudreach, Dwayne worked as a senior Microsoft and cloud architect at High Availability, Inc., a Microsoft cloud solutions architect at McGraw-Hill Education, and a Microsoft Technologies Architect at MedRisk, Inc., among other positions. Join Corey and Dwayne as they discuss the journey that led Dwayne to Azure, how and why the typical customer ends up in Azure, the kinds of new services Dwayne sees being built on Azure, why it’s important to understand an enterprise’s legitimate concerns as they consider cloud migration, how Visual Studio Code is awesome and would be even better if it worked on an iPad, how the people who use Azure tend to be more concerned about operational things than very flashy things, how negotiating with Microsoft has gotten considerably easier in recent years, and more.

Wes Miller is a research analyst at Directions on Microsoft who’s focused on Microsoft identity, security, and management. Over the years, he’s worn many different hats, including serving as director of product management for Invodo and CoreTrace, a contributing editor for TechNet Magazine, an engineering manager at Pluck Corporation, and a product technology strategist at Winternals Software. He also did an eight-year stint at Microsoft, working as a product manager, program manager, implementation manager, and intranet web developer. Join Corey and Wes as they discuss the Directions on Microsoft origin story, the wild world of software licensing, how Azure currently plays second fiddle to AWS, how trying to figure out cost savings in the cloud is akin to untying a Gordian knot, Wes’ “cloud paradox” and what it means for predicting cloud spend, why Wes believes there should be a dedicated individual analyzing spend at a vendor when the numbers are high enough, why Microsoft is still the same old Microsoft despite what many people think, how marketing and developers often speak different languages, and more.

David Boeke is the CTO and VP of Services at Turbot, a cloud governance platform that automates compliance, security, and operational controls for the public cloud. Prior to joining Turbot, David served as the global head of healthcare technology and the global director of architecture and integration at Janssen, a Johnson & Johnson subsidiary. Before those roles, he worked at Johnson & Johnson for 17 years, rising to the senior director of enterprise architecture during that time. Join Corey and David as they discuss what exactly it is that Turbot does; how the cloud makes it easier to keep track of all of your assets thanks to its searchable nature; how David’s background in pharma helped him bring a regulation-first mindset to the cloud; how large organizations sponsor conferences like re:Invent to attract talent; how Turbot works with one-person IT shops all the way up to enterprise with two dozen developers; why tagging resources is important even though it’s one of the least sexy things you can do; why teams should focus on one thing at a time, automate that thing, and move on to the next thing; how Turbot reimagined its dashboard reporting design to give users more peace of mind; and more.

Chris Hill is the CEO of HumblePod, a company that helps businesses develop authentic podcasts and happens to produce Screaming in the Cloud. Prior to founding HumblePod, Chris worked as a business development director and Chief Operating Officer at Smallball Media, a sales development manager at Finworx, a project manager at High Profile Enterprises, and an account manager at AT&T, among other positions. Chris lives in Knoxville, Tenn. Join Corey and Chris as they discuss how Chris got started in the podcast business, the genesis of the name HumblePod, how the feedback model is remarkably different for podcasts versus newsletters, how podcasting opens up the doors to having conversations with titans of industries that would otherwise be impossible, why Chris thinks podcasting is like a magic wand, why people are more willing to hop on a podcast than sit down for a video interview, the importance of having high-quality equipment to record podcasts with, why podcasting makes attribution difficult for advertisers, and more.

Miles Ward is the Chief Technology Officer at SADA, a global business and cloud consulting firm that is Google’s largest partner. Prior to this role, Miles worked as the director of solutions and global lead at Google Cloud for five years and served as the senior management of solutions architecture at Amazon Web Services for four years. He’s also held director-level positions at Visible Technologies and Insurgent Technologies. Join Corey and Miles as they discuss hybrid and multi-cloud environments, what Andy Jassy believes is the biggest impediment to AWS’ growth, why Miles decided to leave Google after a life-changing five-year run, how managing a team of 80 makes it nearly impossible to get your hands dirty with tech, what a solutions architect does and whether the job description changes from company to company, the product Miles killed at Google and what the experience was like, how much Miles believes it costs Google to turn off products, what the Achilles heel of every public cloud is, and more.

Alex DeBrie is the founder of DeBrie, LLC, a cloud-native training and AWS consulting company with a focus on DynamoDB and serverless technologies. He’s also the author of The DynamoDB Book, a 450-page tome that offers tips, strategies, and more about data modeling in DynamoDB. Prior to starting his own company, Alex was an engineer at Serverless Inc. and Hudl. Before that, he worked as an associate attorney for a law firm in Nebraska after earning his J.D. from the University of Virginia School of Law. Join Corey and Alex as they discuss what got Alex so interested in DynamoDB in the first place, why Alex isn’t worried about AWS pricing, why you should view your cloud provider as a partner instead of an enemy, the many hats Alex wore at Serverless, Inc., why Dynamo is the database of choice for serverless applications, why auto-scaling doesn’t work quite as well with DynamoDB as it does for EC2, the most egregious uses of DynamoDB Alex has encountered to date, how Alex made the leap from law school to engineering and tech, the time Alex was the number two Django contributor on Stack Overflow over a six-month period even though he’d never done any real production, and more.

Stephen O’Grady is a cofounder of RedMonk, the open source industry analyst firm, and he works as a principal analyst there. Prior to joining RedMonk in November 2002, Stephen held several different analyst and consultant positions at companies like Illuminata, Blue Hammock, DiaLogos, and Keane, Inc. He’s also the author of two books: The New Kingmakers and The Software Paradox. Join Corey and Stephen as they talk about what RedMonk is and how it’s different from other analyst firms, why Stephen decided to write books that were about half as long as other similar books, how the prominence of the developer within the organization has shifted over the last few years, why having a lot of software solutions at your fingertips is both a good and a bad thing, what Stephen’s next book might look like, what it’s like to make predictions that go against what the big firms are saying, why listening is one of the most important skills in business, and more.

Sid Rao is the GM of Amazon Chime, AWS’ communications platform for voice and video calls. Prior to joining AWS, Sid worked at CTI Group, serving as the company’s CTO for a decade before joining its board of directors. Over the years, Sid’s worn many other hats, including working as a consultant for DaVinci Capital and a program manager at Microsoft. He was also the founder and vice president of R&D at I/O Medical Systems, makers of a device that could acquire multiple physiological indicators using a tablet device. Join Corey and Sid as they discuss the newly announced Amazon Chime and Slack and partnership and what it means for virtual meetings, where the optimal place to host a video meeting between a user in New York City and a user in Taiwan is, how chat becomes exceptionally difficult when you’re trying to scale to hundreds of thousands of users, how the Amazon Chime team responds to user feedback, how Amazon’s own usage of Chime doubled in recent months and Chime scaled without a hitch, why the Chime team focused on and perfected the app’s plumbing first and how it’s now shifting its attention to polishing the porcelain, why the Chime interface displays a region label, what Sid thinks the number one misunderstanding about Chime is, and more.

Jeff Sandquist is the corporate vice president of developer relations at Microsoft, a place he’s called home for more than 20 years of his career. Other positions he’s held there include senior director of developer product management, senior director of developer relations, and general manager of the cloud and enterprise group. In 2013, Jeff left Microsoft for an 18-month stint at Twitter, where he was the company’s global director of developer and platform relations. Join Corey and Jeff as they discuss what Jeff does at the helm of Microsoft’s developer relations group, how Microsoft defines “developer relations,” the critical role docs play in developer success, how Microsoft was able to seamlessly transition Build into a fully remote event during the COVID-19 pandemic, how successful documentation is more of a lifestyle than an initiative, how Microsoft writes docs before they write code, the one thing that makes Microsoft tick, and more.

Colin Percival is the founder of Tarsnap, a secure online backup service. He’s also an AWS community hero. For the last 16 years, Colin has contributed to the FreeBSD project, and he led efforts to bring FreeBSD to EC2. An alumnus of Simon Fraser University, Colin has a D.Phil. in computer science from the University of Oxford. Join Corey and Colin as they discuss what FreeBSD is, why Colin started using it in the first place, how Colin is responsible for getting FreeBSD working on EC2 in the early days, how FreeBSD’s generous open source license raises other issues, what’s changed about communicating with AWS over the last several years, how Colin’s company Tarsnap makes online backups for the “truly paranoid,” how Colin turned down a job offer from Google to start his own company, what Colin’s AWS architecture looks like, why Colin doesn’t care if Tarsnap never becomes a publicly traded company, and more.