Insightful conversations. Less snark.

Tim Bray—the founder of OpenText, one of Canada’s biggest software companies—is a self-professed general-purpose Internet software geek with more than 35 years of experience in the world of technology. In April 2020, he resigned from his job as a senior principal engineer/distinguished engineer at AWS, where he worked in the Serverless group. Other positions he’s held over the years include developer advocate at Google and director of web technology at Sun Microsystems. Join Corey and Tim as they discuss the genesis of XML and JSON along with their shortcomings, what it was like being a distinguished engineer at AWS and resigning due to ethical concerns, why Tim believes capitalism doesn’t work when companies get too big, the Streisand effect and what happens when you fire whistleblowers, how AWS was the best place Tim worked in his career but why he had to leave anyway, what Tim likes about Kubernetes, the technology trends that interest Tim the most, what the future looks like, Tim’s interest in public sector procurement, and more.

Katie Bullard is the president of A Cloud Guru, a cloud education platform. She’s also a board member at Conservice, ChildCareCRM, and Journyx, Inc. Katie previously served as president and chief growth officer at ZoomInfo (formerly DiscoverOrg), VP of marketing, product and corporate development at Mitratech, director of marketing at Accruent, and chief of staff and leader of corporate strategy at Dun & Bradstreet, among other positions. Join Corey and Katie as they discuss Katie’s tenure at A Cloud Guru, how three months feels like both three weeks and three years at the same time, how everyone has a different learning style and what A Cloud Guru is doing to accommodate all of them, how not knowing something makes us vulnerable whether or not we want to admit, what it was like for Katie to accept a new position only to find out six days later A Cloud Guru was acquiring Linux Academy, how A Cloud Guru has both B2B and B2C products, what it’s like to run a company founded by other people, and more.

Liz Fong-Jones is the Principal Developer Advocate at Honeycomb, a company that helps developers visualize, understand, and debug software. Prior to joining Honeycomb, Liz worked at Google for over 11 years, wearing many different hats over that period, including Staff Developer Advocate, Staff Site Reliability Engineer, and Site Reliability Engineering Manager. Join Corey and Liz as they discuss why people either love or hate Honeycomb, how Honeycomb has been pretty awesome to Corey over the years, why Liz left Google after an 11-year run, what Liz’s opinions on AWS and GCP are, how nobody really has a good understanding of AWS’ offering, why Liz doesn’t think anyone has to worry about GCP being deprecated, what boards and VCs tend to do once they hear the word “union,” how there isn’t an ethical leader among cloud providers, and more.

Forrest Brazeal is Cloud Bard who doubles as a senior manager at A Cloud Guru, an e-learning company that helps people learn about the cloud. Previously, he worked as a senior cloud architect at Trek10, Inc. and team lead for cloud architecture and services at Infor. One of the original AWS Serverless Heroes, Forrest holds a master’s in computer science at Georgia Tech, where he earned a 4.0 GPA. Join Corey and Forrest as they discuss what it’s like to be a cloud bard, why you should try to pull fun things into your job so you can get paid to do what you love, what it’s like to design and scale cloud training initiatives, how not everyone knows what the cloud is, the role empathy plays in cloud education, how Forrest wrote a book about the cloud in verse, how Forrest believes there will be hundreds of millions of developers by the end of the decade, what Forrest thinks is an effective way to teach people the cloud, and more.

Melanie Cebula is a staff software engineer at Airbnb who’s focused on cloud infrastructure. She’s a 2016 graduate of UC Berkeley, where she earned a bachelor of arts degree in computer science. Prior to joining Airbnb full-time, she interned there on the payments team. She’s also worked as a teaching assistant at UC Berkeley (CS 164 - Programming Languages and Compilers and CS 61B - Data Structures) and has interned at Facebook, too. Melanie has many opinions, which are her own, and which do not reflect the opinions or views of her employer. Join Corey and Melanie as they discuss the differences between junior, senior, staff, and principal engineers, what a staff engineer’s job looks like at Airbnb, why cloud cost efficiency is a hard-but-great problem to work on, why some engineers are hesitant to turn anything off, how much of optimizing cloud spend involves picking off low-hanging fruit, why it’s more fun to talk to technologists about cloud problems than vendors, how Airbnb uses Kubernetes and what that means for AWS spend analysis, and more.

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.