Insightful conversations. Less snark.

Jeremy Bowers is the Director of Engineering at the Washington Post who’s currently leading a team that’s focused on the 2020 presidential election. Prior to joining the Post, Jeremy held many other news-focused roles, including working at the New York Times as a senior editors for news applications and a senior software engineer; serving as a news applications developer at NPR, and wearing many hats at the Tampa Bay Times, including news technologist and online operations specialist. Join Corey and Jeremy as they explore the common engineering dilemmas newsrooms face, how data visualizations in newspapers have evolved over the centuries, how the Washington Post uses data to examine trends and test hypotheses—like whether Texas will become a blue state in the next election, what the hardest part about bringing data to the surface in a newsroom is (hint: it’s not data ingestion or cleanup), how a lot of reporting is the same as it was 30 or even 40 years ago, why Jeremy thinks reporters won’t be replaced by robots, how newsroom technology has evolved over the last decade, and more.

Join Corey and Kelsey as they explore the journey that led Kelsey to Kubernetes; where Corey feels Kubernetes falls short; how Kubernetes is just another step in the evolution of technology, with more to follow in the future; why Corey used to argue against the cloud; why Kelsey believes Kubernetes makes hyperspecialization worthwhile; Kelsey’s general feelings about multi-cloud; what Kelsey believes is the biggest thing that’s misunderstood about Kubernetes; what the future of Kubernetes looks like; and more.

Rob Zuber is the CTO of CircleCI, makers of a full-service CI/CD platform. Before that, he co-founded Copious, a social marketplace built around people and their interests, and Yoohoot, a mobile advertising company that was acquired by Appconomy. He also served as VP and chief mobile strategist at Critical Path, CTO at AdPerk, VP of business development at Kobo, and an instructor at Marakana, among other positions. Join Corey and Rob as they discuss the ins and outs of continuous integration and continuous delivery and touch upon why it’s hard to scale CI/CD, why many companies end up focusing on what’s called undifferentiated heavy lifting and why that’s a bad thing, what keeps AWS awake at night (hint: something to do with money), why at the end of the day, it’s all about the product, how developer relations is really a marketing endeavor, how CircleCI is a team of engineers solving problems for another team of engineers, why distributed teams are becoming the norm, and more.

Andreas Wittig is an author, entrepreneur, and AWS cloud architect and software engineer at widdix, a tech firm based in Germany. He’s also a senior consultant at tecRacer who focuses on AWS. Andreas recently co-wrote Amazon Web Services in Action with his brother, Michael, and together they run cloudonaut.io, an AWS-focused consultancy. Among other career highlights, Andreas once migrated the complete IT infrastructure of a leading German bank to AWS. Join Corey and Andreas as they discuss both of their journeys to AWS, how Andreas gets his ideas for AWS-inspired content, why Andreas thinks Fargate is a great tool for deploying applications on AWS—and why it’s even better than Lambda in some instances, the inspiration behind the Wittig brother’s new book, the two promises of Global Accelerator and when the tool is particularly valuable, additional AWS services Andreas believes don’t get enough attention, the concept of “infrastructure bootstrapping,” and more.

Thomas Hazel is CTO and founder of CHAOSSEARCH, a powerful search and analytics platform for AWS that’s backed by S3 as a data store. He’s also an official member of the Forbes Technology Council, a hall of fame member at the University of New Hampshire, and advisor to ecoText, Inc. Previously, Thomas founded the Deep Software Foundation, served as chief architect for algorithms at Akiban Technologies, and worked as lead architect of Oracle VM, among other positions. Join Corey and Thomas as they discuss the journey that led Thomas to CHAOSSEARCH, why the company has the name it has, what Corey likes about the CHAOSSEARCH approach, why Corey believes oftentimes you need to “start kidnapping princesses” in order to pay for log analytics, use cases when Thomas thinks Elasticsearch could be a better option than CHAOSSEARCH, the features CHAOSSEARCH is currently working on adding to its platform, why CHAOSSEARCH is in ALL CAPS, what the company has in the hopper for 2020, and more.

Join Corey and Dai as they explore the world of tech reporting and Dai’s recent article on AWS in particular while touching on a number of topics, including how AWS evolved from a platform everyone built on top of to one that runs everything built on top of it, why it’s incredibly difficult to capture all the nuances of the world of open source in a single article, the collaborative nature of writing the news, how a journalist can tell when they’ve written a story that doesn’t have mistakes, why Amazon as a trillion-dollar company should expect more scrutiny, what it was like to try to get people to go on the record talking about AWS, and more.

Leon Adato is a head geek and technical evangelist at SolarWinds, a software company that delivers affordable IT infrastructure management solutions. He’s also the founder and operator of AdatoSystems, a provider of low-cost web solutions. Leon has nearly three decades worth of experience in the tech world, having worn all kinds of IT-related hats for companies like Nestle, PNC Financial Services Group, and Cardinal Health. Join Corey and Leon as they explore the fabled world of on-premises data centers and touch upon a number of topics, including how the world of IT has evolved over the last 30 years, Leon’s mindset on monitoring,the lone genius’ IT domination in the ‘90s, how the perception of IT has changed over the last several years, the path Leon took from a degree in theater to a career in IT, Corey’s musings on the configuration management wars, the concept of “technical empathy,” why you always need to be ready to pivot, how what you learn today bleeds into what you need to know tomorrow, and more.

Adam Jacob co-founded Chef Software and created Chef, a platform that helps DevOps teams ship software faster. Though he still serves on Chef’s board, Adam has a new role these days: serving as CEO and co-founder of a new startup called The System Initiative. For more than a decade, Adam has been designing, building, and managing large production systems. He has more than 20 years of experience working in tech. Join Corey and Adam as they explore the pros and cons of taking venture capital, why Adam believes VC money unfairly gets a bad rep, how great 1Password is and why Adam believes the company’s $200 million raise makes sense, when to take VC money and when to turn it down, how expanding from a tool that performs a specific function to a platform business can be a scary thing for end users, how not all VCs are alike, how “bad founders” exist, why the people who tend to dislike venture capitalists usually aren’t the ones making the tough decisions, and more.

Jessie Frazelle, Steve Tuck, and Bryan Cantrill founded the Oxide Computer Company. They’re building a rack-scale server design to deliver cloud hyperscale innovations around density, efficiency, cost, reliability, manageability, and security to everyone running on-premises compute infrastructure. Join Corey, Jessie, Steve, and Bryan as they discuss how and why a lot of companies still run on-premises infrastructure in the cloud era; the last time Corey bought a box; what happens when you rely on myriad vendors for your hardware and software needs; why two-person startups should start in the cloud and when they should move on-prem; how if the cloud is renting a hotel, on-prem is owning a house; musings on tech and sustainability; how the cloud is not a panacea; the current status of Moore’s law; and more.

Rachel Stephens has worked as an analyst at RedMonk, a firm focused on software developers, for the last four years. Prior to that, she held several other analyst positions for companies like Western Union, Dish Network, Frontier Airlines, and LaSalle Investment Management. She’s also volunteered as a grant writer and mentor for Minds Matter, a nonprofit that helps students from low-income families. Join Corey and Rachel as they discuss what an analyst firm actually is, how RedMonk helps companies understand the link between developer preferences and business strategy, the disconnect between financial and engineering departments and how to bridge the gap, how finance has become more interested in the way IT costs come together, why engineers don’t like being referred to as IT people, why finance isn’t always keen on digital transformation initiatives, how engineers aren’t always interested in making money or generating revenue, Rachel’s number one recommendation for effective financial controls in engineering, and more.

Pete Cheslock is an advisor and consultant who helps startups with product strategy, messaging, and other go-to-market needs. Prior to going out on his own, he worked at a slew of tech companies, holding positions such as VP of Products at CHAOSSEARCH, VP of Technical Operations at Threat Stack, Inc., Director of DevTools at Dyn, and Director of Technical and Cloud Operations at Sonian. Pete holds a master's in business administration from Babson and a bachelor's in communications from Michigan State University. Join Corey and Pete as they discuss the differences between CHAOSSEARCH and Elasticsearch, proper etiquette for the conference badge-scanning experience, how tech can be a bubble and not everyone might know the tools you do, the increasingly prominent roles artificial intelligence and machine learning play in the AWS ecosystem, why the re:Invent experience is like a marathon, what it’s like listening to a talk on a pair of headphones, which re:Invent announcement made the least waves, why diversity amongst chip manufacturers is a good thing, and more.

Chloe Condon is a senior cloud advocate at Microsoft, where she evangelizes on behalf of Azure. Prior to that, she held developer evangelist roles at companies like Sentry and Codefresh. She’s also a freelance writer and has performed in over 30 musicals in the Bay Area, in theaters large and small (50 seats to 4,000 seats). Chloe, who holds a degree in theatre performance from San Francisco State University, is also a graduate of Hackbright Academy, a highly selective accelerated software development program. Join Corey and Chloe as they discuss what it’s like to be a developer advocate, why Chloe built a fake boyfriend alert and how she got a retweet from Smash Mouth, the importance of making the cloud “fun,” what it was like to leave an industry dominated by women and join one dominated by men, how the tech industry stands to benefit from outside perspectives (e.g., stage managers and sommeliers), the role Chloe played in the resurgence of Clippy, and more.