Wednesday, March 22, 2017

The Cloudcast #293 - Silicon Hollow, From Coal Miners to Coders

Brian talks with Justin Hall (@jhalljhall, President of @BitSourceKY) and Payton May (Creative Director of @BitSourceKY) about how they are using developer skills to help rebuild a region that has been impacted by the decline in the coal mining industry. We discuss how they training former coal miners, how they are building apps to address serious issues in their community, and recent media highlighting their efforts and projects.

Show Links:
Show Notes:
  • Topic 1 - Welcome to the show. Tell us about your background (both in technology and elsewhere) as well as some of the areas where BitSource is focused?
  • Topic 2 - Tell us about Pikeville, Kentucky and why it’s not like Silicon Valley.
  • Topic 3 - BitSource Founder Rusty Justice - “He cofounded Bit Source, a code shop that builds its workforce by retraining coal miners as programmers. Enthusiasm is sky high: Justice got 950 applications for his first 11 positions. Miners, it turns out, are accustomed to deep focus, team play, and working with complex engineering tech. “Coal miners are really technology workers who get dirty,” Justice says.”
  • Topic 3a - Tell us about the process you used to train these former coal miners? What tools or trainings did you use? How did you prioritize the types of projects to take on, that matched the skills you had available?  [Did they have any existing technical skills?]
  • Topic 4 - When we spoke earlier, you mentioned that BitSource was working on an “Uber” like project, but with a much different goal of ride sharing. Tell us more about this project.
  • Topic 5 - You also mentioned that you’re being mentioned/highlighted in an upcoming HBO special. Can you tell us more about this? You've also been recognized for Fortune: "1 of 7 world changing companies to watch" and
    Popular Mechanics: Breakthrough Award
  • Topic 6 - How can we help you tap into a broader technical community?
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    Friday, March 17, 2017

    The Cloudcast #292 - VMware, Beyond Virtualization

    Aaron and Keith Townsend (@ctoadvisor) talk to Chris Wolf (@cswolf, VP & CTO, Global Field & Industry at VMware) about emerging trends in the Enterprise and he gives us some insight into where he thinks the industry will go in the next few years.

    Show Links:
    Show Notes:
    • Topic 1 - It’s been a little over 3 years since you’ve gone over to VMware, leaving the analyst side at Gartner. How has the adjustment been? What’s been the biggest change?
    • Topic 2 - Tell us about how what trends you are seeing in the industry and what is interesting to customers you talk too.
    • Topic 3 - You wrote a blog series at the end of 2016 about the Third Industrial Revolution, tell everyone what you meant by that.
    • Topic 4 - We talk to a lot of CTO’s and VC folks, it is always great to get their personal views as well, what is interesting to you personally these days?
    • Topic 5 - Let’s talk VMware a bit, where do you see VMware’s vision talking the company in both the short and long term?
    • Topic 6 - Something we see a lot of interest in lately is Function Based computing, sometimes referred too as Serverless. Will VMware be pursuing this technology as the next technology horizon post containers? How would other infrastructure products such as NSX or VSAN fit into this picture?
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      Sunday, March 12, 2017

      The Cloudcast #291 - Thoughts from Google Cloud NEXT 2017

      Aaron and Brian review the Google Cloud NEXT 2017 event.

      Show Links:
      Show Notes:
        • Topic 1 - What were our overall thoughts on the show vs. our expectations coming into the week?
        • Topic 2 - Let’s talk about the Google Cloud Community event, hosted by Sam Ramji and Sarah Novotny, before the Google Cloud NEXT event.
        • Topic 3 - What is your impression of the 2017 show vs. the 2016 show? Have the changes been good?
        • Topic 4 - What has impressed you about the messaging and technology at Google Cloud NEXT 2017? What were your favorite technologies announced this week?
        • Topic 5 - What has surprised you or been disappointing about the messaging and technology at Google Cloud NEXT 2017?
        • Topic 6 - Where do you now put Google Cloud in relation to other public cloud vendors as well as other technology vendors that companies can choose to work with these days?
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        The Cloudcast #290 - Managing Data Across Multiple Clouds

        Aaron and Brian talk with Joe Arnold (@joearnold, Founder/Chief Product Officer @SwiftStack)about the evolution from OpenStack to today’s public cloud world. They discuss how customers are managing, valuing and protecting data in multiple cloud environments, as well as how they should think about avoid large-scale cloud failures.

        Show Links:
        Show Notes:
          • Topic 1 - Great to have you back on the show. Let’s talk about the evolution from the OpenStack community to the public cloud communities.
          • Topic 2 - With the growth of public cloud services, are you seeing companies doing new things with data that weren’t common in the private data-center days? New types of applications, or just different usage models?
          • Topic 3 - With all the talk about hybrid-cloud or multi-cloud, how are companies actually getting the data from one cloud into another?
          • Topic 4 - Is there a difference between running software-defined storage in multiple locations and having a platform that can interact with multiple cloud APIs?
          • Topic 5 - What is your guidance to companies that have large amounts of data, but also want to leverage multiple cloud platforms (for various reasons - cost, risk-management, local data services, etc.)
          • Topic 6 - It had been a while since there was a significant public cloud outage. With the recent S3 outage, do companies need to come back and ask new questions about how to think about data and the public cloud?
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          Friday, February 24, 2017

          The Cloudcast #289 - Enabling Voice-First Ecosystems

          Aaron talks with Alex Linares (@linaresa, Co-founder & CPO, @VoiceLabsCo) andTerren Peterson (@Terren_in_VA, Alexa Dev Champ, @CapitalOne) about the emerging voice operating system market, driven by products like Amazon Echo/Alexa and Google Assistance, as well as the range of applications and data analysis being built upon these platforms.

          Show Links:
          Show Notes:
          • Topic 1 - We’ve got two great guests tonight. Adam and Terren, please introduce yourselves and give us some of your backgrounds.
          • Topic 2 - Let’s talk about the “voice-first” market. It’s no longer cool for people to use their telephone for “voice calls”, but talking to computers is an exploding market. Give us the basics.
          • Topic 3 - Terren, you’re an “Alexa Dev Champ”. Give us a sense of what the Alexa skills mean for your work at Capital One? How does this tie into the future of banking or credit cards?
          • Topic 4 - Alex, Voice Labs is focused on the analytics behind these voice services. Can you give us a sense of not only the technology behind your analytics platform, but some of the interesting use-cases companies are able to create with your analytics?
          • Topic 5 - Cloud Computing has completely reshaped the role of IT and how developers interact with resources. How is this voice-first movement going to reshape industries, or open up new industry capabilities?
          • Topic 6 - Many people know the physical devices from Google or Amazon, but these capabilities are being embedded in many other devices. How far will we see the voice-first capabilities expand? (cars, phones, etc.)
          • Topic 7 - What’s the best way for developers to get started with this technology?
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            Friday, February 17, 2017

            The ServerlessCast #2 - Kubeless - Serverless Framework for Kubernetes

            Brian talks with Sebastien Goasguen (@sebgoa, Founder @skippbox)about his experience with containers, the focus of Skippbox, market demand for serverless, the architecture of Kubeless, and how the emerging serverless+kubernetes projects need to evolve.

            Show Links:
            Show Notes:
              • Topic 1 - Welcome to the show. Give us some of your background, as well as what you’re doing at Skippbox these days.
              • Topic 2 - Before we jump into “Kubeless”, let’s talk about what you’re hearing around serverless in the market today.
              • Topic 3 - Tell us about the Kubeless architecture.
              • Topic 4 - With different serverless functions, they initially support a limited subset of languages. Since Kubernetes is language agnostic, why does the limitation exist, or how complex is it to add new languages?
              • Topic 5 - You mention on the project’s GitHub page that there are other “serverless on Kubernetes” alternatives out there (Funktions, Fission, OpenWhisk, etc.). Do you expect that one of these projects will emerge, or do you see these starting to merge and just become a job type within Kubernetes?
              • Topic 6 - Let’s come back to Skippbox. You have a focus on Kubernetes and the tooling around making it easier to deploy and run. What are you seeing in the Kubernetes market and when are people engaging with Skippbox?
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              Friday, February 10, 2017

              The Cloudcast #288 - Understanding Public Cloud Spending Trends

              Aaron and Brian talk with Mat Ellis (@matellis, Founder/CEO of @cloudability) about the evolution of public cloud spending, the knowledge level of cloud buyers, how AWS is trending vs. Azure and GCP, the market for Reserved Instances and how companies are beginning to think about Serverless computing.

              Show Links:
              Show Notes:
              • Topic 1 - Great to have you back on the show. First off, how are things going at Cloudability? We see that Cloudability is now managing the costs of nearly 1/3rd of all AWS usage.
              • Topic 2 - The last time we talked, most of the public clouds did not report revenues, but we’re now seeing that broken out. Give us a high-level view of what’s happening with spending in the public clouds? How has it evolved over the last couple years?
              • Topic 3 - Cloudability has always had a strong focus on AWS, but what are you seeing in the market in terms of demand for Azure, GCP or IBM’s cloud?
              • Topic 4 - Cloudability focuses a lot on not just cost awareness, but helping companies be smart about planning purchases via Reserved Instances. How is the learning curve evolving for the market? Are their secondary markets emerging for Reserved Instances?
              • Topic 5 - Do you get asked a lot by companies to help them compare internal costs vs. public cloud costs?
              • Topic 6 - Let’s talk about “serverless”. How much interest do you hear about that, and what sort of costing questions are people asking?
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