You can watch the video recording of this episode as well, if you're into that kind of thing.

If you missed cfgmgmtcamp this year, keep an eye on cfgmgmtcamp for next year - it's a great conference to start the year with.

Check out Andrew in LinkedIn.

Special Guest: Andrew Clay Shafer.

You can watch the video version of this episoode in YouTube, if you prefer that kind of thing.

Check out Nathen in LinkedIn.

Special Guest: Nathen Harvey.

If you prefer video, you can watch that.

Mentions:

• Lian's home page on the World Wide Web.
• Lian's LinkedIn.
• One of Lian's talks discussed: "Many Cooks, One Platform: Balancing Ownership and Contribution for the Perfect Broth," Lian Li, KubeCon EU 2025.
• Kuberoke.
• Lian's workshops.
• Also, Coté on a magazine cover.

Special Guest: Lian Li.

You can also watch the video version of this episode if you prefer that kind of thing.

Check out the book, The Octopus Organization.

Also, an HBR overview article on the book.

And find Jana Werner in LinkedIn.

She's also talked with Coté a couple of other times, back in 2020 and then in 2024.

Special Guest: Jana Werner.

Jason shares his experiences with AI Tools Lab, vibe coding, and personal projects such as developing his own tools to replace commercial SaaS products. They also talk about devrel differences at large vs. mid-sized companies, and how to maintaining personal energy and sanity in high-demand roles.

Check out just about everything Jason Hand related at his home page on the World Wide Web.

If you prefer video, check out the video of this episode.

Special Guest: Jason Hand.

Watch the YouTube Live Recording of Episode 547

This is a cross-over episode with Software Defined Talk.

You can also watch the video version of this episode if you're into that kind of thing.

Links

• Andrew in LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andrewclayshafer/
• Ergonautic: https://www.ergonautic.ly
• All American Burger: https://maps.app.goo.gl/hgNturR3jf76u5EHA

Special Guest: Andrew Clay Shafer.

All of Russell's stuff is to be found on his home page on the World Wide Web, those his photos take some time tracking down.

Also, Coté wears plaid on plaid. This was not done unknowingly.

Here is the video version of this episode, if you prefer that kind of thing.

Special Guest: Russell Davies.

Special Guest: Manton Reece.

Special Guest: Saad Ansari.

You can also watch the video recording of this interview, if you prefer that kind of thing.

AI for the Rest of Us - https://aifortherestofus.live/london-2025
Discount code: SDI20 for 20% off the conference.
The application form for financial support: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSfrOR2OBJUZEJV72lmL_zXFjUyjJPul-NCoqZV4EzQnkhIe6A/viewform
Her LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/hannah-foxwell/
Her Keynote at QCon: https://qconlondon.com/speakers/hannahfoxwell
Paper she mentioned: https://gradual-disempowerment.ai/

Special Guest: Hannah Foxwell.

You can also watch the video recording, if you're into that kind of thing.

Rachel's podcast: https://www.heavybit.com/library/podcasts/generationship
The Generationship fund: https://www.generationship.ai
Rachel LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rachalmers/

Special Guest: Rachel Chalmers.

You can also watch the video version of this episode if you're into that kind of thing.

Links:

• The Business Value of Developer Relations.
• https://www.marythengvall.com/
• https://www.linkedin.com/in/marythengvall/
• https://www.persea-consulting.com/book
• https://www.communitypulse.io/

Special Guest: Mary Thengvall.

Watch the video, if you prefer that kind of thing.

Mentioned in the show:

Manager versus Maker.
Deborha Tannan books: Talking 9 to 5 and You Just Don't Understand: Women and Men in Conversation.

More on James:

Website - https://jameseastham.co.uk/
LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/james-eastham/
Bsky - https://bsky.app/profile/jameseastham.co.uk
YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCutBMcgLfbSfRL-MB5Bskxg

Special Guest: James Eastham.

In this lively and open conversation, Chris Dancy — the self-proclaimed "Most Connected person in the World" — joins hosts Cote and Whitney to discuss digital minimalism, hyper-organization, life augmentation, and cyborg spirituality. The episode is a blend of humor, tech wisdom, and raw human truth. From cord-hoarding and emotional databases to AI for cold case solving and life automation, Chris opens up his digital soul with passion and presence.

The trio wanders delightfully through stories of Google Glass, Apple Vision Pro, Palmolive soap metaphors, and Grandpa Cyborg’s widget garage for municipalities. With sincerity and sparkle, Chris makes the case that life should be intentional, measurable, and ultimately — more loving.

Find all your Chris Dancy delights at his website.

Special Guest: Chris Dancy.

Check out the video recording of this episode, if you prefer that kind of thing.

Here is how ChatGPT draws Whitney, and here is how it draws Coté.

Mentions:

• Whitney's MCP Commit story repo.
• Whitney's Conference talk proposal AI check.

Check out and subscribe to politicalwire.com, highly recommended. The blog coverage is great and the weekly, members only podcast is one of Coté's favorites.

You can watch the video version of this episode if you're into that kind of thing.

Special Guest: Taegan Goddard.

Find Sarah in LinkedIn. Also, Coté referenced a talk by Aneel Lakhani at Monktoberfest 2023.

Special Guest: Sarah Christoff.

Find Melissa in LinkedIn.

You can also watch the video version of this episode if you prefer that kind of thing.

Special Guest: Melissa Smolensky.

You can watch the video of this recording as well, if you prefer that kind of thing.

Find out more about and from Emily: her consultancy; her podcast, The Business of Open Source; LinkedIn; The New Stack writing; and she has a well traveled, IRL-background.

Special Guest: Emily Omier.

You can also watch the video of this interview form if you prefer that kind of thing.

Check out KodeKloud and Mumshad in LinkedIn.

Special Guest: Mumshad Mannambeth.

Find all of Hazel's stuff on her home page on the World Wide Web.

Special Guest: Hazel Weakly.

Find Marino in LinkedIn, Bluesky, Twitter, and YouTube.

Special Guest: Marino Wijay.

Special Guest: Richard Seroter.

Here is the video of this recording if you prefer that kind of thing.

Here is the leaked Mr. Beast memo Coté mentions.

Special Guest: Brian Gracely.

Checdk out Katie in LinkedIn, and the CNCF Ambassadors program.

Special Guest: Katie Greenley.

Find Viktor in YouTube, LinkedIn, Bluesky, and his website.

Special Guest: Viktor Farcic.

Check out Abby in LinkedIn, and Kratix the platform engineering project from Syntasso. Also, check out the CNCF Platforms White paper and Cloud Native Maturity Model.

We had video recording problems during this episode, so this is from the backup recording. Pardon any weirdness, especially Coté making nose noises.

Special Guest: Abby Bangser.

Whitney's KubeCon talks:
Choose Your Own Adventure: The Observability Odyssey
Panel: Exploring eBPF Use Cases in Cloud-Native Security

This episode kicks off the reboot of this podcast, Software Defined Interviews. Whitney and I (Coté) have been planning to start a podcast for a year or so now, and it's great to start. We'll be putting out interviews every two weeks with people from our community. I hope you enjoy it, and tell us what you think! Guest suggestions are, of course, welcome.

Relevant Material:

• Whitney mentions the book Rest.
• Whitney's in YouTube channel, including links to all of her other YouTube projects, conference talks, etc.
• Whitney's LinkedIn.
• Whitney's wedding photography portfolio.
• The photo framed with a handrail.

You can check out the unedited, video version of this interview as well.

At the end, you hear an AI generated version of two hosts discussing Whitney Lee. It's from Google NotebookML.

Here's the AI generated summary:

In this inaugural episode of our new podcast, Coté sits down with Whitney Lee to discuss her diverse career path, including her experiences as a waiter, musician, wedding photographer, and now a tech professional in developer advocacy and Kubernetes. They delve into Whitney’s thoughts on the corporate world’s culture of busyness and the bizarre aspects she’s encountered transitioning from hospitality to tech. Whitney shares her approach to efficiently managing interruptions, setting boundaries, and the concept of context-switching in work environments.

They also talk about the importance of continually learning and adapting, Whitney’s strategy for tackling new technical concepts, and how she integrates her curiosity into creating educational content. The conversation includes anecdotes from Whitney’s time as a wedding photographer, her initial steps into the tech world, and the significant differences in social dynamics between these fields.

Finally, Whitney offers insights about DevRel (Developer Relations), explaining common misconceptions and the real motivations behind effective advocacy. She also touches on her learning habits, the balance of work and creativity, and the importance of rest and mental space for idea generation.

Key Topics:

• Whitney Lee's diverse career path and transitions
• The culture of busyness in the corporate world
• Setting boundaries and managing interruptions
• Effective context-switching and productivity
• Learning strategies and continual adaptation
• Whitney's wedding photography business and lessons learned
• Insights into Developer Relations (DevRel)
• Local jargon, curiosity-driven learning, and the importance of abstractions in tech
• Security in tech and why it remains a persistent challenge

There's other types of comp. then money, obviously, and those are fine too. In particular, we discuss participation in open source and more recognition. But, still: money is the best.

We discuss this problem and things to do in this episode.

Also, we find out why Coté always has bad breath.

Mood board:

• (6:30) - The daily, normal fears are going to drive what a business does more than large, one-off crises.
• If your inventory is on an AS/400, then you're in trouble.
• A chaos monkey for business, or, training for the unexpected.
• "When there's not a crisis, every penny is squeezed out of technology."
• Outsourcing, but the harmful type.
• Hold your customers close, know your evolving storefront.
• Now, software is the primary storefront.
• To improve, you must have an enemy.
• (20:51) "If you're trying to modernize, do this 'digital transformation,' it has to come from a place of an existential problem."
• (21:26) To prepare for a major disruption, you have to prepare for a bunch of minor, incremental disruptions. You have to sell [the return] on paying for change.
• (25:51) If you want to justify paying for continuous delivery, you have to find a problem to solve.
• (27:41) They're bean counters, so just count the beans for them - just give them some beans and they're happy.
• (28:58) As technologist, our views on revenue are not considered important or valid.
• (29:21) Fear and loss are often easier to quantify, e.g., "if the database goes down, the business halts, and we loose millions a minute." Growth potential is harder to quantify and pitch, so we often ask for money based on fear and loss.
• (29:36) "Even though I think about revenue streams, I've never been taken as seriously when I talk about them, as when I talk about fear."
• Finding people outside of IT that care about software, like, in "the business."
• (32:55) The only reason for technical agility, is business agility.
• (33:44) If you do live through a crisis, try to internalize your failure to prepare so you only learn once from crisis, not again and again.
• (35:33) The Business needs the fear, and then needs to ask IT to help with some optimistic technology action...cause no one's gonna believe IT.

Join Rick and I as we try to find this elusive thing called "The Business." We lay out a theory we've been talking about: while IT has been improving or, at least, can improve, the business side of the house isn't showing up to do anything with CLOUD and AGILE and THE DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION.

Why's this the case? Do toothpaste people have this problem? Outsourcing - that's a treat! And so forth.

Hopefully next episode we'll discuss tactics to get people outside of IT interested.

Subscribe at https://misaligned.business

And, check out Coté's work in progress book on this topic: https://cote.io/bottleneck/

Based on case studies and interviews over the past five years, this talk describes how large organizations are getting over that challenge. First, the talk covers moving from a project to a product mindset and the associated practices. Second, it covers how DevOps and cloud platforms enable that product mindset. Third, it goes over how leadership and management change to support this new approach. Finally, the talk catalogs tactics, patterns, and organizational structures that large organizations are using to improve how they do software which leads to improving their business.

This talk is based on my book Monolithic Transformation (O’Reilly, Feb 2019).

You can download the slides if you like, and they pop-up as chapter art if your podcast app supports that.

Show links:

• Hatching Twitter
• GORILLA.BAS
• IBM Extreme Blue
• Eclipse Marketplace
• Eclipse Foundation
• CNCF Charter
• The universal data plane API
• Universal Data Plane API Working Group

Contact Chris:

• @cra
• LinkedIn

More Software Defined Talk

• Subscribe to Software Defined Interviews Podcast
• Subscribe to Software Defined Talk Podcast
• Follow @SoftwareDefTalk on Twitter
• Send your postal address to [email protected] and we will send you free laptop stickers!
• Join us in Slack.

Special Guest: Chris Aniszczyk.

Links

• Goodbye Open Core — Good Riddance to Bad Rubbish
• We need Sustainable Free and Open Source Communities
• Sustainable Free and Open Source Communities

Follow Adam at @adamhjk

Check out the Software Defined Talk Podcast for the latest news in Enterprise Tech.

Special Guest: Adam Jacob.

Topics:

• Darknet Diaries Chartbreakers Episode
• Who Is Michael Ovitz?

Where to find Jeff

• Software Engineering Daily
• Jeff Meyerson
• @the_prion

Special Guest: Jeff Meyerson.

This episode is sponsored by Plastic SCM, that is, it’s a paid interview.

Special Guest: Pablo Santos.

Sponsored By:

• Plastic SCM: Plastic SCM is a version control to help teams focus on delivering work, one task at a time. Signup today for a 30-day free trial and get a sassy T-Shirt.

Contact Umiar:

• LinkedIn
• @UmairMoheet
• Why I joined Scytale

Special Guest: Umair Khan.

Connect with Jake:

• @moilanen
• LinkedIn

Special Guest: Jake Moilanen.

To work with Zane contact him at Liquid Labs

Special Guest: Zane Rockenbaugh.

Brandon interviews Coté about what the job is, what the work's like, and some examples (other than himself) of people who do it well. As the two discuss, it's a weird job.

Links:

• The Man Who Would Be Khan — March 2004: "A new breed of American soldier—call him the soldier-diplomat—has come into being since the end of the Cold War. Meet the colonel who was our man in Mongolia, an officer who probably wielded more local influence than many Mongol rulers of yore."

Fine more from Rachel on her RedMonk blog, and in Twitter.

Special Guest: Rachel Stephens.

Links:

• Five Minute Finance — Have you ever felt utterly out of your element when meeting with your counterparts in the finance or accounting department? If you find yourself lost when discussing financials, here’s a quick primer on some of the key concepts you should be familiar with at a high level.
• Developers and Social Responsibility — “We do, however, want a world where developers are cognizant of their impacts. We need developers to analyze their products and think about second order effects from a variety of perspectives as part of the software development process. We want to encourage technological progress, and we want to do right by people. This is one minor example that illustrates the difficulties of anticipating unintended consequences and considering who is empowered/disempowered with technology products. With one in four workers expecting their job to be eliminated via automation in the next decade, this small example is indicative of a much broader economic shift underway.”

Links:

• Dustin’s Blog
• Dustin on Twitter
• Dustin’s presentation at Google Next
• Run-one
• Vasa Museum

Special Guest: Dustin Kirkland.

Links:

• Jobs at Acxiom
• Floret Microservices

Special Guest: Chris Donaldson.

Links:
Amazon Go Store
500 Rockets Marketing
Quick Concall iPhone App

Special Guest: Matt Brutsche.

Notes:

Marc Andreessen on Product/Market Fit

More about Satish:

• Chief Winning Officer
• Austin Software Consulting
• All Star Pick

Wrap up with Software Defined Talk plugs

• Check out our other podcast: Software Defined Talk. A weekly round up of all the news in Enterprise Tech.
• Keep up with the weekly newsletter.
• Join us in Slack.
• Buy some t-shirts! DISCOUNT CODE: SDTFSG (20% off)
• Send your name and address to [email protected] and we will send you a sticker.

Special Guest: Satish Kodukula.

Special Guest: Rita Manachi.

Sponsored By:

• Software Defined Talk: You know you want a Software Defined Talk t-shirt! With this code, you can get 20% off. WHAT A GREAT DEAL! Promo Code: SDTFSG

Apologies for the audio quality on John’s end, I neglected to ask him to make sure his mic was set-up properly.

Special Guest: John Mitchell.

Sponsored By:

• Software Defined Talk: You know you want a Software Defined Talk t-shirt! With this code, you can get 20% off. WHAT A GREAT DEAL! Promo Code: SDTFSG

Relevant to your interests

• Russel Crowe is actually a Kiwi, apologies.
• AlienVault - unified security for threat detection, incident response, and compliance.

More

• Javvad in Twitter: @j4vv4d.
• Javvad over at AlienVault.
• Javvad’s fantastically funny and informative YouTube videos.
• J4vv4ad.com - all Javvad, all the time.
• Javvad’s 451 work.

Special Guest: Javvad Malik.

Sponsored By:

• Software Defined Talk: You know you want a Software Defined Talk t-shirt! With this code, you can get 20% off. WHAT A GREAT DEAL! Promo Code: SDTFSG

Relevant links & select articles from Dominic

• Think Outside The Black Box: “The problem is that each time, the definition of AI has been updated to exclude the recent achievement.”
• New Paths to Helicon.
• Replace of Augment?
• Not Biting My Tonge: “Where things go wrong is when stodgy enterprise vendors put on their dad-jeans and go down to the skate park.”
• Algorithmic Reality: “We can see the beginnings of this process already: we drive where the algorithms tell us to drive, we exercise the way the algorithms tell us to exercise, and we even date whom the algorithms tell us to date. We buy films, music, and books that the algorithms recommend, go on holiday where they suggest, and take jobs that they set us up with. In the future, what other decisions will we hand over to algorithms - unquestioning and unconcerned?”
• The paperclip maximizer.

More

• In Twitter: @dwellington.
• His blog.
• Articles at DevOps.com, IT Chronicles.

Special Guest: Dominic Wellington.

Sponsored By:

• Software Defined Talk: You know you want a Software Defined Talk t-shirt! With this code, you can get 20% off. WHAT A GREAT DEAL! Promo Code: SDTFSG

More

• Planigle
• www.walterbodwell.com
• Agile Austin
• Keep Austin Agile 2018

Image Credit

Special Guest: Walter Bodwell.

Sponsored By:

• Software Defined Talk: You know you want a Software Defined Talk t-shirt! With this code, you can get 20% off. WHAT A GREAT DEAL! Promo Code: SDTFSG

More

• Recorded Talk on Istio.
• Twitter: cmluciano_
• His website.
• His LinkedIn.

Special Guest: Christopher Luciano.

Sponsored By:

• Software Defined Talk: You know you want a Software Defined Talk t-shirt! With this code, you can get 20% off. WHAT A GREAT DEAL! Promo Code: SDTFSG

One more thing, we also explain how JJ got his nickname "NO_SSH_JJ."

JJ wants you to go to ChefConf in Chicago May 22-25. Tell him his friends at Software Defined Interviews sent you.

More stuff from us:

• Listen to our other podcast Software Defined Talk
• Subscribe to the Newsletter
• Join us in Slack
• Buy a Software Defined Talk T-Shirt use code SDTFSG for 20% off.
• Send your name and address to [email protected] and get a free laptop sticker!

Special Guest: JJ Asghar.

Nancy Gohring covers application and infrastructure performance for 451 Research, including IT monitoring, application performance management and log management. Check her out in Twitter: @ngohring.

You can now buy Software Defined Talk t-shirts and fill out the contact form with your mailing address if you’d like some free stickers!

There’s some more detailed show notes as well.

Special Guest: Nancy Gohring.

Sponsored By:

• Software Defined Talk: You know you want a Software Defined Talk t-shirt! With this code, you can get 20% off. WHAT A GREAT DEAL! Promo Code: SDTFSG

Links:

• Nancy in Twitter
• Nacy's 451 research
• Nancy's recent report on the Application and Infrastructure Performance Market

The EU is rolling out a huge privacy data regulation policy this Spring, the General Data Protection Regulation, or GDPR. If you do anything with “customer data,” you should probably at least take a look at it. Companies like Facebook and others who use customer data to work with third parties are gonna have GDPR all up in their grills. In this interviews episode, we talk with Jon Collins who’s been writing about GDPR of late from his perch in the UK. Jon’s an excellent analyst and always has incisive takes on enterprise IT related matters, as well as music (sadly, not featured in this episode).

You can now buy Software Defined Talk t-shirts and fill out the contact form with your mailing address if you’d like some free stickers!

Brandon Whichard, Coté, guest Jon Collins.

Show

• Putting people on the line for data handling problems.
• Defining legit use for data: like updating on products bought, recommending other things to buy based on past buying. But, when it comes to holding you’re kid’s interest and other creepy thing, stuff comes into effect. Can’t hoard data now, have to justify why you’re doing it at least.
• So, sort of: if a third party gets ahold of the data, you need to spell out to the end-user what the data is and how it’ll be used.
• They started thinking about GDRP in 2005; it’s taken then 12 years for them to come up with this.

Jon on GDPR, and more

• “GDPR, a topic about which I feel strangely sad [about]”
• Summarize it - ensure data can be encrypted, provide data on-demand, notify of data breaches (but just in unencrypted?), appoint CDO, somehow describe policy to end user (is this a set policy or can organizations differ it?), data must stay in EU (unless protection stuff is done off-shore)
• How’d this come about?
• “IT professionals expect that compliance with GDPR will require additional investment: over 80 percent of those surveyed expect GDPR-related spending to be at least $100,000.” (Book of all knowledge)
• In use: “Facebook needs to ask people if it can use status posts as input to its advertising engines, whereas Google does not need to know someone is — its AdWords algorithms generate information based on search requests, location and so on, without being personally identifiable.”
• Meanwhile, “we will consent to have our privacy even more eroded than it already is.” What exactly should we care about with data privacy: how does an individual think through what Facebook does, Axcion, Target, the government, foreign governments, etc. - aka, Jon vs. The McNealy Privacy Principal (it’s dead, get over it).
• Generalizing to Jon’s five rules of cyber security.

Background

• Covering tech: “It’s a conundrum: when to say something out loud, even if it’s been said before?”
• @jonno
• Jon’s author page on Amazon
• Newsletter
• Podcast
• Gigaom Column

Credits: header image from warrenrandalcarr.

Special Guest: Jon Collins.

More detailed show notes, including the charts, are available.

This week, we look at one write-up of this freaking out from The Economist. They also have a smaller version in their “Leaders” section. As always, there are much more extensive, detailed show notes available as well. 

You can now buy Software Defined Talk t-shirts and fill out the contact form with your mailing address if you’d like some free stickers!

If you're not a man, make sure you take the listener survey. (We got plenty of male-responses.)

See the detailed show notes.

(Slightly) more detailed show notes over in paper.

See more detailed show notes.

Detailed show notes: https://paper.dropbox.com/doc/The-Corporate-Podcast-EBCing-azErWSniyTIDSTn8cQn1U

Also, the DC steak scene, BLT Steakhouse’s odd way of cooking a steak. Brandon says to go to Charlie Palmer’s.

Check out the more detailed show notes and links.

More detailed show notes and such.

themselves and talk about the format in general.

The three interviews: (1.) Meg Whitman, HPE; (2.) Steve Singh, Docker; (3.) Pat Gelsinger, VMware. All of them, of course, are CEOs.

See the more detailed show notes for more.

See the detailed notes for more.

This episode was made free since we haven't been recording the regular show.

See more detailed show notes.

Special Guest: Matt Walburn.

See more detailed notes here.

Links:

• Tommy's Margarita
• Anthony Lee and David Brock talk platform operations — The Pivotal Conversations episode mentioned.

This episode was also made free in the regular Software Defined Talk podcast feed - marketing!

See detailed, typed analysis in the show-notes, find the paper attached, and enjoy the podcast in your members only RSS feed.

As always, thanks for being a supporter!

Your pals, @cowboyd & @cote.

See also the raw notes on the paper, references, and more details on the paper. Also, of course, available as a PDF attached here.

This paper in question (attached here, as well) was suggested by Alek.

As always, thanks for being a patron of Software Defined Talk, it's super-encouraging and meaningful. If you liked this episode, perhaps send the attached PDF (as all great white papers are transmitted) and encourage your friends to check out both Software Defined Talk and to become a patron get our exegesis episodes.

Please tell us what you think and suggest any white papers, talks, press releases, or other tech world ephemera that'd be fun to over-analyze!

See the extensive show notes and much more detail in the attached PDF or online. There's also a bonus write-up about two of Coté's Register columns.

As always, thanks for being a patron of Software Defined Talk, it's super-encouraging and meaningful. If you liked this episode, perhaps send the attached PDF (as all great white papers are transmitted) and encourage your friends to check out both Software Defined Talk and to become a patron get our exegesis episodes.

Please tell us what you think and suggest any white papers, talks, press releases, or other tech world ephemera that'd be fun to over-analyze!

Rough Outline

• Business “outcomes.”
• “So what is it you’d say you do here?”
• Marketing and sales for tech decision making - getting budget, etc.
• The EA Strawperson - biz/IT alignment, governance, proscribing stacks
• Risk-modeling and procurement costs get better
• EA as the ROI whisperer.
• SRE book discussions, Pivotal Conversations #58 (Andrew and Coté).
• The technology, and what’s new? AWS RDS as an (almost) end-to-end example.
• So, EA’s jobs to this point: business stuff… versus defining the platform and tech choices (e.g., “use this pagination library or die!”).
• But: product people do the business stuff… you prescribe one platform/PaaS… and then most teams now choose their own stuff above the platform.
• And doesn’t microservices do the rest…?
• Cloud-native EA’s probably spend a lot more attention to process, like SRE-thinking… reducing duplication of services… someone has to have a global, big picture view of everything.
• Being a change agent: boot-strapping to this DevOps/cloud-native/blah blah
• The ultimate goal: the business wants to evolve quickly, try new things to try to grow and defend itself quicker; the IT must work, or, at least, be resilient; I don’t want to pay a lot for this muffler; making it easy to do the right thing. # Background
• Past discussions on cloud-native EA: Pivotal Conversations #72 and Coté Show #36.
• Some rough notes on research.
• Books: Enterprise Architecture as Strategy and Continuous Architecture.

You should be able to find your members only RSS feed and add it to your podcast listener.

First, thanks to our initial, super-fan handful of members who'll be getting this.

Second, tell us if you like this show, format, and, if so, some studies/papers you'd like us to go over.

Third, if you can help us promote this, and grow membership (or at least envy that you get access to!), that'd be awesome. Feel free to email the PDF around, a link the notes, or even the MP3 if you want to be a bit of a privateer.

Links:

• Ongoing topics list — Rolling list of ideas for things to talk about here.
• Gulf Shores, Alabama — A fine place for a beach vacation.
• The Horse of Pride — It’s like _Hillbilly Elegy_, but for 20th century France.
• frontmacs.el — "A package-based, web-centric, customizable, awesome-by-default, acceptance-tested Emacs distribution curated by your friends at Frontside."
• swiper.el — "Ivy - a generic completion frontend for Emacs, Swiper - isearch with an overview, and more. Oh, man!"

Find us here: @mattjcurry and @cote.

See also the video of this interview.

Special Guests: Barton George and Jono Bacon.

See also a video of the interview.

Special Guests: Abby Kearns and Barton George.

See also a video of this interview.

Special Guests: Barton George and Patrick Debois.

Special Guests: Barton George and Diego Lapiduz.

• Last episode Brian was on, #12.
• In Twitter: @mrbriangregory

Special Guest: Brian Gregory.

Links:

• 070: Kubernetes with Joe Beda, The Frontside Podcast — Always be DevOps'in'.
• Paleo French Cuisine - Kindle edition by Chef Alain Braux. Cookbooks, Food & Wine Kindle eBooks @ Amazon.com. — Less beans, more fruit.
• Southern Culture On The Skids: Dirt Track Date — Good hold music.
• Frijoles charros - Wikipedia — These are the best means that humanity has come up with to date.
• Pivotal Conversations: Cloud-Native Monitoring & PCF Metrics, With Todd Persen (Ep. 65) — In an open source business, you have to figure out how to ask people for money.
• Show Topics and notes — Our ongoing list of show topics and scratch-pad for shows.
• What Makes People Do What They Do? Freakonomics — The Israeli pay for being late to pick up your kid story.
• The Five Dysfunctions of a Team: A Leadership Fable — Actually pretty good.
• Maestro's Classic Beard Butter Wisemen's Blend 8 Ounce — This is what Coté uses, but you can feel free to skip caring about beard-care for the first two years or so.
• GitHub - felipeochoa/rjsx-mode: A JSX major mode for Emacs
• Menlo Font

And, as always, Charles' emacs configuration tip of the week.

Links:

• The Wheel of Time series
• Show Topics
• Planet Money buys oil
• There Will be Blood
• Big Oil profit margins — Something like 6-7%
• Avocado Oil
• Whale oil — "nearly 236,000 whales were killed in the 19th century"
• The 4-Hour Body
• Coté's Belgian waffle iron — Oster CKSTWFBF21 1-1/2-Inch Thick Belgian Flip Waffle Maker, Brushed Stainless Steel
• The Wirecutter
• Arlo cameras
• The Sweethome
• Kombucha
• Charles' emacs configuration tip of the week — crux.el
• Austin Emacs Meetup
• Charles on the Emacs.el Podcast
• Coté on The Frontside podcast

Links:

• Skype Call Recorder
• Topic list
• That podcast we used to do
• “You may all go to hell and I will go to Texas.” — It was Davy Crockett.
• "Don't mess with Texas" — “The campaign is credited with reducing litter on Texas highways roughly 72% between 1986 and 1990.”
• O'Tacos — Panini "tacos" in Paris.
• Cooper's now in Austin
• The Splendid Table with Lynne Rossetto Kasper
• Original My Little Pony theme song
• South American pan pipe sounds
• Houston, Dallas, and San Antonio are top 10 US cities, by population — Austin is #11.
• Who invented the breakfast taco?
• Header image of blue bonnets from rubengarciajrphotography

Links:

• Screenhero
• Oracle's financials, past three years — They're pretty much "flat."
• The Software Paradox — Among other things, Stephen O'Grady analyzes Oracle's finances and what it says about their software portfolio and what companies are now buying, i.e., SaaS.
• Kubernetes tool saves eBay from its OpenStack woes
• Kara Swisher on the Ezra Klein show
• 451 Research

You might also know him from his "being an introvert at conferences" talk.

Check him out in Twitter @jjasghar

Special Guest: JJ Asghar.

Find her in Twitter (@rstephensme) and on her RedMonk blog. See also this fine mound of cheese.

Special Guest: Rachel Stephens.

Special Guest: Bridget Kromhout.

Links:

• Video recording of this episode — The livestreamed recording we did.

Special Guest: Josh Long.

Links:

• Video recording of this episode — The livestreamed video of Josh and I's talk.

It was Joel, back in 2000, who said not to re-write code.

I recorded this with a Mevo, hence the kind of echo'y noise. See the video over in Facebook where I LIVESTREAMED IT!

Links:

• My Pairing column from October at The Register — The comments section is especially good for common sentiment about pair programming.
• Charles Lowell — We used to do a podcast.
• Gartner survey on pair programming adoption — I got the number wrong: it's actually around 20%, not just 10%.
• Mark Ardito goes over HCSC’s astonishing success with pair programming — They thought it'd take 12-15 weeks to get their MVP done, but it actually took 5.5 to 6 weeks we finish.
• Selecting people for pair programming and their enthusiastic response — More from Mark Ardito on HCSC's adoption of pair programming.
• Phil Horowitz talks about how exhausting pairing is at first — At Perforce: "This makes pair programming intense, especially at the beginning. At the end of the first day, I couldn't go home. Before I could face humans again, I put my phone on airplane mode, ignored my usual online accounts, and went to the gym for two hours of self-imposed isolation."

Links:

• Failing fast for the uptight — One of my explanations of "failing fast": it actually means learning; here, a recording of a March 2015 talk.
• Getting Started — picking your first cloud native projects, or, Every Digital Transformation Starts with One Project — My tips on picking a series of small projects to build up internal momentum to do larger ones.
• Digital transformation: the what, the why and the how — The sad donut: "Less than 25% of organizations that participated in a recent 451 Research survey (451 Research VoCUL, April 2016) said they had a well-defined formal digital transformation strategy."

In addition to some other random digital transformation topics, we also discuss how HR policies are struggling to change with things like pair programming and DevOps.

Subscribe: iTunes, RSS Feed

Show-notes and Links

• Matt Curry: @mattjcurry
• Coté: @cote, cote.io

Libsyn downloads as of 20160912: 643

I've had a theory that the hard-line philosophy of open source has softened in recent times. Rather than thinking closed source is to be avoided at all costs, I think most developer types are a lot more willing to accept closed source bits mixed in with open source bits. That is, open core has "won." I discuss this topic with my long time pal, Barton George, while at SpringOne Platform, plus the work he's doing in the developer and OSS worlds at Dell.

We also talk about Hawaiian food.

Subscribe: iTunes, RSS Feed

Show Notes and Links

• Find Barton George at bartongeorge.net and in Twitter at @barton808.
• Cuisine of Hawaii
• Coté: @cote, cote.io

Libsyn downloads as of 20160912: 219.

Special Guest: Barton George.

Matt and I talk about lessons learned from almost a year of helping transform IT at Allstate. When it comes to scaling up agile and cloud-think the real challenges are in functions other than development, like budgeting, planning, training, hiring, and how the overall IT department is organized. We discuss those topics - esp. budgeting! - and also how to set one's personal expectations about going on the transformation journey. Then we discuss an upcoming column on mine in The Register on the benefits of small batches thinking.

Subscribe: iTunes, RSS Feed

Show Notes and Links

• After a year, the question becomes "can it scale?"
• How do we do: Budgeting, training, hiring, how do we organize teams
• We only plan with good information, not bad information.
• You need to establish an overall vision, but avoid being too specific on tactics. For example, with a claim application, we know the general product, the vertical, the line of business we have roughly an idea of what claims are, who the customer is, and what that experience is like. Delivering a better experience for claims, what that feels like, and how do we measure it - these things we don't know perfectly up-front, so we have lots of discipline around iterating and experimenting to deliver good product.
• How budgeting changes in this small batches approach.
• With a lot of this, you can't talk someone into doing these things up-front. They have to experience it first hand: you have to walk them through it.
• "Sometimes 'nothing' is a big win."
• Coté's DevOps columns at The Register.
• Not mentioned, but good thinking to be had in Larman's Law
• Matt Curry: @mattjcurry
• Coté: @cote, cote.ios of small batches thinking.

Libsyn downloads as of 20160912: 477.

Download directly, listen above, or subscribe to the feed: iTunes, RSS Feed.

Show-notes and Links

• If we automate, we'll loose our close touch of the systems.
• Being on call, globally, back when there were actual pagers.
• Persuading people to change with tyranny, demo's, trust, and any other tactics you can get your introverted mind around.
• Recording Ernest's talk on all this, from DOES 2015: DevOps Transformations At National Instruments and Bazaarvoice (And Infosec!)
• From DevOpsDays Austin 2012, here's a panel discussion of DevOps at NI.
• Slides for DevOps Transformations at National Instruments and BazaarVoice, his presentation on DevOps at NI and BazaarVoice.
• One of the most comprehensive presentation on DevOps from Ernest and the other DevOps Austin crew.
• Ernest Mueller: @ernestmueller, The Agile Admin blog.
• Matt Curry: @mattjcurry
• Coté: @cote, cote.io

Libsyn downloads as of 20160912: 655.

Special Guest: Ernest Mueller.

You don't hear too many stories about microservices in "normal" companies. In this episode, I talk with Nate Foreman about microservices-driven work he's been doing with a large enterprise recently. We discuss the goods and the bads of this approach and, overall, how it's working out. It's a good discussion of how all the usual "cloud native" concept actually play out in the real world.

(As you can guess, it's not actually an "action figure" company, we just used that example to mask the actual company.)

Subscribe: iTunes, RSS Feed

Show Notes and Links

• DevOpsDays Detroit
• Nate in LinkedIn.
• Coté: @cote, cote.io

Libsyn downloads as of 20160912: 529.

What organization could be larger than the US Federal government? Not only that, the chance to transform how software is done in the government has perhaps one of the largest possible impacts of transforming any "IT department." In this episode, Matt and Coté talk with Diego Lapiduz who works in the GSA's 18F organization helping government agencies develop their software in new, more agile and cloud-driven ways. We discuss the background of 18F and the broader government initiatives to transform how software is done and also walk through some of the learnings 18F has had in trying to make such a huge transformation.

Subscribe: iTunes, RSS Feed

Show-notes and Links

• Hiring is the biggest problem around government processes.
• To build empathy and different teams working together, try to tackle a common goal.
• Building credibly by demonstrating that your method works.
• The Ugly Baby Problem - winning over people who think they're already doing it right.
• Measuring success.
• 18F in github. github.com/18F and 18f.gsa.gov.
• Examples of project: NotAlone.gov, The College Score Card.
• Explaining "failing fast" in government. People start to understand it as they have more experience.
• How open source is helpful here, how non-government folks get involved and contribute to the open source projects.
• Diego's recent talk at the Cloud Foundry Summit 2014.
• As more background on IT change in the government, check out this overview from Mikey Dickerson at OSCON 2015.
• Diego Lapiduz: @dlapiduz
• Matt Curry: @mattjcurry
• Coté: @cote, cote.io

Libsyn downloads as of 20160912: 458.

In this first part of a new series, Matt Curry and I discuss many of the problems with transforming how a large company uses IT. From dealing with businesses cases, the finance department, and changing how the business thinks about using IT, there are numerous organizational change problems to chew on. This launches a new series of episodes in Lords of Computing where Matt and I will talk interview various folks out there who are going through transformation at their company. We're interested in hearing what's work and not worked for them.

Subscribe: iTunes, RSS Feed

Show Notes and Links

• Matt in Twitter, Coté in Twitter
• Avatar pictures
• Excel is a white-collar battering ram.
• Management as programming the orginization
• The Wolf in CIO's Clothing
• Despite a mandate, you have to convince people to do their job
• Leading the Transformation and A Practical Approach to Large-Scale Agile Development
• Negotiating a business case - finding out what's "really" needed.
• "The Business doesn't know what they actually want."
• Getting the business to understand programming, and vice-versa.
• Having a roadmap vs. documented features - flow vs. fully specified goal

Libsyn downloads as of 20160912: 558.

After catching up about movies and OpenStack, John and I discuss how difficult it is to properly integrate acquired companies into the larger company. We also discuss what VCs are looking for to say yes now: a good team, it seems.

Subscribe: iTunes, RSS Feed

Show notes and Links

• Aloha.
• State of OpenStack talk.
• Andrew Shafer's To Whom it May Concern
• If A rounds are easy, what are investors looking for?
• The three P's: people, process, philosophy/priorities
• Toyota Kata - Learning to See.
• That Matt Curry/Andrew Shafer conversation, the original Hangouts video.
• DevOpsDays DC talk on government DevOps use?
• DevOpsDays AMS up next

Libsyn downloads as of 20160912: 500.

Show-notes and Links

• The Bruce Sterling Web 2.0 European Conference Circuit
• Craft conference Prezi
• Consul, Teraform, etc.
• Johnaform
• How do you install the thing, how do you fix the thing?
• DevOps Weekly email list.
• The 5 why's of cloud
• Damon and those guys.
• Simon Wardly's evolution of practice
• "The practice of using the tool is novel."
• When the wave finally broke
• Defined vs. constrained by the tools you use.
• Learning to See
• How does this compare to the rise of VMware?
• Don't be constrained by billing.
• How are you measured?
• Bruge, beer museum, churches, chocolate and beer

Libsyn downloads as of 20160912: 337.

It can take a long time to get "the mainstream" to use new technologies. One would assume that this would be true in supporting the government, as Robert Brook does in his day job. In this brief episode, over the din and bottle collection activities at Monkigras, I catch up with him on just that topic and how he tries to manage being a change agent for the benefit of the UK Parliament.

Subscribe: iTunes, RSS Feed

Show notes and Links

• Roland R09 vs. the Zoom H4n.
• Monkigras 2015, London
• Robert Brook, working at the UK Parliament. What does this guy do exactly?
• Reducing friction in the existing systems. How does one do this?
• Digital enterprises as seen in my "Why I'm working at Pivotal blog post."
• Fun things like "Is my MP sitting?"
• Jon Udell on getting iCal files from the library

Libsyn downloads as of 20160912: 289.

While he's in Paris for the local DevOpsDays, John and I discuss the next big step for DevOps: getting "The Business" involved to tie-break the process deadlock. Plus: the Dutch are delightful!

Sponsor: The Cloud Foundry Summit is coming up on May 11th and 12th, in Santa Clara. It's a great chance to dive into Cloud Foundry ecosystem both on the technology side and to hear how organizations are using Cloud Foundry to become Software Defined Businesses. Register now with the discount code COTE and get 25%, which will bring the price down from $250 to about $187.

Subscribe: iTunes, RSS Feed

Show-notes and Links

• The Dutch are DevOpsing, brother.
• John at DevOpsDays Paris. What's it like there?
• Fighting "them" when it comes to DevOps. Docker is the Millennium Falcon
• The Why guy
• The Wall of confusion, 2010.
• Where's "The Business" when it comes to DevOps and cloud? Are they showing up?
• "What kind of company do you think we are?"
• Chad Dickerson Duke interview on Etsy.
• The Goal - make sure you read it.
• JPMC says the nerds are coming.
• Flash Boys: DevOps Cafe Episode 58 - Zoran Perkov
• A Sense of Urgency
• The Halo Effect - you can't just learn from success.
• Good to Great
• This week's pic: my old Apple and work-Dell side-by-side.

Libsyn downloads as of 20160912: 298.

How do you go from playing baseball in France, to getting shot at, to covering the tech industry? I talk with Alex Williams about how he did just that and eventually launched thenewstack.io, one of the more interesting, new technology news sites.

Sponsor: The Cloud Foundry Summit is coming up on May 11th and 12th, in Santa Clara. It's a great chance to dive into Cloud Foundry ecosystem both on the technology side and to hear how organizations are using Cloud Foundry to become Software Defined Businesses. Register now with the discount code COTE and get 25%, which will bring the price down from $250 to about $187.

Subscribe: iTunes, RSS Feed

Libsyn downloads as of 20160912: 281.

Your friends, @cote and @botchagalupe.

Subscribe: http://feeds.feedburner.com/LordsOfComputing

Show-notes and Links

• Lamb and DevOpsDays Mama Mia.
• Memories, barcampESM - the first IT Management and Cloud podcast episode.
• The need for Disaster Kitchen Apps - getting to better demos for cloud infrastructure
• The Presentation Secrets of Steve Jobs - always have an enemy!
• The Anti-corruption layer pattern for integrating with old IT.
• Netflix documentary of VCs, Something Ventured - Ben Thompson essay on venture capital and tech companies.
• Our plans for the Lords of Computing Podcast.

Libsyn downloads as of 20160912: 633.