SELECT*: Your Resource for Innovative Tech & Developer Topics Hosted by HarperDB: Recent Episodes
Margo McCabe
The team at HarperDB is excited to bring you our new podcast, Select*. We will be featuring guests across a wide range of backgrounds and topics, with the goal of being your resource for coding tips, best practices, diversity and inclusion, product reviews, tech trends, jobs, and much, much more!
We ain't your grandma's podcast, we can guarantee some fun and entertainment while we're at it!
This episode features Annyce Davis, VP of Engineering at Meetup, for a discussion on how to excel in the tech industry, GraphQL, and much more. Questions covered include:
- Intro: background / journey in tech
- It looks like you focus a lot on helping folks in the tech industry excel in their careers or transition to where they want to be. What are some of your main tips around this, and some of the biggest mistakes you see people make?
- You are also a Linkedin Learning instructor, what does that mean?
- You recently spoke about GraphQL - which continues to gain popularity, what have you learned about implementing GraphQL in production?
- Tools / technologies / frameworks that you're really excited about right now or that you have on your list to keep an eye on?
Annyce is currently the Vice President of Engineeringat Meetup. At Meetup, she helps create the future of real community where people show up, do things, and actually talk to each other. Shaping what “mobile-first” means for an established company is both challenging and rewarding.
Annyce has specifically been focused on Android applications for the past several years. She's also an Android Google Developer Expert. This means that she spends a lot of time developing videos, blog posts, and conference talks for the Developer Community.
This Select* podcast episode features Ben Matthews, Director of Engineering at Stack Overflow, for a discussion on leading an engineering team and the future of software development.
Questions covered include:
- Background / journey in tech, what are you working on now?
- What's it like leading an engineering team at a large company, what are some of the biggest challenges?
- How do you blend engineering and product visions to make sure everyone is working towards the same goal? What are some challenges around cross-team functionality in this sense?
- Tips for devs wanting to climb the ladder or get to a similar role that you're in? Advice you would give your younger self?
- What technology / framework / etc. are you super excited about right now or wanting to dig into?
- Predictions for software development over the next few years?
Ben Matthews is a Director of Engineering at Stack Overflow with nearly 20 years of experience in developing technology and building high-performance technical teams. He’s passionate about helping people grow in their roles and empowering people to build great things.
This episode features Kelsey Hightower for a discussion across numerous topics. In this special edition, Kelsey is interviewed by HarperDB's Co-Founder, Stephen Goldberg. Questions covered include:
- How did it feel to retire from Google this year, what’s next?
- You have, what some would consider, a non-traditional background when it comes to the software engineering world. How has that shaped your view on the industry? How do you think the industry performs at mentoring/cultivating young engineers, including those from non-CS degree backgrounds?
- What are your thoughts on where distributed vs. monolithic architecture is going? How is “Edge Computing” impacted by this?
- There has been a focus in the cloud provider space of bringing on new locations, trying to put infrastructure in hard to reach places. Eventually this will reach a saturation point, where do you think they will invest next?
- When thinking about building platforms and products, what is your advice on how to make a decision to internalize automation within your product vs. using a framework?
- What are your opinions on running a stateful application that must have data consistency across its replicas, such as a database, on Kubernetes? It comes with a bunch of problems to solve, like auto scaling, data redundancy and replication. It seems that the community is split on whether or not this is a good idea and how to implement it.
- What advice would you give yourself 20 years ago?
Kelsey Hightower is an American software engineer, developer advocate, and speaker known for his work with Kubernetes, open-source software, and cloud computing.
This episode features Graham Haythornthwaite, VP Of Engineering at Wonde. Questions covered include:
- Tell us a bit about you, background, journey in tech, what do you work on in your current role?
- What do you like about leading an engineering team?
- What prompted your organization to shift to the 4 day work week and what has been the turnout? Pros and cons?
- Your dev team has recently doubled in size, how do you ensure success when scaling a dev team? Anything to avoid?
Graham is VP of Engineering at Wonde where he has helped double the size of the engineering team and successfully transition their practices to embrace a 4 day week. Prior to joining Wonde he created successful software product teams across multiple industries including Unified Communications for Finance and Emergency Services, Energy, Internal IT and EdTech.
This episode features Ghanshyam Bhatt, Software Engineering Manager at PayPal, for a discussion on SDK development. Questions covered include:
- Tell us a bit about you, background, journey in tech
- What is SDK development; what companies are building SDKs and who are the customers?
- How is SDK development different from App development?
- What are some good resources to follow if you're doing SDK development?
- What other tools / technologies are you excited about at the moment related to mobile app development, Android, and/or iOS? How is UI code changing?
Ghanshyam leads the Native Checkout SDK team at PayPal. With over a decade of experience building mobile apps, he has recently been involved in developing mobile SDKs. He is responsible for strategizing and delivering the SDKs by leveraging my mobile experience to compete with various products in the market. He started his career as an Android engineer and evolved his iOS programming skills to advocate for mobile-first experiences to delight users.
This episode features Sai Pragna Etikyala, Technical Lead at Twilio, for a discussion on event driven architectures and modern asynchronous applications. Questions covered include:
- Tell us a bit about you, background, journey in tech
- What do you work on in your role at Twilio?
- What do you like about being tech lead?
- Let's talk about how to build easier/better event driven architectures. Why is this important?
- What workflow orchestration tools can help?
- Are you involved in the tech community outside of work? Anywhere folks can connect with you?
Sai Pragna Etikyala is a Technical Lead at Twilio, currently leading the team responsible for A2P 10DLC compliance for messaging. Utilizing her extensive experience with asynchronous systems, she has efficiently re-architected Twilio's complex compliance systems, leading to notable improvements in manageability and operational efficiency. Before joining Twilio, she worked at Amazon Web Services, Yahoo, and Cerner. Throughout her tenure at these companies, she developed robust end-to-end solutions and successfully managed complex operations. This has enriched her expertise not only in asynchronous computing but also in software development, cloud computing, and healthcare IT solutions. She holds a Master's degree in Computer Science from Arizona State University. Her innovative and agile approach to software engineering and leadership distinguishes her as a significant contributor to the telecommunications realm and beyond.
In this episode, we chat with Ceora, Developer Advocate at Okta and StackOverflow Podcast Co-Host.
Ceora shares a bit about her journey in tech and how she got to where she is today, which includes building community, learning to code, getting into speaking, and following her passions. Ceora also touches on imposter syndrome, and how she has learned to make the most out of being new to something in tech. This was an awesome conversation!
Ceora is a developer advocate based in Philadelphia. Her career thus far has centered around creating educational content focused on making the tech industry more accessible to everyone. She currently works on the Okta Developer Relations team and is a cohost on the Stack Overflow Podcast. Outside of tech, she spends way too much time watching anime, listening to K-pop, and attempting to play the guitar.
This episode features an interview with Max Howell, creator of the open-source software package management system Homebrew, and CEO of Tea.xyz. Questions covered include: * Share a bit about who you are, background and journey in tech * How was Homebrew created and how far has it come? * How are OSS developers exploited by the tech giants / pros and cons of open source? * What is Tea, why did you build it / what problem are you aiming to solve?
Max Howell made a life of creating some of the most used and beloved open source software in the world. Formally trained in chemistry, he quickly left the lab to chase his lifelong passion of development, and fit into the open-source ecosystem with his spirit of altruism and creativity.Max Howell created the open-source software package management system Homebrew, known as “brew,” which grew into the most contributed-to open source software program in the world. Homebrew has been used by tens of millions of developers worldwide and has served as the backbone for the largest technology corporations to build their products without directly contributing to - or paying for - its development. Besides Homebrew, Max has created many other open-source projects like PromiseKit, which is used by over 100k mobile applications. He is revered by developers around the world.Max’s current project is tea. tea.xyz is a feature-rich, delightful, and decentralized package manager that will revolutionize open source development by providing creators and maintainers value for previously unpaid labor.
This episode features a fun discussion with Iris Classon, software developer, speaker, and author. Questions covered include:
- Tell us a bit about who you are, your background / journey in tech.
- You wrote a comedic fiction about a software developer .. tell us about that.
- What's it like combining the technical side of things with the creative side of writing, how does everything intersect?
- Any tips for balancing work, writing, and dev community with family life / personal time?
Iris Classon is a software developer, appreciated speaker, author, Microsoft MVP, and self-proclaimed comedian.
Hobbies include: extreme sports such as deploying on a Friday and force push to master.
Famous last words: it works on my machine.
Here is a link to a sample chapter from her book, The Unlikely Success of a Copy Paste Developer. You can also find it on Goodreads and Amazon.
This episode features Shashi Lo, Senior Software Engineer at Microsoft, for a discussion on UX Engineering & Breaking Into Tech. Questions covered include:* Tell us a bit about you / your background / journey in tech * What are you focused on now? * Why is UX engineering so important, and how can teams ensure they have an effective UX? * Any tips for breaking into tech, pieces of advice that have helped you throughout your career? * What other tools / technologies are you excited about right now or wanting to look into this year?
Shashi is a Senior Software Engineer, currently at Microsoft. He's passionate about UX Engineering and helping others level up their development skills. With the experience he's been through, he's been able to help others navigate their career to become better developers and give back to the development community.
This episode of the Select* podcast features Randy Kinne, Senior Software Engineer & Tech Lead at Mailchimp. Questions covered include: * Tell us about who you are, your background and journey in tech * What are you doing now / what's your day to day like? * What kind of challenges do you face in your role and how do you overcome them? * Any tips for other folks trying to get to a similar place in their career? * Do you have any side projects / contribute to any OSS projects? * What tools / technologies are you really excited about right now?
Randy is a Senior software engineer & new tech lead at Mailchimp. He cares a lot about developer experience and non-traditional paths into tech.
This episode of Select* features Valerie Phoenix, Founder of Tech By Choice & Engineering Manager. Questions covered include:
- Tell us a bit about you / your background / journey in tech
- What are you focused on now? What is Tech By Choice? How/why was it created? How can people get involved?
- Any tips for managing engineering teams?
- What other tools / technologies are you super excited about right now?
Valerie Phoenix is the Founder & CEO of Tech By Choice and an Engineering Manager at a mental health startup. She holds a BS in Psychology & Art. Valerie is passionate about creating secure human-centered digital experiences.
This episode features Ritika Kanade, Network Director for WomenWhoCode. Questions covered include:
- Tell us a bit about who you are, your background and journey in tech
- What is Women Who Code? How did you get involved in WWC and what do you do with the org? How does WWC impact the community?
- How far have we come and what challenges still need to be addressed in the tech community?
- What's it like working for a tech giant? Any tips for other folks trying to get to a similar place in their career?
- What tools / technologies / or tech trends are you excited about right now?
Ritika is a Software Engineer based in Seattle. She has worked at Rakuten in Fukuoka, Japan for ~3 years and was an Openlab Intern at CERN's IT-DB department in the summer of 2015. She is well travelled and enjoys learning new languages and cultures. She believes in equal opportunities and strongly advocates for education to all. She volunteers as a Network Director for WomenWhoCode in Seattle.
In this episode we chat with Hiroko Nishimura about her non-traditional journey in tech, what it means to be an AWS Hero, her recently published book titled "AWS for Non-Engineers," and how she accidentally ended up in her dream job. She also shares a bit about overcoming unique challenges and learning to ultimately use those challenges to her benefit.
Hiroko Nishimura is a Technical Author and Technical Instructor with background in corporate IT and special education. She teaches "Introduction to AWS for Non-Engineers" at LinkedIn Learning, published "AWS for Non-Engineers" at Manning Publications, and is an AWS Community Hero.
Kicking off the new season of Select* with Santiago, a well-known Machine Learning Engineer and content creator. Questions covered include:
- Share a bit about who you are / your background and journey into tech
- What are you working on now? What is bnomial.com and how was it created?
- Why is machine learning so important today? How can it help organizations, what problems does it solve?
- What do you predict with machine learning in 5-10 years?
- What are some of the biggest mistakes when it comes to machine learning? Pieces of advice to avoid headaches?
- Can you explain bias and variance in simple terms?
- What technologies or tools or frameworks are you really excited about right now?
Santiago is the Director of Computer Vision at Levatas. He has a Master's in Machine Learning from the Georgia Institute of Technology and two decades of experience building software for some of the largest companies in the world. He co-founded bnomial.com, where he publishes daily Machine Learning questions and competitions.
This episode of Select* podcast features Itiel Shwartz, the CTO and co-founder of Komodor. Topics covered include:
- Share a bit about you, what led you to found Komodor and what problem are you trying to solve?
- Let’s take a dive into GitOps - can you describe the main benefits and challenges of GitOps?
- Should developers have the same expertise in Kubernetes as DevOps/Platform folks?
- We’ve seen a big shift left trend in the security space - do we expect to see the same here? Should Dev’s be also responsible for troubleshooting K8s? What do they need to succeed?
- Looking ahead: What trends do we expect to see in the next 12 months in this space?
Itiel is the CTO and co-founder of Komodor, a startup building the next-gen troubleshooting platform for Kubernetes. Previously, he worked at eBay, Forter, and Rookout as the first developer. He's a backend & Infra developer turned ‘DevOps’, and an avid public speaker who loves talking about infrastructure, Kubernetes, Python observability, and the evolution of R&D culture.
This episode features Marcin Wosinek, JavaScript developer with more than 10 years of experience, for a discussion on QA / software testing, remote work, and more! Questions covered include:
- Share a bit about who you are, background, journey into tech
- What are you working on now?
- Let's talk about software testing / QA, why is it important?
- What are the different types/methods? What's the best process?
- What are some issues / roadblocks to avoid with QA?
- You've been working remote for a while, what are your biggest tips for staying successful while working remote?
- What languages / frameworks / tools are you really excited about right now?
Marcin's blog: https://how-to.dev/
This episode features Byron Ruth, Director of Developer Relations at Synadia, for a discussion on NATS, Jetstream, open source, and more. Questions covered include:
- Share a bit about who you are, your background, what you’re focused on now
- What is Synadia, what is NATS, Jetstream?
- Why / how are the HarperDB and NATS technologies integrated? What are some other examples of projects where NATS is used?
- In your opinion, what are some pros and cons of open source? Tips on ensuring success in open source?
- Moving forward, future predictions, what are you excited about?
Byron is currently the Director of Developer Relations at Synadia. Prior to joining Synadia, he spent 14 years building software and systems in support of pediatric biomedical research. Outside of work, Byron enjoys running, cooking, yard work, and spending time with his wife and two daughters.
Software applications and services need to exchange data. NATS is an infrastructure that allows such data exchange, segmented in the form of messages.
This episode features a panel discussion with Yair Greenbaum, Major Account Executive at Akamai Technologies, and Kyle Bernhardy, EVP of Engineering at HarperDB. Topics covered include:
- Share a bit about who you are, your background, what you’re focused on now
- What is Akamai?
- Why / how are HarperDB and Akamai working together?
- Discuss the history of the Internet and different phases from on-prem, to cloud, to edge/cloud
- How are Akamai and HarperDB both enabling solutions like edge computing?
- Moving forward, future predictions
___
Yair Greenbaum is a Major Account Executive at Akamai Technologies. Yair joined Akamai in 2010 and held various positions in the Professional Services and Sales organizations. Over the past 13 years Yair worked with some of Akamai’s largest media customers including NBC, Disney, IBM and many more. Yair lives in NJ with his wife and three kids. He loves spending time outdoors – hiking and climbing. He is also a long distance runner. He ran over 25 marathons and ultra-marathons in the past 15 years.
Kyle Bernhardy has over 20 years of experience in the industry and has held leadership roles in product development, support, and consulting at companies ranging in size from startup to publicly traded. Kyle is the co-inventor of 2 patents with Stephen and Zachary. He is an expert in cloud architecture as well as multiple programming languages.
This episode features Shaundai Person, Senior Software Engineer at Netflix, for a discussion on non-traditional paths into engineering. Questions covered include:
- Tell us about you / your background / journey into tech
- What are you working on now?
- Tell us what it's like taking a non-traditional path into engineering? what are some of the challenges and how to overcome them? what are the positives that come out of it?
- Advice you would go back and give your younger self if you could?
- Tools / languages / frameworks that you're super excited about now? Goals for the next 6 months?
Shaundai is a Senior Software Engineer (Netflix) and TC39 Delegate based in Atlanta, GA, US. She is passionate about making programming interesting and approachable for all, and does that through her work as a course instructor (http://tsforjs.com), co-lead for React Robins (http://reactrobins.com), and technical blogger. In her spare time, Shaundai loves to go hiking, jogging, and listen to audiobooks. Find her on Twitter at @shaundai
This episode of the HarperDB podcast features Matteo Collina, Core Contributor of Node.js, Lead Maintainer of Fastify, & PhD. Questions covered include:
- Share a bit about you / your background / journey into tech
- How did you become a core contributor of Node.js?
- What's one of your favorite projects you've seen using Node?
- Tell us about Fastify, why are you excited about it?
- Thoughts on Bun?
- What do you love about the open source community? Are there any drawbacks to OSS?
- Looking ahead - predictions for Node & JS in general, what are your goals over the next year?
Matteo is a core contributor of Node.js, an author and a maintainer of many modules - including Fastify and Pino, and conference speaker. See his blog here: https://nodeland.dev/
This episode of Select*, the HarperDB podcast, features Ben Lesh. Ben is the RxJS core team lead, as well as a Dad and art lover. Questions covered include:
- Share a bit about you, your background and journey into tech, and what you're working on now.
- What is RxJS, what's it used for, how and why was it created?
- What's it like being in the open source space, what kind of strategies have been successful for you thus far?
- What piece of advice, good or bad, has really stuck with you throughout your career?
- What other technologies / tools / frameworks are you super excited about right now?
Ben Lesh is a software engineer from Austin, Texas. He's best known for being the project lead on RxJS for the past 7 years (https://rxjs.dev). During his >20 year career he's worked at companies like Netflix and Google, and he's spoken about reactive programming all over the world. He has 3 kids. He loves painting, drawing, and visiting art museums.
In this episode we chat with Bria Sullivan, CTO of Honey B Games, Mobile Game Entrepreneur, and Ex-Google Engineer. Bria shares a bit about her journey, including the decision to quit her full time role to pursue her side gig. Questions covered include:
- Share a bit about you / your background and journey into tech / what you're working on now. What drew you into the gaming world?
- Did Honey B Games start as a side project? What are your tips on fitting in a side project/business with a full time job?
- How do you know when it's time to leave your full time gig to pursue a passion that might have started as a side project, what should you consider before taking the plunge?
- What piece of advice, good or bad, has really stuck with you throughout your career?
- Tips for folks getting into game dev
- What technologies / tools / frameworks are you super excited about right now?
Bria Sullivan is the Chief Technology Officer of Honey B Games, an independent game studio specializing in wholesome mobile games. She has specialized in product development and engineering strategies for mobile apps and games across most platforms and tech stacks for 12 years. Prior to founding this game studio, she was a software engineer at Google. She voluntarily developed a permanent 3D interactive installation for the Smithsonian's National Museum of African-American History and Culture, to help change the way we learn about our nation's true history. She serves as a Startup Advisor for Neighborhood Start Fund and Google for Startups.
In this episode we chat with Hila Fish, Senior DevOps Engineer at Wix, about Devops culture and role. Questions covered include:
- What drew you into DevOps / how did you pick that specific path?
- What does a DevOps role look like? What problems are you solving, how are you solving them?
- What types of tools / technologies / processes are most helpful for someone in a devops role similar to yours?
- What's Devops culture like? Where would you like to see improvements?
- Looking ahead: what are you excited about, focused on learning or achieving in the next few months?
Hila Fish is a Senior DevOps Engineer @ Wix. She believes the DevOps culture is what drives a company to perform at its best and carries the vision of enhancing and stabilizing the business by taking care of its infrastructure.
In her spare time, Hila is a lead singer of a cover band, giving back to the community by co-organizing DevOps-related events (Inc. "DevOpsDays TLV" & "StatsCraft IL Monitoring Conference"), mentoring in courses and communities such as “Baot” (Women in tech engineering Israeli community) and others, and shares her passion and knowledge whenever possible.
Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/hila-fish
Twitter: https://twitter.com/Hilafish1
In this episode we chat with José Domingos, a VP of Systems Engineering at Ori Industries, which is a unique edge orchestration and networking solution.
- In your words, define decentralized computing. Why is it important? Why are companies focused on it? How does it tie into blockchain and web3?
- How is Ori enabling / enhancing decentralized computing? How are HarperDB and Ori working together?
- What types of use cases are a fit for decentralization?
- Are there any risks / downsides to decentralized computing? What's the best process to move towards this methodology?
- Looking ahead: what can we expect from Ori next? What are you excited about?
José has 20+ years experience in telecommunications and networking, designing and architecting very large scale monitoring systems, for global and in-country networks. At Ori Industries he is the VP Systems Engineering, responsible for Solution Integration. José has been working on Edge and Cloud Native technologies for the last 4 years and his passion is technology and science in general. José also loves the outdoors, trekking, swimming or cycling, whatever gets him out in nature.
In this episode we chat with Jessica Wilkins, a former classical musician who came across an awesome opportunity in software development through technical writing. Questions we covered include:
- What do you do now, how did you get to where you are today?
- How did you transition into tech, how did platforms like FreeCodeCamp help with the transition and create strong connections in the community? What was it like coming from a non-technical background?
- Were there parallels between being a classical musician and learning to code? How were you able to pull from previous knowledge to assist with the learning process?
- Other tips for folks just starting out with their dev career?
- What technologies and/or tools are you focused on right now or excited about?
Jessica Wilkins is a classical musician turned junior developer and technical writer. Prior to joining the tech industry, she spent her time running her own sheet music company (JDW Sheet Music) as well as performing and teaching in Los Angeles, CA. She now enjoys working as a developer and working with React, Node and Express. She is also a prolific technical writer for freeCodeCamp, and created the Black Excellence Music Project which is dedicated to black artists who have made significant contributions to the arts.
In this episode we chat with Patrick Loeber, a Software Engineer & YouTuber who is teaching the community about Python and Machine Learning. Topics covered include:
- Why are you excited about machine learning, why is python your framework of focus?
- Is there a difference between AI / ML / deep learning, how do they intersect?
- Top tips / biggest mistakes you see for folks learning python? Challenges with machine learning?
- Where do you see machine learning being used now and 10 years from now?
- Favorite technologies / tools, things you're learning now?
Patrick is a Software Engineer and Developer Advocate with a passion for Machine Learning and Data Science. He’s the founder of http://python-engineer.com and the corresponding YouTube channel where he creates programming content for over 100k subscribers.
In this episode we chat with Pratham Prasoon, a Programmer, Student, Developer Advocate, and web3 super genius, about what is web3 and what it means for developers. Some additional topics covered include:
- How do NFTs work
- What are potential concerns or downsides of web3 and NFTs
- What tools and technologies should people be learning who want to move towards web3
- What are you working on next / what side project are you excited about
Pratham is 17 years old. Building in web3 and machine learning and sharing his journey.
Read about what web3 and decentralization mean for data storage in this blog.
Episode 2 features Annie Liew, also known as @anniebombanie, a Front-end Engineering Lead at Pastel, for a discussion on life at an early stage startup. In this episode we learn a bit about Annie's journey, as well as the following topics:
- Tell us about the company you're at and their product
- What's it like working at an early stage startup? Were you scared to take the plunge into the startup world?
- Pros and cons of being on such a small team? Tips for folks in a similar position?
- What are you focusing on at the moment, main goals for 2022?
- What technologies / frameworks / tools are you currently learning or really excited about right now?
Annie comes from a multidisciplinary design & teaching background. She's currently the Front-end Engineering Lead at Pastel and is active in both the design and developer community. In her free time, she reads, travels and makes CSS art!
Website: https://anniebombanie.com
Polywork: https://updates.anniebombanie.com
Blog: https://blog.anniebombanie.com
Margo starts off season 2 of SELECT* with BekahHW, a Software Developer & Technical Community Builder. Bekah talks about how learning to code can be therapeutic, what it was like building the Virtual Coffee community, and more recently becoming a Technical Community Builder. We also touch on what is TensorFlow.js and why it's important, as well as some really cool use cases for Machine Learning.
More about BekahHW:
After spending ten years as a college English instructor, Bekah pivoted to coding and graduated from the Flatiron School Software Engineering program in May of 2019. She has spent most of her tech career specializing in front-end development, but has also created the developer community Virtual Coffee, spoke on podcasts and at conferences, and continued to mom her four kids. She's excited to be joining her first DevRel team with Deepgram as their Technical Community Builder.
In this episode, we chat with Charlie Gerard, Senior Front-End Developer at Netlify. Charlie started on the Product team at Netlify and is more recently doing a rotation on the Developer Experience team. She shares a bit about her journey into tech, including how a background in marketing helped her get to where she is today. We also discuss creative side projects, JavaScript, remote work, staying motivated, and general tips for other devs. Such a fun chat!
As a GoogleDevExpert & Mozilla Tech Speaker, Charlie is an Author, Speaker & Creative Technologist mostly tinkering w/ JavaScript.
Find her on Twitter: @devdevcharlie
In episode 13, we chat with Zoë Knox, an Open Sourceress and Head of Engineering at OpenNMS, about the intersection between technology and activism. Zoë talks about how tech can connect people across the world, shares tips for devs working to get to a similar place, and talks a bit about her hacking / side projects (hint: imagine a fully open source operating system that's Mac compatible). We also discuss distributed systems, and even touch a bit on parenting in the modern world!
"Technology is not good or evil, it's just a tool. How we use it is what matters." -Zoë
A veteran of software development and management, Zoë Knox is currently the head of engineering at The OpenNMS Group (https://opennms.com), principal developer of airyxOS (https://airyx.org), and an LGBTQ+ rights activist. She is passionate about open source, privacy, human rights, and the ability of technology to improve the world. Zoë lives with her family in Ottawa, Canada.
Find Zoë on Twitter: @thatzoek
Margo asks HarperDB's VP of Product, Jaxon Repp, all about HarperDB's new Custom Functions feature and what it means for HarperDB users. The product team has put a LOT of work into getting the latest HarperDB release (3.1) out, to say the least, and now Jaxon has a chance to share a bit about why it's is so exciting! Custom Functions essentially combine serverless functions with the underlying database, collapsing the stack into a single solution with the ability to define custom API endpoints that have direct access to HarperDB core operations. Listen now to learn more, or check out Custom Functions to see for yourself: https://harperdb.io/docs/custom-functions/
SELECT* Episode 11 features another interesting chat with a well-known dev in the community, Laurie Barth. Laurie is a Senior Software Engineer at Netflix. You can also find her creating content and educating the technology industry as an egghead instructor, member of the TC39 Educators committee, and technical blogger. She shares insights into how she went from consulting to where she is today, including pivotal decisions and tips along the way. Laurie knows the industry inside and out and is sure to have some advice no matter where you are in your journey!
Follow Laurie on Twitter: @laurieontech
Follow HarperDB on Twitter: @harperdbio
In this special episode, Margo chats with Ron Lewis, a friend (and fan) of HarperDB. Ron is the Director of Innovation, Engineering, & Integration at Lumen Technologies. With a diverse background in innovative tech, data science, and security, Ron has some interesting insights to share - to say the least!
Questions covered in this episode:
1- What initially drew you to HarperDB?
2- You focus a lot on disruptive technologies - do you see HarperDB as disruptive? What other technologies are super disruptive right now?
3- What do you mean when you say you don't necessarily use HarperDB as a database?
4- Talk a bit about 4th industrial revolution technologies (Industry 4.0), what does it mean to you?
5- Predictions for the future when it comes to innovative technologies?
What do you know about service workers? Pato talks about increasing the UX with customer engagement strategies including segments, push notifications, service workers, SEO, etc. We touch on how to know if you need service workers, and when and how to get started. Pato also shares a bit about his developer journey and talks about why he's passionate about PWA's (progressive web apps).
Patricio (Pato) Vargas works with the dev community as a Sr. Developer Advocate at OneSignal and GDE on Web Technologies. You can find him helping others by writing articles, mentoring, giving talks, and answering questions on StackOverflow.
Follow Pato on Twitter
Follow HarperDB on Twitter
In this episode, we hear from Edidiong Asikpo, a software developer, content creator, and Hashnode Developer Advocate based in Nigeria. We touched on a little of everything! Edidiong shares her interesting journey into tech, touches on Hashnode now and what's to come, developer advocacy tips, the growing developer community in Nigeria, positive takeaways from the pandemic, and tips for software devs general.
Edidiong Asikpo is Frontend Developer and Content Creator who currently works as a Developer Advocate at Hashnode. She has given over 50+ talks at various tech conferences/meetups worldwide and played a significant role in building 3 of the most impactful developer communities in Africa. Edidiong writes technical articles about web development, blogging for developers, soft skills, and Open Source contributions on her blog.
Edidiong was so fun to chat with and super inspiring! Listen now wherever you access your podcasts. (And if you haven't already, check out the HarperDB + Hashnode Joint Hackathon happening this month: https://townhall.hashnode.com/announcing-harperdb-hackathon-on-hashnode
Edidiong's Twitter
HarperDB's Twitter
This episode features James Q. Quick, a JavaScript Developer, Speaker, Content Creator, and Dev Advocate. James has interesting insights into the world of developer advocacy and content creation. As a well-established resource in the tech community, he shares tips from personal experience on reaching a wide audience and growing your community - even when starting from square one. We also talk about James's work at Auth0 and security in general, as well as topics like the Jamstack and tech to get excited about right now.
James is a developer, speaker, and teacher with a passion for Web Development. He is a Developer Advocate at Auth0 and has over 7 years of experience in Advocacy and Software Development. In his spare time, he runs a YouTube channel, plays co-ed soccer with his wife, spends time with his dogs, and can solve a Rubik's cube in under a minute. (He also has a new podcast called Compressed.fm!)
Follow James on Twitter
In SELECT* episode 6, Margo chats with Debbie O'Brien, a Head Developer Advocate for Bit.dev and Nuxt.js ambassador with 10+ years of experience in frontend development. Debbie talks about her interesting journey into tech and across numerous roles, from leading a dev team into dev advocacy, and more! She shares a bit about her initial career shift and learning to code in just nine months, learning JavaScript, and then getting into Nuxt and React. Debbie shares insightful tips for people trying to get into similar Dev Advocacy roles and talks about the technology she's excited about this year. With such a wide range of experience and skills, you can definitely learn a thing or two from Debbie. (She also earned a GitHub Stars Award for all of her community work in 2020, is a Microsoft MVP, and a Google Dev Expert!)
Debbie's Twitter
HarperDB's Twitter
SHOW LESS
In SELECT* episode 5, Margo chats with Jem Young, Senior Software Engineer at Netflix. Jem started out at Netflix in UI and is now in backend/infrastructure. He shares a bit about what it's like working at a tech giant, imposter syndrome, the importance of communication in engineering, and tips for being a leader including what it's like managing an engineering team. Jem is inspiring, knowledgeable, and super easy to talk to!
@JemYoung
Jem Young is a tall engineer at Netflix who loves dogs, reading, and clean code. He really enjoys working across the stack but his true passion lies in JavaScript and building a clean user experience. He believes that empathy is the key to building an effective UI and when he’s not at the gym or chasing his cat, you can find him hassling other engineers to write more tests.
In this podcast interview, Margo was fortunate enough to get some airtime with Jerome Hardaway, an Air Force veteran who launched Vets Who Code. Vets Who Code is a veteran-led and operated charitable non-profit that focuses on training veterans in web development and software engineering principles free of charge, with the focus of starting careers as JavaScript developers and other roles in tech.
_
Jerome shares his intriguing and inspiring story of returning from the military without a clear path of what to do next, learning how to code, and eventually creating this much-needed organization that helps other vets in his similar position. Jerome is passionate about community, highly focused on his goals, and incredibly fun to talk to! Listen now to learn about Jerome, Vets Who Code, and ways to get involved.
_
@JeromeHardaway
@VetsWhoCode
vetswhocode.io
A panel-style discussion with two different perspectives: a self-proclaimed code newbie and a coding instructor! Mina is an aspiring Web Developer, self-learning CSS, and Javascript. Shruti, Engineer at Paypal, is on a mission to make JavaScript and GraphQL development easier. From Javascript, front end, and 100 days of code, to community, skills for the job hunt, and staying motivated - you won't want to miss this discussion.
In SELECT* episode 2, Margo chats with David Neal, known as the "ambassador of awesome and doodle-driven developer", about building apps in Node.js and Electron.js, as well as the power of illustrations! We covered the following topics:
- David's background and journey in the tech world (hint: he's been a full time dev and database nerd since the beginning of the Internet!)
- Building web apps or command-line apps with Node.js
- Building desktop apps with Electron.js
- Fun fact- drawing illustrations used for presentations and content
Listen now to gain some serious inspiration going into the new year, and learn about how David helps other developers be more awesome.
Meet David:
David Neal is a family man, musician, illustrator, software developer, and Microsoft MVP living in North Georgia. He currently leads Developer Relations at ActiveCampaign, runs on a high-octane mixture of caffeine and JavaScript, and is made entirely of bacon.
Twitter: @reverentgeek
Website: reverentgeek.com
In this episode of SELECT* from August of 2018 our CEO, Stephen Goldberg interviews Greg Cook, the Founder of CloudPremise with over 15 years of experience across many technical roles on the role of ETL and Enterprise Architectures in modern day technology along with how to successfully manage a modern day engineering team.
Back in September 2018 Stephen Goldberg interviewed Kirk Borne (@KirkDBorne), Principal Data Scienctist at BoozAllen about everything from Astro Physics and windmills to 4D printing and autonomous lawn mowers in their conversation to explain Digital Twin. Margo McCabe, new host of SELECT* gives a brief intro.
The new SELECT* podcast will cover a variety of topics including coding tips, best practices, diversity & inclusion, product reviews, tech trends, jobs, and much more! Email us at podcast@harperdb.io for any topic ideas, guest nominations, or feedback!
You can also learn more about Digital Twin from this HarperDB Blog:
Listen to four of our employees across a variety of departments discuss what it's like working at HarperDB and why they love their jobs for this 2018 episode of SELECT*. Stephen Goldberg leads this round table with a short introduction from our new host, Margo McCabe.
The new SELECT* podcast will cover a variety of topics including coding tips, best practices, diversity & inclusion, product reviews, tech trends, jobs, and much more! Email us at podcast@harperdb.io for any topic ideas, guest nominations, or feedback.
For our 1st episode, our host, Margo McCabe interviews two HarperDB Co-founders, Kyle Bernhardy (CTO) and Zach Fowler (CPO) on their founder story and journey to becoming startup innovators, along with looking at how far HarperDB has come and where we are headed. They also discuss other technologies they are excited about in the new year, as well as Kyle's rockin' plaid suite with matching shoes!
Questions in this Episode:
- Tell us a bit about your background, how you met / how the Harper team came together.
- What is it like going from a technical / dev background to management / founder?
- Talk a little bit about how far HarperDB has come…. What’s your favorite thing about HarperDB, what problems are you solving?
- Focus on future - where is HarperDB headed, main goals for 2021?
- Favorite programming languages? Other tools / technologies you're excited about?
The new SELECT* podcast will cover a variety of topics including coding tips, best practices, diversity & inclusion, product reviews, tech trends, jobs, and much more! Email us at podcast@harperdb.io for any topic ideas, guest nominations, or feedback! (edited)