The Boring Enterprise Nerdcast

Here are the notes from the episode, and a transcript at the bottom.

Paul: This is the very, very first inaugural episode of the podcast. And so what we'd like to do is kind of introduce ourselves, talk about what we're going to do, get all of that interest stuff into our listeners ears. So they know what's going on. I mean, I'm thinking that we should, before we do anything, we should really give ourselves like a, sort of a personal intro to the universe.

So I'm going to hand the podcast talking stick to you, Jelena, and say, please introduce yourself as who you are. What do you love? What you hate, what you do in life, all those things. Just tell us about yourself.

Jelena: Hey, thank you, Paul. So I'm Jelena Perfiljeva. I am an SAP professional with many years of experiences, as I would typically officially introduce myself. In real life, of course, I have many other interests. But what we usually focus on with Paul is enterprise software in general. And we have started talking to each other. And we also have a newsletter that we're publishing and we decided to do a podcast as well.

So talk about all the different things in enterprise software and then software in general, and even, even in life That that really excite us and that inspire us. So I hope that this podcast will also provide some interest in some inspiration to you, our listeners. Thank you. And back to you, Paul.

Paul: yeah. the, the stick has been passed back to me and now I may speak in the, in the campfire circle. Right. So thank you, Jelena. My name is Paul, as you probably heard in the intro, and as you hear me speaking now, so I am also a professional software developer, focused a lot in SAP, almost entirely in SAP and a little bit in sort of some Microsoft and Google things in there, here and there, but pretty much in SAP these days.

And, just like Jelena, I [00:02:00] have lots of strong interest in sort of the enterprise software space in general. And then of course, other things going on kind of outside the podcast. And we can add on some episodes someday, we should just kind of dive into our personal stuff too, at some point, at least a little bit of that personal stuff and get kind of a flavor of, you know, what else has been going on because I, for one would love to hear some of the little Jelena in the USSR, kinda like growing up kind of stuff, just to, just to learn more about that kind of thing. Right. It's interesting to me as…

Jelena: Back in the days.
Paul: Yeah those back in the day things can actually illuminate a lot of why, you know, why things are the way they are now for us as professionals in that kind of stuff.

So, anyway, like I said, we started this to be, to be educational, to have some sort of semblance of community, to, to share our experiences and knowledge with folks. And because the two of us, like we talked to each other and we have a good time and we also like to be social and talk to people and we like to talk to interesting [00:03:00] people.

And so we're going to have interesting people on this podcast and talk to them. So I'm excited. I'm pumped to get started on this. So, I think maybe Jelena, can you talk, talk us through why podcasting? Like what, what inspires you to think that a podcast is kind of the right thing for us to do in this space?

Jelena: Yeah, I think that podcast format, it allows us to have discussions that go much farther than a simple post or a blog or newsletter article can go on. And when we, when we're talking life to people, I think sharing of ideas and kind of immediately bouncing back against each other, that’s what really makes great podcasts stand out.

And I hope that we can have really great guests here. And talk to them and we can learn from them. They can hopefully learn from us as well. And then our listeners can learn from everyone here and maybe even [00:04:00] participate further, or maybe give us some feedback in our comments section, or just reach out to us directly.

Paul: Yeah. And I think one thing that's great about podcasts and why I think that we talked about this is like, you know, we, at this point we do a lots of our things on social media, right? We post on Twitter, LinkedIn, we have a newsletter, that kind of stuff, those things are engaging in a certain way, but sometimes, you know, comments and social media interactions they're disjointed.

And also you don't get a very good personal flavor sometimes because sometimes there's nuance, it's hard to interpret in just the typed word. And I think, I think that adding a personal touch of literally just talking to somebody will really help us kind of uncover some depth and get a kind of feedback that we can't get from like the digital, like written digital things in that space.

So I'm excited to, to have people on. And then if you, or I disagree in some way with either each other or with that person we're talking to. Of course it can be civil and then it can be easy to sort of like, say, I don't understand that. What do you mean by this? And then we can come to that resolution right there.

I think that's really neat about podcasts that I don't think Twitter has that, you know what I mean?

Jelena: Yeah.

Paul: Twitter has a different kind of energy

Jelena: Exact, exact opposite.

Paul: Twitter has a little more…

Jelena: …blurt out stuff. And then taken out of context, disagreements.

Paul: Yeah, love/hate back and forth a little bit kind of thing. And that, that hopefully we don't get too much love and hate back and forth in this podcast.

So our release schedule, we're starting out with once a month that may someday go maybe slightly more often, but right now we're being sane with our own lives, our own personal lives, our schedules, our listener's schedules too. And we're just going to go once a month with somebody interesting and go dive deep on a topic. So look for us to publish about once a month.

Our structure on the podcast is actually pretty simple. I think because really what we do is we identify a topic like training or learning. That'll be our first one and identify a person, a luminary in that space. And then we just, we just go to that.

There's no, like there's no news review and there's no like top 10 music hits or whatever kind of thing going on. It's just talk to another nerd, stitch it together and get out that's our, that's our format. And, and hopefully that's simple and quick and easy and kind of fun for people to get into.

Jelena: We just lure people in and then we question them.

Paul: Yeah, there's, there will be a virtual, like light bulb hanging over their heads. And we're going to have like a picture of a big burly guy in the background doing like this, then we're going to try to get the real answers out of them, you know, and make them talk, make them squeal.

Jelena: Yup.

Paul: Of course, like, I, I think we talked about this briefly before we started recording this, Jelena, that like these intro things are a little bit dry if there's not some kind of personal touch to them.

So I would love to add just like a tiny little spice of something personal to this. And so what I would love for you - and I'll do the same thing - describe for me, one of your favorite early moments in your programmer slash developer life, talk about something that was sort of formative for you in that nerd space.

Jelena: Yeah. Yeah, definitely. So for me, it was very, very long time ago. My formative years are way, way, way behind. So think about late, late nineties or very super early two thousands. Before SAP, I was a mainframe consultant and the way I started this I found the company back in Latvia that did training for mainframe consultants that they then provided for projects for the rest of the world.

And prior to that, I did some development, but only for small [00:08:00] computers or personal computers of different kinds. Even though by education. I was essentially a system designer. I just, it, it was very typical path. I think for many developers for you get education in certain areas and you do work with some other things.

And for me suddenly that course, that training was suddenly connected to my education that I received at university. And suddenly I was able to apply all those concepts in the context of much bigger mainframe systems. And I think it is, it is similar, it's not the exact same experience, obviously, but it's similar to what many developers can relate to. It's a differences between enterprise and non-enterprise software and just having your learning and education in one area and maybe doing something else. And then suddenly later in life, connecting back to what you have learned and digging into that knowledge unexpectedly sometimes. So yeah, that's, that's my “origin story”, if you will.

Paul: That at some point we should have a, we should have a guest or a topic on that, like that difference between enterprise and non-enterprise development. That would be fascinating because I mean, for both of us, I think, the vast majority of our lives professionally have been in enterprise-shaped environments and it would be, I think, it'd be great to have somebody sort of contrast our experiences with theirs in, you know, startups or gaming or whatever like that, and really kind of illuminate some differences in that kind of stuff. That's an interesting, interesting take on.

Well, okay. So thank you, Jelena, for the, for the opening the history book and turning back a few years.

So you know, something that stands out to me in my, in my life as a programmer is even before I had a job as like a developer, I think one of the first programs I ever wrote, I was in college. And I didn't do tech in college, I did like theater and psychology. I did kind of just liberal arts stuff in college, and I noticed that my girlfriend, who is now my wife, she was playing lots of Sudoku.

So the, the nine by nine number game, right. That was in lots of newspapers then, I think it still probably is. And she taught me how to play and I would play a puzzle and I did a few of them and I realized I was just using the same strategy over and over to solve the thing. And I thought to myself, this can totally be automated. And I knew because I had seen somebody else doing macros in Excel. I was like, I bet you that Excel could automate this and solve a Sudoku puzzle in a macro.

So I literally from like, not knowing anything about that my school laptop had a copy of Excel on it. And my job for like the next week was like, I would do my schoolwork and my, like my job. I would come home and like, just type into Google, like how to program in Excel. Right? And so I started with my vision, so to speak, of like, how would I make a computer? Make a guess and then verify it. And then I had to like, learn, okay, how do I make program code encapsulate the logical process I'm thinking of. Right? And so I, after about a week of like, just like late nights and like scratching my head and like, what is a variable? Like all that kind of stuff. Right? I got it working, but it, it only worked up to like medium level difficulty. And if it didn't work, it didn't like, it didn't give you feedback. Like, oh, I can't solve this. It just crashed Excel! Right? So you just, what you would do is like, there was one sheet and you have to like, look at the newspaper and then like hand type, all the starting numbers in it, and then click a little button to make it start going. And so it would be like either “go, done” or “go, crash” because it would quickly run out of memory ‘cause I wasn't controlling things the right way.

Whatever, it's horrible program, now I'm sure. I wish I could find it. But what it really illustrated to me was two things. One is that, those late nights of like, “I bet you, I can do this, I just need to figure out how”. That was like inspiring to me. I was like, oh my gosh, you could make a computer do anything! Then (b) is because my girlfriend who, like I said now is my wife, she was like, why would you ruin a game that way? Why would you invent a thing that I just saw?

Jelena: Good point.

Paul: Because part of the fun is like going through the process and like you from A, to B to C to D or whatever. But to me, I was like, the game was making a thing that solves the game, not playing the game itself. Right? So anyway, that was my, I think my most formative experience early on in programming was like, just going, I can make a thing that does that better. Right?

Jelena: Yup.

Paul: So, okay. Those are some of our early formative stories.
Before we go out of control and go crazy and like off into the wilderness about all these different things, let's call it here. Let's say that we're done now and get this out to the world and then we'll get ready for our first guest in the next month's episode. So if you want to find out more, listeners, follow us at @BoringNerds on Twitter, go to boringenterprisenerds.com on the web or search for Boring Enterprise Nerds on LinkedIn. Find us there, follow us. You send us some money, you know, some cookies, do something like that. Give us stuff, I guess, is the thing. But we, we really, sincerely hope to hear from you to, to talk back with you, to talk to you, all that kind of stuff.

And we hope to see more as the months go on. Thanks, everyone!

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