Stayin' Alive in Technology: Recent Episodes
Melinda Byerley
The tech industry is great at talking about the future, especially on podcasts. What we're not so great at is taking the time to understand our past.
And that's what this podcast is all about. From the Noyce and Fairchild Semiconductor generation through the founding of social media, the history of Silicon Valley has many lessons for us. And we'll be interviewing the people who lived through these experiences to bring their knowledge to you.
You'll get explanations for how we got where we are, which can also suggest where the future might be; along with a few laughs and inside stories from those who lived through it. So pull up a seat and listen to the tales of the past, in which may lie seeds for our future. New Episodes twice a month on Thursdays.
Tom Peters first burst onto the management and thought leadership scene way back in 1982 with the groundbreaking and massively influential management book he co-authored, In Search of Excellence. His prolific output hasn’t slowed since, and now he’s back with yet another book: Tom Peters’ Compact Guide to Excellence, a collection of quotes he developed in collaboration with iconic designer Nancye Green. Albeit different from his previous releases, this book upholds Tom’s inherent and core belief that treating one another humanely is the best path forward.
In this episode, Tom explains the story behind the book, his reasons for creating it, and one particular quote he wishes he had included. And, as always, we veer off into plenty of other avenues, covering everything from why Tom is so apprehensive of “managing by text,” a famous football coach who was once his neighbor, and what he means when he says, “if you piss away your work life, you piss away your entire life.”
Second Life is widely credited for mainstreaming the concept of the metaverse as a virtual social platform—and today’s guest, James Au, invites us in to hear the inside scoop on how this platform foreshadowed today’s social media and virtual worlds, both in promise and in pitfalls.
A freelance tech journalist at the time, James was hired to report on the Second Life metaverse shortly after its launch in 2003. He created an avatar and focused on the real-life stories that could get both inspiring and wild, ranging from users who were homeless in real life building virtual mansions to real-life private detectives hired to determine if someone was virtually cheating on their virtual significant other.
Author of "The Making of Second Life,” James describes what the platform was originally conceived to be like and explains what he means when he calls Second Life “the biggest mystery in Silicon Valley.” And you don’t even need an avatar to listen.
Links Mentioned in This Episode:
- Second Life and Linden Lab
- James’s HarperCollins Author Page
- James’s stories for Wired
- New World Notes - James’s long-running blog devoted to all things Second Life and VR
- James’s book - The Making of Second Life
- James’s book - Game Design Secrets
- How to Change Your Mind by Michael Pollan
- Oculus Quest
- Sine Wave Entertainment
- NetHack - an open-source single-player game Salon once described as “one of the finest gaming experiences the computing world has to offer.”
This podcast typically focuses on the history of tech and where it is today, so what better guest to have on than a woman who learned to code when floppy discs were still a thing, became one of the first tech industry analysts to write about companies like VMware and Cloudera, and has since served as an advisor to some of the most innovative tech platforms in the world? These all describe Rachel Chalmers, a tech industry analyst, investor, and advisor for well over 20 years.
A native Australian whose love for tech was cultivated at an early age, Rachel left her home country to earn a master’s degree from a university in Ireland before eventually making her way to Silicon Valley, where she’s now been for the past 25+ years. And she’s learned some things.
In our ninth episode of season four, you’ll enjoy some truly brilliant metaphors and unique anecdotes, followed by an honest assessment of the ingrained cultural problems that are far from being rectified in an industry that has always struggled with inclusion and discrimination.
Rachel also talks about the need for “human-centered innovation,” how to address burnout when it inevitably arises, what tech CEO she refers to as a “monster” (but in an endearing way), and why life is not really about trying to fit in where you are, but more about finding others who are like you.
LINKS MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE:
- Feminist Survival Project—hosted by Emily and Amelia Nagoski, authors of BURNOUT: the Secret to Unlocking the Stress Cycle.
- Faces of COVID—NPR piece about the Twitter account that tells the stories of those who have died of COVID-19
- Project Include—Non-profit devoted to giving everyone a fair chance to succeed in tech by using data and advocacy to accelerate diversity and inclusion solutions in the tech industry.
- Usenet—A worldwide distributed discussion system used via dial-up modems in the 1980s
- Osborne 1—Article on the history of the Osborne 1, the first commercially successful portable computer.
- AWA Building—The famous Sydney building Rachel’s father worked in, now included in the New South Wales State Heritage Register
- Keep Calm and Log On—Book by Gus Andrews
- “She was demoted, doubted and rejected. Now, her work is the basis of the Covid-19 vaccine”—Leah Asmelash and AJ Willingham, CNN
- AlchemistX: Innovators Inside—Rachel’s podcast featuring interviews with thought leaders and high achievers in Corporate Innovation.
MUSICAL INSPIRATION FOR THIS EPISODE ON SPOTIFY:
”Three Horses,” by Joan Baez
ABOUT THIS PODCAST
Stayin' Alive in Tech is an oral history of Silicon Valley and technology. Melinda Byerley, the host, is a 20-year veteran of Silicon Valley and the founder of Fiddlehead, a digital marketing intelligence firm based in San Francisco.
We really appreciate your reviews, shares on social media, and your recommendations for future guests. And check out our Spotify playlist for all the songs we refer to on our show.
During part one of our conversation with Shireen Mitchell, you heard what it was like for a young Black girl from the projects of New York to get into computers, gaming, and coding during the 1980s. Shireen recounted her time attending an HBCU and her career experiences in Washington D.C. that gave her eye-opening looks into the issues minority women were (and still are) facing within the tech realm. If you missed part one, please make sure to give that one a listen first.
In part two with Shireen, she tells us about founding Stop Online Violence Against Women, and we have a candid talk about the constant slew of threats, harassment, and sexism women of color face in online spaces—and how social media platforms tend to have it backward in their approach to policing abuse directed at minorities.
Very fitting for right now, we also discuss what it really means when conversations about racism and sexism are labeled as “getting political”—and how this has led social media platforms to enact special protections for politicians that typically don’t extend to ordinary citizens.
Towards the end, you’ll hear Shireen’s thoughts on the problems with hiring practices regarding diversity and inclusivity and why so many still can’t seem to find the right approach. You’ll also hear her views on what true allyship looks like in practice and some closing thoughts on voter suppression and the weaponized disinformation. Don’t miss this episode!
LINKS MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE:
- Stop Online Violence Against Women - A nonprofit that addresses inadequate laws and policies that lack protections for women, in particular women of color
- An explainer on Donglegate, widely viewed as the precursor to Gamergate
- Gamergate—An online harassment campaign that centered on issues of sexism and anti-progressivism in video game culture
- Kansas Cop Fired After Threatening 5-Year-Old Girl On Facebook—Huffington Post
- Twitter Blocks 'Uncle Tim' From Trends After Racist Phrase Goes Viral in Response to Tim Scott's Speech—Newsweek
- The Central Park Five (referred to in the episode by Shireen as the “Exonerated Five”)—Five black and Latino youths wrongly convicted of assaulting a NY woman in 1989
- Amadou Diallo—The unarmed 23-year-old Guinean immigrant killed by plainclothes NY policemen in 1999 after reaching for his ID
- Stop Digital Voter Suppression—Shireen’s grassroots reporting movement that supplements existing data collection efforts with real-life experiences
- The First Amendment—(at Shireen’s request—we could all use a brushing up from time to time)
- SOVAW Reports—Shireen’s reports on Russian disinformation targeting black voters
- Russian Influence Operation - Targeted specifically Black users across social media in 2016
As a proud product of 1980s Harlem, Shireen Mitchell is an award-winning woman of color in tech with many talents: founder, author, speaker, social entrepreneur, nonprofit leader, advocate, diversity analyst, and strategist in the political, digital, and social realms.
Growing up, Shireen developed a love for computers while beating the neighborhood boys at games like Frogger and Galaga. Her mother responded by buying her an Atari and Commodore 64. She saw it as an investment—and she was right.
Shireen quickly learned as she got older that the world of tech was mainly reserved for men. This moment of truth became even more clear when she went to college. By the time she was building some of the first BBS boards and experimenting with the Gopher protocol, Shireen knew she needed to help other women learn to code. And this was about 30 years ago.
Shireen’s motivation to bring women (especially women of color) into the tech and computer realm quickly shifted to a different form of advocacy: she realized these same women needed protection from the vileness, sexism, racism, and threats that were already taking shape in the early days of the consumerized internet.
Our candid talk with Shireen is a profound teaching moment. And it’s so good we couldn’t cut too much of it, so we’ve broken it up into two episodes. In our seventh episode of season four, Shireen outlines the ongoing struggles Black women have in tech while offering up some blunt and insightful advice to young Black women looking to get a foot in the door. You’ll also hear why it was a problem for Shireen to have a high reading level at a young age, how Pac-man was actually made to attract women gamers, her surprising experiences attending an HBCU, and why men were begging to attend her women’s coding classes in D.C. in the early 90s.
LINKS MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE:
- Stop Online Violence Against Women - A nonprofit that addresses inadequate laws and policies that lack protections for women in particular women of color
- The History of Pac-Man - The clip Shireen mentioned that discusses how Pac-Man was created to appeal to girls
- Facebook cracked down ahead of the Chauvin verdict. Why not always? - LA TImes article featuring thoughts from Shireen
- Timnit Gebru - A widely respected leader in AI ethics research known for co-authoring a groundbreaking paper that showed facial recognition to be less accurate at identifying women and people of color
MUSICAL INSPIRATION FOR THIS EPISODE ON SPOTIFY:
“You Can’t Stop the Girl” by Bebe Rexha
ABOUT THIS PODCAST
Stayin' Alive in Tech is an oral history of Silicon Valley and technology. Melinda Byerley, the host, is a 20-year veteran of Silicon Valley and the founder of Fiddlehead, a digital marketing intelligence firm based in San Francisco.
We really appreciate your reviews, shares on social media, and your recommendations for future guests. And check out our Spotify playlist for all the songs we refer to on our show.
Hint Water founder and CEO Kara Goldin certainly knows a thing or two about entrepreneurship at this point, but that’s not where she got her start. During the 1990s, Kara was immersed in the world of Silicon Valley, working on products like Steve Job’s 2Market and AOL when it was at its peak. However, by the time the 2000s rolled around, Kara decided it was time to focus on raising her kids.
But her next (and biggest) chapter was just around the corner. After initially noticing a personal need for healthy beverages that weren’t bogged down by sugars and artificial sweeteners, Kara launched Hint Water from her home just a few years later, despite having absolutely zero beverage industry experience.
In our sixth episode of season four, Kara explains what drives her to take the same risks that many others simply choose to avoid. You’ll hear how a simple reply to a letter she sent just out of college emboldened her to move halfway across the country to NYC and will herself into her first position on a whim. You’ll also hear Kara expound on the virtues of remaining curious and how she used the hard lessons learned during the 2008-09 financial crisis to raise additional capital for her company to survive the economic climate triggered by the pandemic.
LINKS MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE:
- Hint Water
- Kara’s book Undaunted: Overcoming Doubts and Doubters
- The Kara Goldin Show
- “It’s important to bring your personal story into the brand identity.”—a profile on Kara from Forbes
- Sliding Doors, the 1998 film with Gwenyth Paltrow
MUSICAL INSPIRATION FOR THIS EPISODE ON SPOTIFY:
“I Won’t Back Down” by Tom Petty
ABOUT THIS PODCAST
Stayin' Alive in Tech is an oral history of Silicon Valley and technology. Melinda Byerley, the host, is a 20-year veteran of Silicon Valley and the founder of Fiddlehead, a digital marketing intelligence firm based in San Francisco.
We really appreciate your reviews, shares on social media, and your recommendations for future guests. And check out our Spotify playlist for all the songs we refer to on our show.
In the mid-1990s, when Heidi Williams got her first job in Silicon Valley coding and developing software, she was not unlike most anyone else starting their career: she simply wanted to put her skills to work. But this is the world of tech, where evolution is rapid and industry-shifting changes can occur in the middle of your lunch hour.
As you’ll hear, Heidi would end up “riding the wave from CD-ROMs to the web, to mobile, and to live video streaming” while working at some of the biggest and most prolific tech companies in the world.
This journey has given Heidi a profound experience with shifting sands after years of stability—whether it’s your company being acquired by a competitor, foundational technology behind most of your company’s products suddenly rendered obsolete, or dealing with the complexities of a company going from 500 employees to over 5,000 practically overnight.
LINKS MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE:
MUSICAL INSPIRATION FOR THIS EPISODE ON SPOTIFY:
“History Repeating” by Shirley Bassey
ABOUT THIS PODCAST
Stayin' Alive in Tech is an oral history of Silicon Valley and technology. Melinda Byerley, the host, is a 20-year veteran of Silicon Valley and the founder of Fiddlehead, a digital marketing intelligence firm based in San Francisco.
We really appreciate your reviews, shares on social media, and your recommendations for future guests. And check out our Spotify playlist for all the songs we refer to on our show.
In our first episode with Bob Alberti, we heard what it was like to be at the forefront of the new world of computers and early internet of the 1970s, along with all the innovations he had a key role in during the decades that followed. Do you play games like World of Warcraft? Thank Bob for that. Ever search for something on the internet? He helped develop that, too. (If you missed the first episode, give it a listen, too.)
While Bob was certainly excited to see the primitive internet of the 1970s and 80s develop into what we use now, the rapid advances in speed, usage, and capabilities presented a whole new set of problems—many of which he was already sounding the alarm on in the mid-90s. What do we do about data security and the massive potential disinformation that practically anyone can put out there? There wasn’t an easy answer then, and there definitely isn’t one now.
In this second of two episodes with Bob, you’ll hear him discuss why the creation of the internet is just as significant as the invention of the first printing press, and the unintended consequences that come with being able to send information from one corner of the world to the next in a matter of seconds. He also reflects on the new world we find ourselves in since the pandemic began and how, if it weren’t for the newfound need to work from home, many of us may have been unnecessarily bound to cubicles for the next few decades.
Ultimately, Bob closes his time with us by offering some simple advice on determining what your life and career path should be—advice that comes from a man who’s tried his hand at more than a few things in life, including his more newfound passion: improv.
LINKS MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE:
- GamBit Multisystems—Bob’s company credited with developing the world’s first MMORPG, along with other commercial email, chat, and interactive games.
- Sdf.org—A real, living, working example of a Gopher server you can still use today
- “After 32 years, dad is now grad,” article featuring Bob in the Minneapolis Star Tribune
- “Sorting through electronic keepsakes: Sentimentality has turned many of our computers into ‘the new attic.’" from the Star Tribune
ABOUT THIS PODCAST
Stayin' Alive in Tech is an oral history of Silicon Valley and technology. Melinda Byerley, the host, is a 20-year veteran of Silicon Valley and the founder of Fiddlehead™, a digital marketing intelligence firm, based in San Francisco.
We really appreciate your reviews, shares on social media, and your recommendations for future guests. And check out our Spotify playlist for all the songs we refer to on our show.
Bob Alberti epitomizes what this podcast is all about: stayin’ alive in the often unforgiving world of technology. In the backdrop of Minnesota, which Bob calls the “Silicon Valley before there was Silicon Valley,” he started (and lost) two separate tech companies, developed the world’s first massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMOPRPG), and helped create a foundational internet search program that paved the way for the ones we use today.
While that sounds exciting, those milestones were not without plenty of losses and hardships along the way. In this first of two episodes with him, Bob is candid about what it’s like to be one of the builders of the internet we use today, why developing cutting-edge tech innovations is not always guaranteed to make you rich, and how Al Gore really did play a big role in creating the World Wide Web.
You’ll also hear Bob recall what it was like using chat rooms, email, and multiplayer network games in the 1970s, and how things really aren’t that different 50 years later.
LINKS MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE:
- GamBit Multisystems
- Solid State: Minnesota's High-tech History—A program from Twin Cities PBS documenting how Minnesota was once the global epicenter of computing. It’s free to watch!
- Sdf.org — A real, living, working example of a Gopher server you can still use today
- The generation you may have never heard of, Generation Jones
- Ringworld, by Larry Niven
- “After 32 years, dad is now grad,” article featuring Bob in the Minneapolis Star Tribune
- “Sorting through electronic keepsakes: Sentimentality has turned many of our computers into ‘the new attic.’" from the Star Tribune
MUSICAL INSPIRATION FOR THIS EPISODE ON SPOTIFY:
Go Your Own Way by Fleetwood Mac
ABOUT THIS PODCAST
Stayin' Alive in Tech is an oral history of Silicon Valley and technology. Melinda Byerley, the host, is a 20-year veteran of Silicon Valley and the founder of Fiddlehead®, a digital marketing intelligence firm, based in San Francisco.
We really appreciate your reviews, shares on social media, and your recommendations for future guests. And check out our Spotify playlist for all the songs we refer to on our show.
Michigan-based entrepreneur and marketer Jenifer Daniels was frustrated with the lack of diversity and inclusivity in the world of stock photography. In 2015, she launched Colorstock, a valuable database of original stock photos featuring people of color, intended to fill a massive void that companies like Adobe and Shutterstock were largely ignoring. As she puts it: “Colorstock was born from a pain point in marketing communications.”
Colorstock was successful from the start, but this actually ended up being an eventual problem for Jenifer: The major players in the stock photo industry were now fully aware of what they were missing out on. The prominence of Colorstock created a situation Jenifer hadn’t foreseen, which led her to make a difficult choice about its future.
In this episode, we talk to Jenifer about how she launched her marketing career working for a minor league hockey team and how her mother significantly influenced her mindset from a young age. You’ll learn how she bootstrapped Colorstock, the lessons she learned from its success, and hear some crucial advice to people of color looking to enter an industry that is still struggling to be more authentically inclusive. You’ll also hear why it’s always a good idea to keep an updated resume handy at all times, even when attending college classes.
LINKS MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE:
- JeniferDaniels.com
- Detroit Human Capital
- Wayne State Innovation Studio
- Wayne State Carer Services
- Jenifer’s open letter on Colorstock’s closing
- The PLUG
MUSICAL INSPIRATION FOR THIS EPISODE ON SPOTIFY:
“Hustle” by Pink
ABOUT THIS PODCAST
Stayin' Alive in Tech is an oral history of Silicon Valley and technology. Melinda Byerley, the host, is a 20-year veteran of Silicon Valley and the founder of Timeshare CMO, a digital marketing intelligence firm, based in San Francisco.
We really appreciate your reviews, shares on social media, and your recommendations for future guests. And check out our Spotify playlist for all the songs we refer to on our show.
In this Season 4 opening episode, we welcome back Rand Fishkin, founder of Moz and co-founder of the new SparkToro, to explore how Rand found innovative ways to not only launch a new (very cool) product during 2020 but also help people and other businesses on a variety of levels in the process.
In this episode, you’ll hear Melinda and Rand discuss the three things that marketers should be doing during a crisis, the difficulty and necessity of changing your brand’s messaging to reflect the times, and how to keep your business and your team surviving during a time when entire industries have been turned upside down.
You’ll also hear some of the innovative ways Rand and his team adjusted the launch plan of SparkToro to account for decreased budgets, shifting revenues, and a general malaise. Oh, and he also figured out a way to donate money during it all. Listen to our show to find out how.
LINKS MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE:
- SparkToro and SparkToro’s blog where Rand writes posts several times a month
- GiveDirectly.org: allows donors to send money directly to the poor with no strings
- HeyElevate.com: helping SaaS companies identify & act on high ROI opportunities
- Rand’s book: Lost and Founder: A Painfully Honest Field Guide to the Startup World
- Geraldine’s book: All Over the Place: Adventures in Travel, True Love, and Petty Theft
MUSICAL INSPIRATION FOR THIS EPISODE ON SPOTIFY:
“Start Me Up” by The Rolling Stones
ABOUT THIS PODCAST
Stayin' Alive in Tech is an oral history of Silicon Valley and technology. Melinda Byerley, the host, is a 20-year veteran of Silicon Valley and the founder of Timeshare CMO, a digital marketing intelligence firm, based in San Francisco.
We really appreciate your reviews, shares on social media, and your recommendations for future guests. And check out our Spotify playlist for all the songs we refer to on our show.
We’re normally all about the history of tech, but the coronavirus pandemic is history in the making. This episode welcomes back best-selling business author and speaker Tom Peters to discuss how managers should handle the tough decisions they’re facing right now. Tom describes himself as an “Extreme Humanist” and he has bold words for those who aren’t prioritizing empathy and people in this moment unlike any other.
LINKS MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE (FOR FULL LIST OF LINKS, SEE OUR FULL WEBPAGE):
- Tom Peters’ 2019 episode: “Don’t Stop Me Now”
- Washington Post: The surprising thing Google learned about its employees — and what it means for today’s students
- Managing By Walking Around: Tom’s YouTube clip describing MBWA
- The Heart of MBWA
- TomPeters.com
MUSICAL INSPIRATION FOR THIS EPISODE ON SPOTIFY:
"Til a Tear Becomes a Rose” by John Prine
ABOUT THIS PODCAST
Stayin' Alive in Tech is an oral history of Silicon Valley and technology. Melinda Byerley, the host, is a 20-year veteran of Silicon Valley and the founder of Timeshare CMO, a digital marketing intelligence firm, based in San Francisco.
We really appreciate your reviews, shares on social media, and your recommendations for future guests. And check out our Spotify playlist for all the songs we refer to on our show.
We’re normally all about the history of tech. But today we invited our friend Howard Rheingold back onto the podcast to get his unique perspective on the coronavirus pandemic—an historical moment in itself. As the man who coined the term “virtual community” long ago, he shares his thoughts on online socializing and learning, and predicts how this virus might change the future of work and learning for good.
LINKS MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE (FOR FULL LIST OF LINKS, SEE OUR FULL WEBPAGE):
- Howard’s first appearance on Stayin’ Alive in Tech, named “People Got To Be Free”
- Petr Kropotkin’s work Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution
- Howard’s article Mutual Aid & Social Capital: The Power of Communities, Networks
- Wikipedia article for the organization theory Mutual Aid
- Peeragogy Handbook
- Howard’s Patreon profile
- Connected Learning Alliance
- Howard’s book The Virtual Community (1993)
MUSICAL INSPIRATION FOR THIS EPISODE ON SPOTIFY:
"Changes” by David Bowie
ABOUT THIS PODCAST
Stayin' Alive in Tech is an oral history of Silicon Valley and technology. Melinda Byerley, the host, is a 20-year veteran of Silicon Valley and the founder of Timeshare CMO, a digital marketing intelligence firm, based in San Francisco.
We really appreciate your reviews, shares on social media, and your recommendations for future guests. And check out our Spotify playlist for all the songs we refer to on our show.
With all that is going on in the world this month—the uncertainty, the fear—we still want to take a moment to celebrate Women’s History Month this March. Because it is worth taking a moment to listen to inspiring stories. It’s important to sow uplifting, interesting, and even funny moments in times like these. This episode features some of our favorite clips from 9 of our women and non-binary guests, following two themes.
We focus in on these two ideas: first, the vast differences in experience between those coming into this field in different times in history, and second, the bias that some women have encountered (but not all) and their suggestions for fighting that bias.
These women, and indeed the women around all of us right now, are worth celebrating and hearing from. Enjoy this celebration of Women’s History Month.
HERE ARE SOME OF OUR FAVORITE MOMENTS with Jacqueline Harper, Ellen Petry Leanse, Sherry Wei, April Wensel, Laura Yecies, Coraline Ada Ehmke, Linda Popky, Mar Hicks, and Paula Buchanan.
Dr. Kate Miltner is a technology and society researcher examining the ways that technology, identity, and structural power intersect. Coming from a background in tech and advertising, Dr. Miltner conducts ethnographic research that digs into things we’re so close to, we may not even take notice. She’s taken a closer look at memes as cultural artifacts, in particular those cute but spelling-optional Lolcat memes, and is now examining coding boot camps and the “learn to code” movement and whether the hype around learning to code is really the solution many think it is.
LINKS MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE:
- Status Update: Celebrity, Publicity, and Branding in the Social Media Age by Alice E. Marwick
- Cheez Town Crier, the hub for Lolcats fans
- This Woman Getting a Master's Degree In LolCats Will Be Richer Than You by Adrian Chen, Gawker (with the Princess Bride-esque final line: “Meme culture is serious business these days. Anyone who tries to convince you otherwise wants to sell you something.”
- The World Made Meme: Public Conversations and Participatory Media, by Ryan Milner
- “One part politics, one part technology, one part history”: Racial representation in the Unicode 7.0 emoji set” - Kate’s article in New Media and Society
- Mar Hicks’s episode on Stayin’ Alive in Tech: “We Belong”
- April Wensel’s episode on Stayin’ Alive in Tech: “Better People”
- Nathan Ensmenger's book: The Computer Boys Take Over: Computers, Programmers, and the Politics of Technical Expertise (History of Computing)
MUSICAL INSPIRATION FOR THIS EPISODE ON SPOTIFY:
"School's Out" by Alice Cooper
ABOUT THIS PODCAST
Stayin' Alive in Tech is an oral history of Silicon Valley and technology. Melinda Byerley, the host, is a 20-year veteran of Silicon Valley and the founder of Timeshare CMO, a digital marketing intelligence firm, based in San Francisco.
We really appreciate your reviews, shares on social media, and your recommendations for future guests. And check out our Spotify playlist for all the songs we refer to on our show.
We celebrate the stories of five brilliant black women in tech who have been guests on the Stayin’ Alive in Tech podcast. We have welcomed scientists, developers, founders, and authors; a designer and venture capitalist, a data analyst, a CEO, a woman who was one of the first black female programmers at IBM, and a woman on the forefront of an emerging industry, biomedical informatics. Hear choice clips from Jacqueline Harper, Sian Morson, Dr. Tiffani Bright, Paula Buchanan, and Dr. Roshawnna Novellus.
LINKS MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE:
- Jacqueline Harper’s episode: “Shining Star”
- Sian Morson’s episode: “The Story”
- Tiffani Bright’s episode: “Girl on Fire”
- Paula Buchanan’s episode: “American Girl”
- Roshawnna Novellus’s episode: “Run the World (Girls)”
ABOUT THIS PODCAST
Stayin' Alive in Tech is an oral history of Silicon Valley and technology. Melinda Byerley, the host, is a 20-year veteran of Silicon Valley and the founder of Timeshare CMO, a digital marketing intelligence firm, based in San Francisco.
We really appreciate your reviews, shares on social media, and your recommendations for future guests. And check out our Spotify playlist for all the songs we refer to on our show.
April Wensel has a powerful message for engineers about how to improve your own lives as well as the lives of your coworkers and the users you serve. April is the founder of Compassionate Coding, an organization that teaches emotional intelligence to software dev teams. If you’re already nodding, you’ll love this episode. If you don’t think it’s a problem, just listen to April’s perspective. She tells us two reasons why people resist becoming more compassionate—and one thing she sees that gives her hope.
LINKS MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE:
- Pair Programming and Mob Programming
- Start Where You Are by Meera Lee Patel
- Ignore Everybody: and 39 Other Keys to Creativity by Hugh MacLeod
- It’s Time to Retire “RTFM", from the Compassionate Coding blog
MUSICAL INSPIRATION FOR THIS EPISODE ON SPOTIFY:
“Better People” by India Arie
ABOUT THIS PODCAST
Stayin' Alive in Tech is an oral history of Silicon Valley and technology. Melinda Byerley, the host, is a 20-year veteran of Silicon Valley and the founder of Timeshare CMO, a digital marketing intelligence firm, based in San Francisco.
We really appreciate your reviews, shares on social media, and your recommendations for future guests. And check out our Spotify playlist for all the songs we refer to on our show.
Dr. Roshawnna Novellus is the founder and CEO of EnrichHER, a platform that allows investors to lend directly to any woman-led business across the country. EnrichHER’s thriving ecosystem is built from Roshawnna’s desire to equip women with the financing, confidence, and community support they need as business-owners. Hear how Roshawnna fights the biases that surround women, whether they’re the challenges she faced as a female engineering student or the idea that women should “keep studying” to get ahead instead of seeking investment.
LINKS MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE:
- Mogul Watch: How Dr. Roshawnna Novellus Is Changing The Stats On Funding For Black Women Founders At EnrichHER
- How More Women Can Break the $1 Million Mark article from Forbes
- In 2018, 1,821 net new women-owned businesses were launched every day. More stats from the Women’s Business Enterprise National Council article: Behind the Numbers: The State of Women-Owned Businesses in 2018
MUSICAL INSPIRATION FOR THIS EPISODE ON SPOTIFY:
“Run the World (Girls)” by Beyonce
ABOUT THIS PODCAST
Stayin' Alive in Tech is an oral history of Silicon Valley and technology. Melinda Byerley, the host, is a 20-year veteran of Silicon Valley and the founder of Timeshare CMO, a digital marketing intelligence firm, based in San Francisco.
We really appreciate your reviews, shares on social media, and your recommendations for future guests. And check out our Spotify playlist for all the songs we refer to on our show.
John Levisay joins us as CEO of Bluprint, the “Maker’s subscription service,” an educational library for the world of crafters, artists, and hobbyists of all kinds. His own career has been a creative journey in itself, from GE and eBay, to founding and eventually selling Craftsy, to continuing on as CEO of its current iteration, Bluprint. He shares about the flourishing startup scene in Denver, describes going through an acquisition, and tells us how to create a culture of creativity and safety that brings out the brightest ideas from your team.
LINKS MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE:
- Bluprint
- John Levisay on LinkedIn
- Melinda’s book that she read in preparation for interviewing with eBay: The Perfect Store: Inside eBay by Adam Cohen
MUSICAL INSPIRATION FOR THIS EPISODE ON SPOTIFY:
“Johnny99” by Bruce Springsteen
ABOUT THIS PODCAST
Stayin' Alive in Tech is an oral history of Silicon Valley and technology. Melinda Byerley, the host, is a 20-year veteran of Silicon Valley and the founder of Timeshare CMO, a digital marketing intelligence firm, based in San Francisco.
We really appreciate your reviews, shares on social media, and your recommendations for future guests. And check out our Spotify playlist for all the songs we refer to on our show.
As one of the co-founders of BlogHer, Elisa Camahort Page had a guiding hand in the evolution of social influence and blogging. At the forefront of social web revolution, BlogHer was, in effect, one of the first groups to build value for women online through community, blogging, conferences, and commerce.
Elisa describes the moment in 2005 when she and her co-founders decided to create a conference solely for women—in a time when social media wasn’t around, but online discussions and influence definitely were. This conference evolved into a massive women’s media company, and BlogHer was later acquired in 2014 by SheKnows Media.
In this episode, Elisa makes the case that having women in leadership at a social media platform keeps the toxicity down, and how tapping into the women and mom population helped to make blogging explode as a medium. Listen in as she describes why three co-founders is the ideal number for a new company, what it really feels like to be acquired, and how to approach your next request for funding or a promotion.
LINKS MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE:
- BlogHer
- Elisa’s 2018 book Road Map for Revolutionaries: Resistance, Activism, and Advocacy for All
- Blogger/Author Heather Armstrong from Dooce.com
- Author Alice Bradley, aka Finslippy
- Sister Mary Ignatius Explains It All to You by Christopher Durang
MUSICAL INSPIRATION FOR THIS EPISODE ON SPOTIFY:
"Just A Girl" by No Doubt
ABOUT THIS PODCAST
Stayin' Alive in Tech is an oral history of Silicon Valley and technology. Melinda Byerley, the host, is a 20-year veteran of Silicon Valley and the founder of Timeshare CMO, a digital marketing intelligence firm, based in San Francisco.
We really appreciate your reviews, shares on social media, and your recommendations for future guests. And check out our Spotify playlist for all the songs we refer to on our show.
Gary Angel is one of the founders of the field of digital analytics. As leader of Ernst & Young’s digital anlytics and founder of his own analytics consultancy, which had been acquired by EY, Gary and his team were reimagining web analytics back when all we measured were website “hits.” Gary takes us through the pillars of good analytics—and the major drawback that comes with such a complex process.
We’ve named this episode “Shake It Up” after the song by The Cars, because this guest is not one to sit still in this field. He is now CEO of Digital Mortar, a company that provides comprehensive collection and measurement of the customer journey in retail stores. He found that most retail organizations were not able to answer basic questions like when their cash registers are busiest or how many people are in their stores at certain times of day. Using a combination of software and now hardware, Digital Mortar uses analytics to solve for those small but important points of friction. Enjoy the thoughtfulness of this conversation with Gary Angel.
LINKS MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE:
- Find Gary’s blogs on the Digital Mortar website
- Gary was voted the most influential industry contributor by the Digital Analytics Association
-
Gary podcasts on these subject at The Measurement Minute
-
Gary’s book Measuring the Digital World: Using Digital Analytics to Drive Better Digital Experiences
MUSICAL INSPIRATION FOR THIS EPISODE ON SPOTIFY:
"Shake It Up" by The Cars
ABOUT THIS PODCAST
Stayin' Alive in Tech is an oral history of Silicon Valley and technology. Melinda Byerley, the host, is a 20-year veteran of Silicon Valley and the founder of Timeshare CMO, a digital marketing intelligence firm, based in San Francisco.
We really appreciate your reviews, shares on social media, and your recommendations for future guests. And check out our Spotify playlist for all the songs we refer to on our show.
When it comes to data and the privacy of the individual, where is the balance between the customer’s expectations and the company’s compliance with privacy regulations, not to mention responsibility to the consumer? In today’s data-saturated world, Aurélie sifts through the many priorities that are competing for a company’s attention—priorities that let privacy rights get pushed aside.
As the Data Protection Officer for New York-based CDP mParticle, Aurélie Pols has spent much of her career applying her deep web analytics background to issues of consumer privacy. Aurélie is one of the most informed web analytics practitioners out there today, especially in the realm of the GDPR and the upcoming California Consumer Privacy Protection Act (the CCPA). As a European, she also brings the EU perspective and compares how Europe and America think very differently about consumer privacy—for historically significant reasons.
We’re at a pivotal juncture for data collection and data analytics. Aurélie will challenge every marketer and executive to think about what we will or won’t do at this critical moment in our history. Will we perpetuate laws and practices that hurt consumers? Will we just focus on the money? Or will we find the balance between the data we collect and the rights of the people behind it?
LINKS MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE:
- PRISM- NSA Surveillance program
- Aurélie’s LinkedIn article about realizing her google email address caused her to be flagged by American Intelligence
- More about Madiran French wine
- MyPermissions.com
- Web Analytics Demystified: A Marketer's Guide to Understanding How Your Web Site Affects Your Business by Eric Peterson
- GDPR and Google Analytics: Google, you are not an island!: Aurélie’s LinkedIn article
- The Universal Declaration of Human Rights: United Nations, 1948
-
Piwik PRO: Capture each customer touchpoint between Desktop, Mobile and Secure Member Areas while staying privacy compliant. Designed for data-sensitive industries.
-
The Times article on the cost of marketing Brexit to Europe; the largest marketing effort in England since World War II
MUSICAL INSPIRATION FOR THIS EPISODE ON SPOTIFY:
"Hope For The Future" by Paul McCartney
ABOUT THIS PODCAST
Stayin' Alive in Tech is an oral history of Silicon Valley and technology. Melinda Byerley, the host, is a 20-year veteran of Silicon Valley and the founder of Timeshare CMO, a digital marketing intelligence firm, based in San Francisco.
We really appreciate your reviews, shares on social media, and your recommendations for future guests. And check out our Spotify playlist for all the songs we refer to on our show.
Howard Rheingold calls himself an Independent Instigator & Observer, and we are so glad he is. Since the 60s, when the first concepts of personal computing and connecting humankind through networks were merely ideas on an LSD trip, he’s been watching how technology and human minds interrelate.
Howard brings us up to the macro level, discussing how modes of communication shape the way societies behave, or how expressing hope can save an entire generation. Then he takes us to the micro level, comparing Facebook to other platforms that better encourage self-expression, telling us about the ‘five essential literacies’ for surviving in the modern world, and giving a huge list of recommended reading—like any good professor would.
LINKS MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE (FOR FULL LIST OF LINKS, SEE OUR FULL WEBPAGE):
- Michael Pollan’s book: How to Change Your Mind
- Higher Creativity: Liberating the Unconscious for Breakthrough Insights by Howard Rheingold and Willis Harman
- The WELL
- Howard’s TED Talk: “The New Power of Collaboration”
- Alan Kay’s article in Scientific American “Microelectronics in the Personal Computer"
- Future Shock by Alvin Toffler
- Whole Earth Catalog (on Amazon and Wikipedia) and the Millennium Whole Earth Catalog
- Our Minds Have Been Hijacked by Our Phones. Tristan Harris Wants to Rescue Them from Wired.com
- Connected Learning Alliance
- What the Dormouse Said: How the Sixties Counterculture Shaped the Personal Computer Industry by John Markoff
- Doug Engelbart’s “Mother of All Demos” video— the world debut of personal and interactive computing in 1968!
- Howard’s Patreon profile
MUSICAL INSPIRATION FOR THIS EPISODE ON SPOTIFY:
"People Got to Be Free" by The Rascals
ABOUT THIS PODCAST
Stayin' Alive in Tech is an oral history of Silicon Valley and technology. Melinda Byerley, the host, is a 20-year veteran of Silicon Valley and the founder of Timeshare CMO, a digital marketing intelligence firm, based in San Francisco.
We really appreciate your reviews, shares on social media, and your recommendations for future guests. And check out our Spotify playlist for all the songs we refer to on our show.
Jacqueline Harper has a story that is rarely told and exactly the kind that we’re trying to bring to light with this podcast. As one of the first black female programmers, her career goes back further than most of our guests. At her job in the IBM typing pool in the 1960s, she was asked to go home when she became pregnant with her first child. Eventually, she went back to work and pushed herself to learn programming while also raising her family. Jacqueline talks about the programming languages used decades ago, sifting through hexadecimal code, and what it was like when laptops entered the market.
She also brings her passion to a new project in the Hudson Valley in New York, excavating the artifacts of freed slaves and reconstructing what their lives were like—she just doesn’t slow down!
Listen to this remarkable story of perseverance and pursuit from a perspective we don’t hear often enough.
LINKS MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE:
- Chronological History of IBM (1970s)
- More about Jacqueline’s current work to excavate artifacts from freed slaves: Poughkeepsie Journal article: “Slavery's hidden history in the mid-Hudson Valley coming to light”
- The Archaeological Conservancy: Locals Dispute Over Guinea Community Artifacts
- The earliest core dumps were paper printouts of the contents of memory, typically arranged in columns of octal or hexadecimal numbers (a "hex dump"). [Wikipedia]
- I am Not Your Negro, by James Baldwin; and Official Trailer for I am Not Your Negro Film
MUSICAL INSPIRATION FOR THIS EPISODE ON SPOTIFY:
"Shining Star" by Earth, Wind & Fire
ABOUT THIS PODCAST
Stayin' Alive in Tech is an oral history of Silicon Valley and technology. Melinda Byerley, the host, is a 20-year veteran of Silicon Valley and the founder of Timeshare CMO, a digital marketing intelligence firm, based in San Francisco.
We really appreciate your reviews, shares on social media, and your recommendations for future guests. And check out our Spotify playlist for all the songs we refer to on our show.
Rand Fishkin, founder of Moz and co-founder of SparkToro, has an unrivaled wisdom and candor perfect for podcasting. Over his years at Moz, Rand led marketers to a deeper understanding of SEO, armed with a well-placed whiteboard and an impressive mustache. Now Rand is bringing us SparkToro, a software product that opens up information on your audience you can’t see anywhere else. Listen in as Rand candidly discusses what it’s really like to go through dark times as a founder, how content marketing has changed in the past ten years, and the type of tech companies he imagines will be founded in the coming years.
LINKS MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE:
- Rand’s marriage proposal commercial and appearance on Oprah with wife Geraldine
- The Whiteboard Friday series on Moz
- James Damore, Google engineer fired for writing manifesto on women's 'neuroticism,' sues company
- Rand’s book: Lost and Founder: A Painfully Honest Field Guide to the Startup World
- https://youtu.be/PxZsE5CmmaA WebCertain TV April 11, 2019: Rand Fishkin talks digital marketing trends in 2019
- “When I was young, I admired clever people. Now that I am old, I admire kind people”.
- Abraham Joshua Heschel
- Interview with Barry Schwartz on rustybrick: Rand Fishkin Of SparkToro On Early Days At Moz, SEO Community, VC Funds & More (Part One) and Part Two
RAND’S BOOK RECOMMENDATIONS:
- April Dunford's "Obviously Awesome"
- Liz Fosslien & Molly West Duffy's "No Hard Feelings"
MUSICAL INSPIRATION FOR THIS EPISODE ON SPOTIFY:
"Humble and Kind" by Tim McGraw
ABOUT THIS PODCAST
Stayin' Alive in Tech is an oral history of Silicon Valley and technology. Melinda Byerley, the host, is a 20-year veteran of Silicon Valley and the founder of Timeshare CMO, a digital marketing intelligence firm, based in San Francisco.
We really appreciate your reviews, shares on social media, and your recommendations for future guests. And check out our Spotify playlist for all the songs we refer to on our show.
We kick off Season 3 with Adam Nash, the VP of Product at Dropbox, whose career includes some of the biggest companies in tech at some of their most transformative stages—from NeXT during its 1997 acquisition by Apple, then Apple under Steve Jobs, to planning products at eBay and working at LinkedIn when there were only 100+ employees and less than a million users.
Adam describes where product strategy plays out between engineers and marketers—and how he’s brought that expertise to some of the brands we know and use almost every day. Hear why LinkedIn chose not to use any profile photos at the beginning, and how Silicon Valley execs went about reinventing the way we use the web after the .com bust.
For any students or those making transitions in their careers, Adam shares his advice for how to get the most out of schooling and the professors around you and the best ways to approach your first work experiences.
LINKS MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE:
- The Design of Everyday Things by Don Norman
- My Book About Me by Dr. Seuss
- The Innovator’s Dilemma by Clayton Christensen
- And just for fun, the Office Space clip featuring the guy “with people skills”
MUSICAL INSPIRATION FOR THIS EPISODE ON SPOTIFY:
"You Get What You Give" by New Radicals
ABOUT THIS PODCAST
Stayin' Alive in Tech is an oral history of Silicon Valley and technology. Melinda Byerley, the host, is a 20-year veteran of Silicon Valley and the founder of Timeshare CMO, a digital marketing intelligence firm, based in San Francisco.
We really appreciate your reviews, shares on social media, and your recommendations for future guests. And check out our Spotify playlist for all the songs we refer to on our show.
Laura Yecies has an incredible list of Silicon Valley companies on her resume, including Yahoo!, Catch.com, SugarSync, and Netscape following the AOL acquisition. She has been the CEO of two venture-backed startups, including her current role as CEO of SyncThink, an eye-tracking technology with profound implications for neurological health.
In this episode, Laura and Melinda discuss balancing a family and a tech career (and how we need to start asking this question of men as well as women), and what it was like to walk into a room of 50 CEOs and realize she’s the only female.
Laura offers recommendations for books, advice for managers, supportive words for females in tech, and nuggets of wisdom for married couples trying to nurture two careers at once.
LINKS MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE:
- Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead, by Sheryl Sandberg
- Brogrammer culture article from Inc.: New Report: Sexism in Silicon Valley Is Really Pretty Awful
- Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game, by Michael Lewis
- State Department of Justice lawsuit against Microsoft Wikipedia article
- Laura’s recommendations for Behavioral Economics books:
-
- Misbehaving by Richard Thaler
- Thinking Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman
- Predictably Irrational by Dan Ariely
MUSICAL INSPIRATION FOR THIS EPISODE ON SPOTIFY:
"Good Life" by OneRepublic
ABOUT THIS PODCAST
Stayin' Alive in Tech is an oral history of Silicon Valley and technology. Melinda Byerley, the host, is a 20-year veteran of Silicon Valley and the founder of Timeshare CMO, a digital marketing intelligence firm, based in San Francisco.
We really appreciate your reviews, shares on social media, and your recommendations for future guests. And check out our Spotify playlist for all the songs we refer to on our show.
Geoff Donaker has seen every stage of a start-up—from going public to having to close the doors. Now he is on the VC side as founder of Burst Capital, bringing his expertise to investing. Meet this former COO of Yelp and hear his advice for founders and new companies on how to avoid common problems like stagnant prices or becoming untethered from your customers.
LINKS MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE:
- Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future by Peter Thiel
- Dorm Room Tycoon podcast with Geoff Donaker: “How to Take a Company Public”
- Burst Capital
- Geoff's 25-minute presentation “Building a Sales Team for Your Marketplace Business,” delivered at the 2019 Marketplace Conference in San Francisco
MUSICAL INSPIRATION FOR THIS EPISODE ON SPOTIFY:
"Instant Karma! (We All Shine On)" by John Lennon
ABOUT THIS PODCAST
Stayin' Alive in Tech is an oral history of Silicon Valley and technology. Melinda Byerley, the host, is a 20-year veteran of Silicon Valley and the founder of Timeshare CMO, a digital marketing intelligence firm, based in San Francisco.
We really appreciate your reviews, shares on social media, and your recommendations for future guests. And check out our Spotify playlist for all the songs we refer to on our show.
Joe tells the story of founding ExecThread, the member-driven job sharing platform where successful executives share information about great job opportunities—openings that you’d only hear about through word-of-mouth or a lucky draw with a recruiting firm. What he soon discovered, however, was that the members signing up for ExecThread were disproportionately non-white and non-male. This idea of opening up accessibility to high-level jobs was clearly speaking to marginalized groups.
For our East Coast listeners, we finally have a New York accent gracing our podcast. In addition to talking about ExecThread, Joe shares his perspective on the exciting tech scene that’s on the move in New York City, telling us his main reason for deciding it’s better to be in tech in New York than Silicon Valley (gasp!). Enjoy this episode with Joe Meyer.
LINKS FROM THIS EPISODE:
- Follow ExecThread on LinkedIn
- CEO Today article: Joe Meyer on How To Access the Hidden Executive Job Market
- Built in NYC article: Who's who? Meet the fresh faces of NYC tech leadership
- Business Insider article: This chart shows the gender pay gap extends all the way to the top of the corporate ladder
MUSICAL INSPIRATION FOR THIS EPISODE ON SPOTIFY:
"It Don’t Come Easy" by Ringo Starr
ABOUT THIS PODCAST
Stayin' Alive in Tech is an oral history of Silicon Valley and technology. Melinda Byerley, the host, is a 20-year veteran of Silicon Valley and the founder of Timeshare CMO, a digital marketing intelligence firm, based in San Francisco.
We really appreciate your reviews, shares on social media, and your recommendations for future guests. And check out our Spotify playlist for all the songs we refer to on our show.
Dr. Tiffani Bright, Ph.D., is the Biomedical Informatician Evaluation Team Lead at IBM Watson Health. As she describes it, the field of Biomedical Informatics sits right at the middle of a three-part Venn diagram, where computational sciences, health/life sciences, and social sciences overlap. Dr. Bright is currently working to advance the science of AI and its application to major public health issues, in collaboration with Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston and Vanderbilt University.
Tiffani’s studies have been extensive and have led her to this fascinating, growing field that combines data and biology to advance the ways healthcare is delivered. In this episode, she shares the story of how she arrived to this point, achieving degree after degree and receiving award after award along the way.
Tiffani is the recipient of several awards and honors, including a Meyerhoff Scholarship from the University of Maryland Baltimore County, a National Library of Medicine Biomedical Informatics Pre-doctoral Fellowship, and a Columbia University Center for Interdisciplinary Research to Reduce Antimicrobial Resistance Pre-doctoral Fellowship. She is also a board member of the American Medical Informatics Association.
LINKS MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE:
- Meyerhoff Scholars Program
- Dreams by Langston Hughes (1902-1967)
MUSICAL INSPIRATION FOR THIS EPISODE ON SPOTIFY:
"Girl on Fire" by Alicia Keys
ABOUT THIS PODCAST
Stayin' Alive in Tech is an oral history of Silicon Valley and technology. Host Melinda Byerley is a 20-year veteran of Silicon Valley and the founder of Timeshare CMO, a digital marketing intelligence firm, based in San Francisco.
We really appreciate your reviews, shares on social media, and your recommendations for future guests. And check out our Spotify playlist for all the songs we refer to on our show.
Jim Sterne: Speaker, Author, Consultant, Professional Explainer
Jim Sterne is widely considered the godfather of digital marketing analytics. He has not only seen it all, he has been articulating how to prepare for what’s coming next since the 90s. This episode delves into just that—in this case, the next big thing he sees coming is Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning, which he encourages all marketers to embrace as the next tool to use in mastering marketing data.
Jim also gives great advice to young people about how to approach their career, and the one thing he wishes he had known earlier: to ask experts all the tough questions whenever he had the chance. “Experts are put on this earth for you to ask them questions and not to be flummoxed or afraid.” Join Melinda and Jim as they reminisce about Silicon Valley when there was zero traffic and get blunt about where we need to be looking for the future.
LINKS MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE:
- Meet Jim at the Marketing Analytics Summit June 17-20 in Las Vegas
- Jim’s latest book: "Artificial Intelligence for Marketing: Practical Applications"
- Director Emeritus of the Digital Analytics Association
- Chris Locke article: “Faster Horses”
- Jim’s article: “The Numbers Just Don't Add Up”
- How cookies got their name.
- Podcast pick from Jim: "This Week In Machine Learning & AI"
MUSICAL INSPIRATION FOR THIS EPISODE ON SPOTIFY:
"Statistician’s Blues" by Todd Snider
ABOUT THIS PODCAST
Stayin' Alive in Tech is an oral history of Silicon Valley and technology. Melinda Byerley, the host, is a 20-year veteran of Silicon Valley and the founder of Timeshare CMO, a digital marketing intelligence firm, based in San Francisco.
We really appreciate your reviews, shares on social media, and your recommendations for future guests. And check out our Spotify playlist for all the songs we refer to on our show.
Philip Rosedale is a virtual world entrepreneur with insatiable curiosity. Co-founder of High Fidelity and Second Life, he joins the podcast to discuss the biggest themes at the intersection of humanity and technology. Hear Philip describe how they built believable virtual experiences and takes a look forward to the future of expansive virtual worlds and 3D interactions.
LINKS MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE:
- Snow Crash, by Neal Stephenson, the 1992 book that’s called a “gigathriller of the information age,” which had a significant impact on Philip’s visions for virtual worlds
- The Documentary film Our Digital Selves: My Avatar is me [full feature film]
- Melinda’s tweetstorm about the documentary
- Moore’s law: the prediction that the number of transistors on integrated circuit chips would double about every two years.
MUSICAL INSPIRATION FOR THIS EPISODE ON SPOTIFY:
"Starman" by David Bowie
ABOUT THIS PODCAST
Stayin' Alive in Tech is an oral history of Silicon Valley and technology. Melinda Byerley, the host, is a 20-year veteran of Silicon Valley and the founder of Timeshare CMO, a digital marketing intelligence firm, based in San Francisco.
We really appreciate your reviews, shares on social media, and your recommendations for future guests. And check out our Spotify playlist for all the songs we refer to on our show.
"We didn't let tools define what we wanted to do. We figured out what the business value is and then we created a data existence that allowed us to answer those questions.”
A sense of awe runs throughout this episode with Avinash Kaushik, one of the godfathers of web analytics. Avinash is a data visualization expert and Digital Marketing Evangelist at Google and takes a step back with us to wonder at the magic of the Internet while delving into how data can better serve businesses.
Avinash has maintained Occam’s Razor, one of our favorite blogs, since 2007, and has been encouraging us to reimagine how we gain business insights from the massive amounts of data laid at our feet in modern times. He speaks about the practitioner’s role in data analysis and how having access to every possible data point doesn’t make humans smarter; it can often lead us astray or paralyze us without the proper analysis.
And for those of you who are interested in making a career in digital marketing, Avinash is the person to listen to. He tells us why one of the most future-proof professions will prove to be data analytics and the number one personality trait that will make a person great at it.
But most notably, Avinash brings sincere optimism for finding the balance between data and humanity. Enjoy hearing what this humble guest has done to help transform the industry of web analytics, both for marketing and for strategic decision-making at the highest levels.
Find Avinash on LinkedIn and Twitter.
SHOW NOTES/LINKS MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE * Avinash’s bi-monthly blog, Occam’s Razor, including the article that is required reading for Timeshare CMO employees: “It’s not the ink, it’s the think.” * Be Real-World Smart: A Beginner's Advanced Google Analytics Guide * Avinash’s two best-selling books: Web Analytics: An Hour A Day and Web Analytics 2.0 * AntennaPod.org podcast manager * “Customer Centric Web Decision Making” Avinash’s Google Tech Talk * Udacity’s Nanodegree in Digital Marketing * Jim Sterne and his book “Artificial Intelligence for Marketing: Practical Applications” * Top Ten: Signs You Are A Great Analyst, one of Avinash’s first blog posts from 2006, and Melinda’s first comment on the blog
MUSICAL INSPIRATION FOR THIS EPISODE ON SPOTIFY:
"Curious” by Holly Valance
ABOUT THIS PODCAST
Stayin' Alive in Tech is an oral history of Silicon Valley and technology. Melinda Byerley, the host, is a 20-year veteran of Silicon Valley and the founder of Timeshare CMO, a digital marketing intelligence firm, based in San Francisco.
We really appreciate your reviews, shares on social media, and your recommendations for future guests. And check out our Spotify playlist for all the songs we refer to on our show.
Our next guest left a successful career in Silicon Valley at Adobe and Macromedia when she realized that a major shift had been happening—the women who had been working in the cubes and offices around her were gone. Karen Catlin turned her attention to writing, speaking, and coaching on creating more inclusive workplaces and adding diversity to speaker line-ups, particularly in tech.
Author of Better Allies: Everyday Actions to Create Inclusive, Engaging Workplaces, Karen Catlin shares several practical tips for creating an atmosphere of inclusion. "At every level of an organization, we can be a better ally."
SHOW NOTES/LINKS MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE * PRESENT! A Techie’s Guide To Public Speaking * Better Allies: Everyday Actions to Create Inclusive, Engaging Workplaces * Grace Hopper Celebration: World’s largest gathering of women technologists * Lean In: Women, Work and the Will to Lead, by Sheryl Sandberg * Why Most Performance Evaluations Are Biased and How to Fix Them report by Clayman Institute for Gender Research * Amplification: Washington Post article “How a White House women’s office strategy went viral” * How women can say no to ‘office housework’ Ladders article
MUSICAL INSPIRATION FOR THIS EPISODE ON SPOTIFY:
"Brand New Day" by Sting
ABOUT THIS PODCAST
Stayin' Alive in Tech is an oral history of Silicon Valley and technology. Melinda Byerley, the host, is a 20-year veteran of Silicon Valley and the founder of Timeshare CMO, a digital marketing intelligence firm, based in San Francisco.
We really appreciate your reviews, shares on social media, and your recommendations for future guests. And check out our Spotify playlist for all the songs we refer to on our show.
Tom Peters, best-selling business author, speaker, and “Red Bull of management thinking,” reaches back to his start in Silicon Valley in the 1970s, reflecting on how the Valley has evolved and what work still needs to be done to bring the focus back to the people. Tom predicts that continued change is coming our way—especially for women—and that any company or industry’s success comes back to what he calls the “soft stuff.”
LINKS MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE * The Excellence Dividend: Meeting the Tech Tide with Work That Wows and Jobs That Last by Tom Peters
- Liberation Management by Tom Peters
- In Search of Excellence by Tom Peters
- Tom’s latest paper, what he calls a “Sorta Manifesto” named Extreme Humanization/ Extreme Employee Engagement”
- Brotopia: Breaking up the Boys’ Club of Silicon Valley by Emily Chang
- George Valliant Study via The Harvard Gazette: “Harvard study, almost 80 years old, has proved that embracing community helps us live longer, and be happier”
- Washington Post: "The surprising thing Google learned about its employees — and what it means for today’s students"
MUSICAL INSPIRATION FOR THIS EPISODE ON SPOTIFY:
"Don’t Stop Me Now" by Queen
ABOUT THIS PODCAST
Stayin' Alive in Tech is an oral history of Silicon Valley and technology. Melinda Byerley, the host, is a 20-year veteran of Silicon Valley and the founder of Timeshare CMO, a digital marketing intelligence firm, based in San Francisco.
We really appreciate your reviews, shares on social media, and your recommendations for future guests. And check out our Spotify playlist for all the songs we refer to on our show.
Our guest Sian Morson has always followed that nagging idea that keeps her up at night, and this persistence has allowed her to dive into mobile before most people saw its potential, bootstrap her own mobile app business, Kollective Mobile, launch her own beauty app, and now serve as an LP for Backstage Capital. Coming from a background in film and design, Sian can speak to everything from the history of emojis to how to lead a bespoke app-creation company without an engineering background.
Sian leads us through her career journey while sharing her perspectives on being a black female entrepreneur, what makes a good founder, and when to tackle a big idea.
For listeners who are startup founders or are thinking about a startup, this is another guest whose advice you would otherwise be paying to hear. Sian explains how the challenge of finding a technical co-founder shouldn’t stop any potential entrepreneur in their tracks, and hear one of the more surprising traits she looks for when hearing pitches.
LINKS MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE:
- Sian is the CEO of Kollective Mobile, a mobile development agency in Oakland, CA.
- Mentor at Backstage Capital
- Arlan Hamilton on inc.com: “VC Arlan Hamilton: The Qualities I Look For in a Founder”
- The first book written on Sketch, Sian’s Designing for iOS with Sketch
- Learn Design for iOS Development
- Ebony magazine and the Cast Beauty App: "Black-owned App Helps Users Stay Beautiful No Matter the Weather"
MUSICAL INSPIRATION FOR THIS EPISODE ON SPOTIFY:
"The Story" by Brandi Carlile
ABOUT THIS PODCAST
Stayin' Alive in Tech is an oral history of Silicon Valley and technology. Melinda Byerley, the host, is a 20-year veteran of Silicon Valley and the founder of Timeshare CMO, a digital marketing intelligence firm, based in San Francisco.
We really appreciate your reviews, shares on social media, and your recommendations for future guests. And check out our Spotify playlist for all the songs we refer to on our show.
Mar Hicks, Associate Professor of History at Illinois Institute of Technology, drops in to talk about the history of technology and how algorithmic bias has evolved over the years. They discuss topics from how women were purposefully excluded from the tech industry to how transgender algorithmic bias began in the 70’s. Mar shares insights about bias in tech that you have probably experienced but might have only given a passing thought. Mar tells an anecdote about one of the earliest examples of institutionally trans algorithmic bias by the British government in the early 70’s. This episode is as thought-provoking as it is entertaining.
LINKS MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE:
- Mar’s Book: Programmed Inequality: How Britain Discarded Women Technologists and Lost Its Edge in Computing
- Female Chauvinist Pigs: Women and the Rise of Raunch Culture, by Ariel Levy
- Automating Inequality: How High-Tech Tools Profile, Police, and Punish the Poor, by Virginia Eubanks
- Artificial Unintelligence: How Computers Misunderstand the World, by Meredith Broussard
- Algorithms of Oppression: How Search Engines Reinforce Racism, by Safiya Umoja Nobles
MUSICAL INSPIRATION FOR THIS EPISODE ON SPOTIFY:
"We Belong" by Pat Benatar
ABOUT THIS PODCAST
Stayin' Alive in Tech is an oral history of Silicon Valley and technology. Melinda Byerley, the host, is a 20-year veteran of Silicon Valley and the founder of Timeshare CMO, a digital marketing intelligence firm, based in San Francisco.
We really appreciate your reviews, shares on social media, and your recommendations for future guests. And check out our Spotify playlist for all the songs we refer to on our show.
Sherry Wei, the soft-spoken but gritty founder of Aviatrix Systems, shares her story of emigrating from China and starting her career coding for Cisco Systems, and the steps that convinced her to jump into the unpredictable world of startups in 2013. From taking Aviatrix Systems from a bootstrap startup to a company with $25 million in venture investments, Sherry conveys what that experience taught her about not giving up and learning to trust yourself.
Sherry has candid tips for start-up founders as they struggle with funding, vision, and allocating time to their business. Should you quit your day job? Should you keep going when you’re reaching dead ends? From someone who’s been there, her wisdom is informational and inspirational.
MUSICAL INSPIRATION FOR THIS EPISODE ON SPOTIFY:
"Here Comes the Sun" by The Beatles
ABOUT THIS PODCAST
Stayin' Alive in Tech is an oral history of Silicon Valley and technology. Melinda Byerley, the host, is a 20-year veteran of Silicon Valley and the founder of Timeshare CMO, a digital marketing intelligence firm, based in San Francisco.
We really appreciate your reviews, shares on social media, and your recommendations for future guests. And check out our Spotify playlist for all the songs we refer to on our show.
Paula Buchanan, writer, researcher, and self-proclaimed data nerd, likes to pose the question “so what?” as she looks at how data should be presented and how tech should not be a gadget in search of a problem. “How can I make it so what I’m researching can help people not just by my taking a more maternalistic view, but how can I empower them to help themselves?” The way she helps people help themselves? Data visualization and research in the realm of public health.
In this episode, Paula tells Melinda about being a woman of color from a middle class upbringing and how her early years and education formed her motto: Never Stop Learning. Paula has combined her education from Tulane University and her experience with the Americorps program to improve the lives of others through data visualization. She has a passion for making data, specifically health information, more easily understood.
A supporter of Girls Who Code and the Southern Data Science Center, Paula believes that combining science and tech allows for a unique opportunity to make complex ideas more accessible. “If you’re in Health services research, you are, to a degree, a public servant...You have to think about, not the technology, but how the technology serves the people.”
LINKS MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE:
- AmeriCorps places thousands of people into intensive service positions.
- The New Orleans Health Care for the Homeless operates a primary health care clinic and an adolescent drop-in clinic.
- Girls Who Code and Women Who Code
- Paula’s blog on attending the Southern Data Science Conference: a data science R&D conference that brings together experts and researchers from the top data science companies and institutes
- Paula’s article: “Concepts and Uses for Open Data”
MUSICAL INSPIRATION FOR THIS EPISODE ON SPOTIFY:
"American Girl" by Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers
ABOUT THIS PODCAST
Stayin' Alive in Tech is an oral history of Silicon Valley and technology. Melinda Byerley, the host, is a 20-year veteran of Silicon Valley; and the founder of Timeshare CMO, a digital marketing intelligence firm, based in San Francisco
We really appreciate your reviews, shares on social media, and your recommendations for future guests. And check out our Spotify playlist for a playlist for all the songs we refer to on our show.
Paula Buchanan, writer, researcher, and self-proclaimed data nerd, likes to pose the question “so what?” as she looks at how data should be presented and how tech should not be a gadget in search of a problem. “How can I make it so what I’m researching can help people not just by my taking a more maternalistic view, but how can I empower them to help themselves?” The way she helps people help themselves? Data visualization and research in the realm of public health.
In this episode, Paula tells Melinda about being a woman of color from a middle class upbringing and how her early years and education formed her motto: Never Stop Learning. Paula has combined her education from Tulane University and her experience with the Americorps program to improve the lives of others through data visualization. She has a passion for making data, specifically health information, more easily understood.
A supporter of Girls Who Code and the Southern Data Science Center, Paula believes that combining science and tech allows for a unique opportunity to make complex ideas more accessible. “If you’re in Health services research, you are, to a degree, a public servant...You have to think about, not the technology, but how the technology serves the people.”
LINKS MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE:
- AmeriCorps places thousands of people into intensive service positions.
- The New Orleans Health Care for the Homeless operates a primary health care clinic and an adolescent drop-in clinic.
- Girls Who Code and Women Who Code
- Paula’s blog on attending the Southern Data Science Conference: a data science R&D conference that brings together experts and researchers from the top data science companies and institutes
- Paula’s article: “Concepts and Uses for Open Data”
MUSICAL INSPIRATION FOR THIS EPISODE ON SPOTIFY:
"American Girl" by Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers
ABOUT THIS PODCAST
Stayin' Alive in Tech is an oral history of Silicon Valley and technology. Melinda Byerley, the host, is a 20-year veteran of Silicon Valley; and the founder of Timeshare CMO, a digital marketing intelligence firm, based in San Francisco
We really appreciate your reviews, shares on social media, and your recommendations for future guests. And check out our Spotify playlist for a playlist for all the songs we refer to on our show.
This episode contains adult themes and a few swear words; so you may wish to exercise discretion when listening with others.
"You’re never too old or too young to do anything."- Cindy Gallop
From her early training in theatre, to a career in advertising and a life filled with purpose and fun, to her next mission as founder, investor, and evangelist for positive, joyful sex technology on the web at Make Love, Not Porn; Cindy Gallop has been "blowing shit up" for a long time.
Cindy's experiences in building a sex-tech company and an investment fund have lessons for all of us. You'll learn a ton about the perseverance required to build a startup in the sex tech space, which makes the average startup look easy by comparison. But Cindy's episode will also make you think, including challenging us all to wish our friends the best anniversary and vacation sex possible.
LINKS MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE:
- Make love, not porn TED talk from 2009
- TechCrunch article: Sex, the Final Frontier: Cindy Gallop Raises $2M from Mysterious Investor for Social Sex Tech
- All the Sky Holdings
MUSICAL INSPIRATION FOR THIS EPISODE ON SPOTIFY:
"Talk Dirty To Me" by Poison
ABOUT THIS PODCAST
Stayin' Alive in Tech is an oral history of Silicon Valley and technology. Melinda Byerley, the host, is a 20-year veteran of Silicon Valley; and the founder of Timeshare CMO, a digital marketing intelligence firm, based in San Francisco
We really appreciate your reviews, shares on social media, and your recommendations for future guests. And check out our Spotify playlist for a playlist for all the songs we refer to on our show.
The word that keeps coming up in this episode is “audacity.” Ellen Petry Leanse joins Melinda Byerley to talk about her experiences in the early days of Apple, when she served as Apple’s first User Evangelist. Proclaimed the “nerd queen,” she led the company’s first online debut in 1985 with one of the first BBSs. Her career is a parable of what happens when you are willing to take risks, work hard, and don’t worry about looking back.
Ellen touches on how she views art as an integral part of product design, science, and business, and raises the question of whether today's atmosphere of innovation is truly letting curiosity reign.
Greatly respected throughout Silicon Valley for her achievements, Ellen has been featured on CNN, CNBC, and NBC and in the pages of Time, Forbes, Vogue, and Business Insider. Currently, she teaches “Unleashing Creative Innovation and Building Great Products” for Stanford University Continuing Studies.
MUSICAL INSPIRATION FOR THIS EPISODE ON SPOTIFY:"Imagine" by John Lennon
LINKS MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE:
- Ellen’s essay on the word “just”: "Google and Apple alum says using this word can damage your credibility"
- “Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited to all we now know and understand, while imagination embraces the entire world, and all there ever will be to know and understand.”― Albert Einstein
- Ellen's bestselling book: The Happiness Hack: How to Take Charge of Your Brain and Program More Happiness into Your Life
- Happiness by design | Ellen Petry Leanse | TEDxBerkeley (video)
- “What I Learned About the Brain by Writing a Book About It” from Stanford University @ Fifteen Seconds Festival 2017 (video)
ABOUT THIS PODCAST
Stayin' Alive in Tech is an oral history of Silicon Valley and technology. Melinda Byerley, the host, is a 20-year veteran of Silicon Valley; and the founder of Timeshare CMO, a digital marketing intelligence firm, based in San Francisco.
We really appreciate your reviews, shares on social media, and your recommendations for future guests. And check out our Spotify playlist for a playlist for all the songs we refer to on our show.
Ron Lichty joins Melinda Byerley to share stories about his time in Silicon Valley as a programmer, then a team and product manager. They talk about his instrumental role in the development of Apple’s game-changing personal computer, the Macintosh. This is only one highlight of his distinguished career that also includes three patents, several books, and recognition as a thought leader in agile methodology. Even if you aren’t a techie you will enjoy listening to Ron because if you use a computer he has probably touched your life.
ARTICLES AND BOOKS MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE * Ron’s book: Managing the Unmanageable: Rules, Tools, and Insights for Managing Software People and Teams, published by Addison Wesley * The periodic Study of Product Team Performance, an endeavor that continuously improves our understanding of why some product teams excel while others struggle. * "Joy, Inc.: How We Built a Workplace People Love" by Richard Sheridan (Amazon) * About Google’s Project Aristotle: From The New York Times Magazine “What Google Learned From Its Quest to Build the Perfect Team” Feb. 25, 2016 * PB Works, first online Wiki by David Weekly (Wikipedia)
MUSICAL INSPIRATION FOR THIS EPISODE ON SPOTIFY:
"Fixing a Hole" by The Beatles
ABOUT THIS PODCAST
Stayin' Alive in Tech is an oral history of Silicon Valley and technology. Melinda Byerley, the host, is a 20-year veteran of Silicon Valley; and the founder of Timeshare CMO, a digital marketing intelligence firm, based in San Francisco.
We really appreciate your reviews, shares on social media, and your recommendations for future guests. And check out our Spotify playlist for a playlist for all the songs we refer to on our show.
Linda Popky, one of Silicon Valley’s top 100 women of influence, stops in to talk to Melinda Byerley about her lifetime of marketing experiences and specifically her time at Sun Microsystems in the heady days of the genesis of Silicon Valley. In this insightfully fun episode, she talks about how she came to work for Sun and her eventual move from Boston to the West Coast. You will enjoy Linda’s engaging stories about her marketing philosophy, some Silicon Valley history, and the tech marketing ecosystem she has navigated for over 30 years.
LINKS MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE:
- Linda's newest book: "Marketing Above the Noise" Achieve Strategic Advantage with Marketing That Matters"
- Sign up to receive the weekly "Top of Mind Thursday" memos from Leverage2Market
- "Product Management Training" video: Part One, and Part Two
- 20th Anniversary summary video of Sun Microsystems
- A couple of fun Sun Microsystems commercials--a movie trailer parody, "The Dot", and a compilation of comedy spots.
MUSICAL INSPIRATION FOR THIS EPISODE ON SPOTIFY:
"We Built This City" by Starship
ABOUT THIS PODCAST
Stayin' Alive in Tech is an oral history of Silicon Valley and technology. Melinda Byerley, the host, is a 20-year veteran of Silicon Valley; and the founder of Timeshare CMO, a digital marketing intelligence firm, based in San Francisco.
We really appreciate your reviews, shares on social media, and your recommendations for future guests. And check out our Spotify playlist for a playlist for all the songs we refer to on our show.
Owen Thomas joins Melinda Byerley to talk about the history of his controversial blog post about Peter Thiel’s sexuality and the ethos of narrative control that pervades Silicon Valley. His story includes how and why Nick Denton founded Valleywag. His story is about how journalists can incite grudges and the destruction money and power can unleash.
ARTICLES & BOOKS MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE * The original 2007 Gawker article: "Peter Theil is totally gay, people" * The Washington Post published a good summary of the situation after the judgment: "Peter Thiel had no reason to be angry at Gawker for writing that he's gay" * Conspiracy: Peter Thiel, Hulk Hogan, Gawker, and the Anatomy of Intrigue by Ryan Holiday, Penguin Books, 2018, tells the story of the aftermath of Owen’s blog post and how Peter Thiel brought down Gawker * Ryan Mac’s more recent account, “This Man Helped Peter Thiel Demolish Gawker,” talks about how Aron D’Souza helped Thiel bring down Gawker * Kara Swisher’s interview talking about mirror-ocracy: “They look at themselves reflected and think their success is earned and they made it on their own, especially for white men...”
MUSICAL INSPIRATION FOR THIS EPISODE ON SPOTIFY:
"Gimme Some Truth" by John Lennon
ABOUT THIS PODCAST
Stayin' Alive in Tech is an oral history of Silicon Valley and technology. Melinda Byerley, the host, is a 20-year veteran of Silicon Valley; and the founder of Timeshare CMO, a digital marketing intelligence firm, based in San Francisco.
We really appreciate your reviews, shares on social media, and your recommendations for future guests. And check out our Spotify playlist for a playlist for all the songs we refer to on our show.
Kumar Garg joins us to talk about his now famous whiteboard and how to get things done. He tells us about his experiences from the White House Office of Science and Technology during the Obama administration and how the content of the whiteboard came about. Sprinkled in are stories about him being a young migrant from India and how he came to be involved in education policy. This is a fast paced and entertaining listen.
MUSICAL INSPIRATION FOR THIS EPISODE ON SPOTIFY:
"History Has Its Eyes On You" from Hamilton
ABOUT THIS PODCAST
Stayin' Alive in Tech is an oral history of Silicon Valley and technology. Melinda Byerley, the host, is a 20-year veteran of Silicon Valley and the founder of Timeshare CMO, a digital marketing intelligence firm based in San Francisco.
We really appreciate your reviews, shares on social media, and your recommendations for future guests. And check out our Spotify playlist for all the songs we refer to on our show.
Jim Long, a serial entrepreneur and venture capitalist, shares with us his thoughts on product development, the importance of an MBA, and the cultures of places like Intel and Hewlett-Packard in the 80’s. His experiences continue to coalesce into one of the most authentic and honest perspectives of what has been going on in the valley over the last 40 years.
LINKS MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE:
- The Dip: A Little Book That Teaches You When to Quit (and When to Stick) by Seth Godin (Amazon): "Every new project (or job, or hobby, or company) starts out fun…then gets really hard, and not much fun at all. You might be in a Dip—a temporary setback that will get better if you keep pushing."
- Crossing the Chasm, by Geoffrey Moore (Amazon): "...the best book ever written on being a founder.
MUSICAL INSPIRATION FOR THIS EPISODE ON SPOTIFY:
"Are You Experienced?" by Jimi Hendrix
ABOUT THIS PODCAST
Stayin' Alive in Tech is an oral history of Silicon Valley and technology. Melinda Byerley, the host, is a 20-year veteran of Silicon Valley and the founder of Timeshare CMO, a digital marketing intelligence firm, based in San Francisco.
We really appreciate your reviews, shares on social media, and your recommendations for future guests. And check out our Spotify playlist for all the songs we refer to on our show.
Deirdré Straughan, Open Source Content Lead at Amazon Web Services and a global telecommunications pioneer, joins us to talk about how she built an accidental career in tech with absolutely no STEM degree. Along the way, she gives a crash course in the history of the desktop publishing space, which evolved alongside her career as a technical writer and marketer.
LINKS MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE:
- Representing a company in public internet forums
- Recommended Book: "Getting In Touch With Your Inner Bitch"
- Early Experiences in Online Customer Communications
- Basic Principles for Communicating Online
- How to do newsletters right (and a little history of newsletters)
- eMail Encounters: Anecdotes of a Professional Life Online
- Deirdre's history in customer service
- Early usenet: supporting a company on the front lines
- 25 years of online communication - since 1982
MUSICAL INSPIRATION FOR THIS EPISODE ON SPOTIFY:
"I Will Survive" by Gloria Gaynor
ABOUT THIS PODCAST
Stayin' Alive in Tech is an oral history of Silicon Valley and technology. Melinda Byerley, the host, is a 20-year veteran of Silicon Valley and the founder of Timeshare CMO, a digital marketing intelligence firm, based in San Francisco.
We really appreciate your reviews, shares on social media, and your recommendations for future guests. And check out our Spotify playlist for all the songs we refer to on our show.
We used to be able to log on and take on any identity we wanted. Now, we expose our entire lives to the world.
Is that a good thing? What are the tradeoffs? And in that environment, how have anonymous trolls and bots somehow pushed us all back towards anonymity? And what does eBay’s reputation system have to do with all this?
Coraline Ada Ehmke has a very personal story about her experience of identity on the internet, and we discovered that she and I shared similar experiences, from different angles. She’s a developer, I’m a marketer, but we both began our life on the internet in anonymity and watched it disappear.
In this episode we’ll talk about the evolution of identity on the internet, and what today’s tech companies can learn from the past to better serve their customers today.
Coraline Ada Ehmke is an open-source advocate and developer with over 20 years of experience. She was recognized for her work on diversity in open source with a Ruby Hero award in 2016. Coraline is the creator of the Contributor Covenant, the most popular open source code of conduct in the world with over 40,000 adoptions. She is a founding panelist on the Greater than Code podcast. In her free time, Coraline pursues her interests in artificial intelligence and writes and records music in her home studio.
LINKS MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE:
- The Proteus Effect (Wikipedia): describes the phenomenon of people changing their behaviors online and in virtual worlds based on the characteristics of their avatar.
- Online Identity: Who, Me? (InternetSociety.org): A resource for everyone that dives into internet identity and helps everyone protect and secure their identity online.
- Identity and the Internet: From Pixels To Personas (Financial Times): A 2011 article that covers Facebook's insistence on real names and some of the impact noted at the time.
- Building Web Reputation Systems, Randy Farmer (Amazon). A 2010 book that served as summary of what we knew then about reputation systems.
- Trust Building Systems (University of Washington): Excellent collection of identity and trust systems
- The Online Identity Crisis (Wired, 2014): Outlines concerns Coraline raises about Federated Identities
MUSICAL INSPIRATION FOR THIS EPISODE ON SPOTIFY:
"Who Are You Really?" by The Who
ABOUT THIS PODCAST
Stayin' Alive in Tech is an oral history of Silicon Valley and technology. Melinda Byerley, the host, is a 20-year veteran of Silicon Valley and the founder of Timeshare CMO, a digital marketing intelligence firm, based in San Francisco.
We really appreciate your reviews, shares on social media, and your recommendations for future guests. And check out our Spotify playlist for all the songs we refer to on our show.
The New York Times had an article in March in which several investors on a Detroit road trip seemed to think Silicon Valley was "over" when it came to investing in early-stage startups. I wanted to ask a person actually doing this work what he thought
LINKS MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE:
- Data on VC investment by metro region
- More on Investing in Women-led Companies
MUSICAL INSPIRATION FOR THIS EPISODE ON SPOTIFY:
"Calling All Angels" by Train
ABOUT THIS PODCAST
Stayin' Alive in Tech is an oral history of Silicon Valley and technology. Melinda Byerley, the host, is a 20-year veteran of Silicon Valley and the founder of Timeshare CMO, a digital marketing intelligence firm, based in San Francisco.
We really appreciate your reviews, shares on social media, and your recommendations for future guests. And check out our Spotify playlist for all the songs we refer to on our show.
It's hard to believe, but the internet didn't always have teams of people and algorithms to keep us safe. As Vinton Cerf, one of the creators of internet protocols, put it: “We didn’t focus on how you could wreck this system intentionally.” Larry Friedberg was one of eBay’s first Trust and Safety employees and came to define the profession. He’s here to help us understand what good Trust and Safety looks like as we ask ourselves what Facebook might have done differently if they'd learned the lessons of the past.
LINKS MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE:
- Larry's post on the 3 pillars of trust and safety
- Designing your resolution room
- The Surprising Thing About Trust, by Seth Godin
MUSICAL INSPIRATION FOR THIS EPISODE ON SPOTIFY:
"The Safety Dance" by Men Without Hats
ABOUT THIS PODCAST
Stayin' Alive in Tech is an oral history of Silicon Valley and technology. Melinda Byerley, the host, is a 20-year veteran of Silicon Valley and the founder of Timeshare CMO, a digital marketing intelligence firm, based in San Francisco.
We really appreciate your reviews, shares on social media, and your recommendations for future guests. And check out our Spotify playlist for all the songs we refer to on our show.
Owen Thomas, Business Editor of The San Francisco Chronicle, discusses his career, starting at Suck.com. We'll explore the origins of Suck.com and its outsize impact on digital media; as well as how today's tone of tech media coverage was impacted by Suck.com.
LINKS MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE:
- Owen recommends anything by Polly Esther (Heather Havrilesky), but this is the article on straight dating mentioned in this episode.
- Ana Marie Cox snarks on Burning Man in the days of dial up, long before it was cool to do it on Twitter.
- The proof CNN's Jake Tapper was a "Suckster"—and his unforgettable screen name.
MUSICAL INSPIRATION FOR THIS EPISODE ON SPOTIFY:
"Dirty Laundry" by Don Henley
ABOUT THIS PODCAST
Stayin' Alive in Tech is an oral history of Silicon Valley and technology. Melinda Byerley, the host, is a 20-year veteran of Silicon Valley and the founder of Timeshare CMO, a digital marketing intelligence firm, based in San Francisco.
We really appreciate your reviews, shares on social media, and your recommendations for future guests. And check out our Spotify playlist for all the songs we refer to on our show.
There are so many great tech podcasts focused on the future.
So I'm doing something different - and that's talking about Silicon Valley's past. There are many lessons to be learned from our past that not only explain how we got here, but also provide clues as to where we're going.