Podcasts about DataStax

Here are three business leaders who all have one thing in common - they lead US-based, SaaS companies valued at more than $1 billion. SaaS (software as a service) businesses are the lifeblood of the modern economy. Their products help with everything from sales calls and marketing to employee onboarding and supply chain management. These days all companies are awash with data, but artificial intelligence is making it easier than ever to put that data to use. Dougal Shaw speaks to the three CEOs about how they scaled-up their business. He speaks one-on-one with Katherine Kostereva of Creatio, Chet Kapoor of Datastax and Doug Winter of Seismic. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

On this episode of Alexa's Input (AI), we're diving deep into the world of distributed databases with Patrick McFadin, Principal Technical Strategist at DataStax and a leading voice in the Apache Cassandra community. Patrick shares his journey into tech and how he became one of the foremost experts on Cassandra—an open-source, highly scalable NoSQL database that powers mission-critical applications across the globe.We explore Cassandra's unique architecture, its approach to the CAP theorem, real-world use cases, and how it continues to evolve in the era of AI and real-time analytics. Whether you're a developer, architect, or just database-curious, this episode offers a clear, insightful look at how Cassandra handles scale, availability, and open-source innovation.Links:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/patrick-mcfadin-53a8046/DataStax: https://www.datastax.com/our-people/patrick-mcfadinX: https://x.com/patrickmcfadinGithub: https://github.com/pmcfadinYou can support this podcast on the ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠creators page⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. Make sure to subscribe and follow ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Alexa's Input Twitter account⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ to get notified when a new podcast episode comes out.

In this episode of Campus Technology Insider Podcast Shorts, Rhea Kelly discusses the unveiling of Turnitin Clarity, a new AI-assisted writing tool for students, the launch of OpenAI's advanced AI model GPT-4.5, and IBM's strategic acquisition of DataStax to enhance its AI-driven data management capabilities. Stay tuned for more updates on educational technology and AI advancements. 00:00 Introduction and Overview 00:17 Turnitin Clarity: Enhancing Student Writing 00:55 OpenAI's GPT-4.5: Advancements and Costs 01:35 IBM's Strategic Acquisition of DataStax 02:08 Conclusion and Further Resources Source links: New Turnitin Product Brings AI-Powered Tools to Students with Instructor Guardrails OpenAI Launches Its Largest AI Model Yet in Research Preview IBM to Enhance Watsonx Portfolio Through DataStax Acquisition Campus Technology Insider Podcast Shorts are curated by humans and narrated by AI.

In this episode of The Enterprise Apps Podcast, Melody Brue and Robert Kramer dive deep into the latest developments in AI, enterprise apps, and business technology. From Zoom's surprising AI efficiency breakthrough to Microsoft's push for autonomous ERP, Robert and Mel cover the innovations shaping enterprise apps and the future of work. Plus, they unpack Salesforce's AI agents, IBM's latest acquisition, and how ServiceNow is doubling down on industry-specific solutions.

In the season finale of The Enablement Edge, hosts Steve and Amber chat with Stephanie Middaugh, Founder & CEO of Phoenix GTM Consulting, about where to succeed in enablement in 2025.Together, they tackle the industry's current challenges, including burnout and exhaustion among professionals, while highlighting the need to sustain passion and empathy in these roles. Stephanie shares actionable strategies for navigating market uncertainties and organizational obstacles, emphasizing the importance of prioritizing skill-building over task-focused activities and looking to what is actually within your control.The discussion also explores Stephanie's book, Elevate and Optimize: Your Enablement Maturity Journey, which provides practical guidance on advancing enablement functions and setting achievable goals. Stephanie shares her insights into effective maturity models, the current and future impact of AI on enablement, and the transformative potential of a well-aligned enablement strategy. Her advice inspires listeners to stay focused on their enablement objectives and drive meaningful change within their organizations.—Guest BioStephanie Middaugh is a seasoned expert in revenue enablement and sales operations, known for her innovative approach to training and process improvement. She is currently a CSM with Luster, a cutting-edge AI sales practice and upskilling solution that is revolutionizing how go-to-market teams learn and practice. However, Stephanie is also the Founder & CEO of her own business, Phoenix GTM Consulting.Most recently, Stephanie was the Head of Global GTM at Pinecone. With a career spanning leadership roles at Zoom, Divvy Inc., DataStax, Alteryx, and Sage, she has consistently built scalable enablement frameworks supporting global sales teams. Passionate about fostering community and delivering impactful programs, Stephanie continues to be a thought leader in the enablement space.—Guest Quote“People are tired, exhausted, and burnt out. But that passion is still burning. We want to help. So we're still going to be there. Enablement as a profession is still going to get these initiatives, trainings, and everything [else] through. We're still going to be bought into helping our reps succeed and seeing the business move forward. Even though it kind of goes through these ups and downs and ebbs and flows, enablement is going to be here for a while, and it's the companies that know how to properly leverage it that are going to see the results at the end of the day.” —Time Stamps 00:00 Episode Start4:45  How Stephanie defines enablement6:38 Facing burnout in 20259:56  Where is all this pressure coming from?12:50  Moving foward despite uncertainty16:13 Focus in on what you can control18:20 Elevate and Optimize: Your Enablement Maturity Journey24:37 Does your enablement team have to be large to be mature?28:11 Transformational enablement31:40 On the Edge—LinksConnect with Stephanie Middaugh on LinkedInRead “Elevate and Optimize: Your Enablement Maturity Journey”Check out Phoenix GTM ConsultingCheck out LusterConnect with Steve Watt on LinkedInConnect with Amber Mellano on LinkedInCheck out Seismic

Mergulhamos no universo dos AI Agents e discutimos por que eles são considerados a próxima revolução em Data & AI. Nossos convidados exploram desde os conceitos básicos até aplicações reais, incluindo como empresas estão criando agentes de forma autônoma e o papel do Langflow — uma plataforma de AI Agents, fundada por um brasileiro, que já é destaque no cenário internacional — nesse ecossistema. Neste episódio do Data Hackers — a maior comunidade de AI e Data Science do Brasil - cconheçam Mikaeri Ohana - Head de Dados e IA na CI&T & Content Creator at Explica Mi , e o Gabriel Almeida - Founder & CTO @ Langflow. Lembrando que você pode encontrar todos os podcasts da comunidade Data Hackers no Spotify, iTunes, Google Podcast, Castbox e muitas outras plataformas. Nossa Bancada Data Hackers: Paulo Vasconcellos — Co-founder da Data Hackers e Principal Data Scientist na Hotmart. Monique Femme — Head of Community Management na Data Hackers Gabriel Lages — Co-founder da Data Hackers e Data & Analytics Sr. Director na Hotmart. Referências: Participe do Evento do ifood: https://lu.ma/si2mn42p?utm_campaign=o-novo-ataque-da-openai-na-automacao-do-trabalho&utm_medium=referral&utm_source=www.datahackers.news   Blog Data Hackers - Langflow: Conheça uma plataforma de AI Agents fundada por um Brasileiro que já é destaque no cenário internacional: https://www.datahackers.news/p/langflow-conheca-uma-plataforma-de-ai-agents-fundada-por-um-brasileiro Langflow: https://www.langflow.org/pt/ Site da DataStax: https://www.datastax.com/  Blog Data Hackers - CrewAI : https://www.datahackers.news/p/crew-ai-a-startup-brasileira-que-esta-dominando-o-mercado-de-ai-agents

What's next for AI, and how does it compare to the transformative technology waves that have shaped our world? In today's episode of Tech Talks Daily, I'm joined by Chet Kapoor, CEO of DataStax and a veteran leader with over two decades of experience at tech giants like Google, IBM, and BEA Systems. Chet's career journey began as an intern working alongside Steve Jobs at NeXT, where he learned invaluable lessons about leadership, innovation, and an obsession with user experience. Chet walks us through the four major technology waves—client-server, web, mobile, and cloud—offering insights into how each wave optimized different aspects of technology and paved the way for the AI revolution. He explains why the AI wave is not only unique but also the most impactful yet, highlighting its shift from digitalization to “agentification,” where AI agents are designed to focus on effectiveness rather than just efficiency. We also dive into the practicalities and challenges of AI adoption, including its potential impact on jobs and the economy. Chet provides a balanced perspective, calming anxieties while emphasizing the importance of human-AI collaboration. He shares real-world examples of AI-powered innovation, from education to healthcare, demonstrating how AI is reshaping industries and enhancing productivity. Leadership in the AI era is another key focus of our discussion. Chet introduces his philosophy of “inspired execution,” encouraging leaders to move the human heart, believe in AI's potential, and inspire their teams to embrace it. He offers actionable advice for businesses looking to integrate AI, starting with mission-critical projects and iterating for effectiveness. Tune in to hear Chet's global perspective on AI, gleaned from his experiences presenting at the World Economic Forum in Davos, and learn about the opportunities and ethical challenges that lie ahead. What do you think is the most significant aspect of the AI wave, and how do you see it shaping the future? Join the conversation and share your thoughts!

From vulnerabilities associated with autonomous decision-making to AI-powered attacks, rapid advances in AI agents can pose novel threats to organizations and society. What responsibility-based strategies must businesses adopt to leverage AI agents effectively while minimizing emerging cybersecurity risks? This is the full audio from a discussion hosted at the World Economic Forum in Geneva on 13 November, 2024. The video is available to Forum digital subscribers here: https://toplink.weforum.org/event-mode/a0PTG0000004wNC2AY/sessions/a0WTG000000TESb2AO/defending-the-digital-mind-the-emerging-challenges-of-ai-agents Speakers: Grant Waterfall, Partner, Europe, Middle East and Africa and Germany; Leader, Cybersecurity and Privacy, PwC Hoda Al Khzaimi, Director, Centre for Cybersecurity, New York University Abu Dhabi Matan Getz, Chief Executive Officer, Aim Security Nic Chavez, Chief Information Security Officer, Datastax More podcasts: Check out all our podcasts on wef.ch/podcasts: YouTube: - https://www.youtube.com/@wef/podcasts Radio Davos - subscribe: https://pod.link/1504682164 Meet the Leader - subscribe: https://pod.link/1534915560 Agenda Dialogues - subscribe: https://pod.link/1574956552 Join the World Economic Forum Podcast Club: https://www.facebook.com/groups/wefpodcastclub

Datastax's CEO Chet Kapoor talks about his company's positioning in the database market with Bloomberg Intelligence's Sunil Rajgopal and Mandeep Singh. They discuss the company's pivot to generative AI, LLM customization and RAG (retrieval augmented generation) as enterprise customers evaluate different databases for AI inferencing.

Today, we're trying something a little different! This week we hosted an awesome group of engineers w/ Cloudflare and Sourcegraph in SF for tech talks about the future of engineering w/ AI. The talks were so good - we grabbed the highlights to discuss and share them with you all!Let's get into it!(00:10) Why we love hosting dev events(01:24) Making AI work for large messy codebases - Beyang Liu, CTO at Sourcegraph(06:23) Why S(mall)LMs are the future of AI - Tejas Kumar, AI at DataStax(12:06) Rebuilding the terminal with AI - Zach Bai, tech lead at Warp(15:51) 5 things we learned building AI at Jam Subscribe to Building Jam on YouTube, Spotify, and Apple Podcasts.New episodes drop every Friday at 10AM ET. See you there!

DataStax is known for its expertise in scalable data solutions, particularly for Apache Cassandra, a leading NoSQL database. Recently, the company has focused on enhancing platform support for AI-driven applications, including vector search capabilities. Jonathan Ellis is the Co-founder of DataStax. He maintains a technical role at the company and has recently worked on developing The post DataStax and the Future of Real-Time Data Applications with Jonathan Ellis appeared first on Software Engineering Daily.

DataStax is known for its expertise in scalable data solutions, particularly for Apache Cassandra, a leading NoSQL database. Recently, the company has focused on enhancing platform support for AI-driven applications, including vector search capabilities. Jonathan Ellis is the Co-founder of DataStax. He maintains a technical role at the company and has recently worked on developing The post DataStax and the Future of Real-Time Data Applications with Jonathan Ellis appeared first on Software Engineering Daily.

Today we have Tejas Kumar on the show. Tejas is part of the Developer Relations team at Datastax. He's really good at frontend, got a great podcast and he has written a book called Fluent React. He spoke recently at the Shift Conference in Croatia, where he talked about AI engineering and what that means. So we talked about AI Engineering, we talked about React, content creation, education, and much more. This episode is full of value and we think you'd love this one.

Hello listeners, I am Rahul Abhyankar, your host. Welcome to Product Leader's Journey. In today's episode we talk about B2B Product Marketing, Sales Enablement, and AI with Lara Shackelford. Lara is a veteran Chief Marketing Officer many times over, and has led marketing teams to create impact at companies such as Oracle, Intel, Datastax, Looker (both before and after the acquisition by Google), and has also led global demand generation at Microsoft. She is currently senior vice president of marketing at iCapital. In this episode, Lara talks about how the B2B buying experience has changed, what is a good blueprint for sales training, coming up with a good ROI analysis, how to assess the ROI of AI, and what does a good partnership between product marketing, product and sales teams looks like, and much more. David Packard, the cofounder of HP, is believed to have said, “Marketing is too important to be left to the marketing department,” so I wanted to see what Lara had to say about that. Enjoy listening!

Episode Summary: In this week's episode of the Futurecraft Marketing podcast, hosts Ken Roden and Erin Mills interview guest Lara Shackelford, a prominent AI strategist and thought leader, about moving beyond use case frenzy and getting strategic with AI-first and focused strategies. Throughout the discussion, they explore the nuances of implementing AI in marketing beyond basic use cases. 00:00 Introduction and Podcast Disclaimer 00:27 Meet Your Hosts: Ken and Erin 00:52 Exploring AI in Marketing 03:14 Guest Introduction: Lara Shackelford 03:42 Diving into AI Strategies with Lara 07:54 The Future of AI in Marketing 16:29 Frameworks for AI Integration 22:39 Creating Effective Focus Groups with AI 23:26 Hyper-Personalization in Customer Experience 24:18 Challenges and Innovations in Telecom Marketing 28:16 Global Economic Trends and AI Strategies 30:52 The Future of Work: Project-Based Engagements 35:01 Measuring ROI in AI-Driven Marketing 41:44 Practical AI Tips and Tools for Marketers 46:21 Reviewing Canva's AI-Powered Features 48:52 Conclusion and Final Thoughts Key Takeaways: AI Integration Strategy: Lara Shackelford emphasizes the significance of AI literacy across all organizational levels and the dual exploratory and exploitative approach to integrating AI in business processes. Customer Experience: Hyper-personalization through AI-driven contextual marketing can significantly enhance customer experience, moving beyond ‘creepy' personalization to more welcomed and relevant interactions. AI-First vs. AI-Enabled: The nuanced differences between AI-first and AI-enabled go-to-market strategies and their implications for crafting robust marketing plans are the subject of a pivotal discussion. Dynamic Project-Based Work: The potential shift towards project-based engagements and dynamic work structures facilitated by AI could redefine traditional employer-employee relationships, offering more flexibility and efficiency. Future AI Trends: Lara forecasts further advancements in real-time, dynamically adjusting marketing messages and the pivotal role of sophisticated data utilizalization About our Guest: Lara Shackelford is an influential thought leader and executive in AI and marketing. Currently heading Fieri AI, a company that emphasizes building trust between businesses and customers through AI, Lara has a diverse professional background with roles at major tech companies such as Intel, Oracle, and Microsoft. She has also contributed significantly to startups like Datastax and Looker. Recognized as a LinkedIn top voice in AI, Lara strongly advocates diversity in tech and has been lauded for her innovative approach to integrating AI into marketing strategies to boost customer satisfaction and operational excellence. Notable Quotes: “One of the biggest parts is focus groups. We spent a couple hundred thousand dollars on focus groups that took months... In the end, GenAI comes out and I just posed the question... and it gave me back the term we chose.” - Lara Shackelford “We can be more responsive to markets today and look at things like dynamic pricing and offers... AI can feed into our sales process, our proposal creation, and more.” - Lara Shackelford “If you can change and adjust your message in real-time, and that can then dynamically change the message on your website... marketing is going to get the real lift.” - Lara Shackelford “Companies are demonstrating already... with layoffs showing an emerging gig economy where scaling up and down is becoming normalized.” - Lara Shackelford Resources: LinkedIn - Lara Shackelford Fieri AI Website Paul Roetzer Ethan Mollick Stay tuned for more insightful episodes from the Futurecraft Marketing podcast, where we continue to explore the evolving intersection of AI and marketing. Take advantage of the full episode for in-depth discussions and much more!   To listen to the full episode and stay updated on future episodes, visit the FutureCraft Marketing Podcast website. Disclaimer: This podcast is for informational and entertainment purposes only and should not be considered advice. The views and opinions expressed in this podcast are our own and do not represent those of any company or business we currently work for/with or have worked for/with in the past. Music: Far Away - MK2

Join this live show to learn about some really cool before & after real-time AI use cases. We'll chat with Charna Parkey, Ph.D. the head of real-time AI strategy at DataStax. You'll get to learn about some mind-blowing use cases, including: Finance/Fraud Detection Gaming Ecommerce + In Person Commerce Travel We will also take questions from the live audience and have an opportunity to win prizes! --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/datacated/support

In this podcast episode, Amir Bormand interviews Carla Foster, the VP of Global Talent Acquisition at DataStax, to explore how talent acquisition leaders can add more value and better align with the needs of their organizations. Carla shares her insights on moving beyond mere process management to truly understanding the business functions they support, ensuring candidate quality, and building trusted relationships with hiring managers. She emphasizes the importance of communication, adapting to the team's cadence, and the strategic use of 'uncomfortable nos' in decision-making. The conversation also touches on the challenges of aligning talent acquisition practices with engineering and other departmental processes, the significance of visibility into recruitment activities, and the impact of showcasing value through metrics and direct involvement of hiring managers in the recruitment process. Carla advocates for openness and collaboration and for leveraging her extensive experience to navigate the complexities of talent acquisition and contribute significantly to organizational success. Highlights 01:37 The Core of Talent Acquisition: Adding Value and Alignment 02:13 Deep Dive into Talent Acquisition Strategies 03:30 Challenges and Solutions in Talent Acquisition 05:08 Building Relationships and Trust in Talent Acquisition 08:57 The Importance of Asking the Right Questions 12:12 Adapting Talent Acquisition to Engineering Teams 13:50 The Power of Communication and Feedback Guest connect: https://www.linkedin.com/in/carla-croghan-foster-82a126/ ----- Thank you so much for checking out this episode of The Talent Tango, and we would appreciate it if you would take a minute to rate and review us on your favorite podcast player. Want to learn more about us? Head over at https://www.elevano.com Have questions or want to cover specific topics with our future guests? Please message me at https://www.linkedin.com/in/amirbormand (Amir Bormand)

DataStax is a generative AI data company that provides tools and services to build AI and other data-intensive applications. Ed Anuff is the Chief Product Officer at DataStax. He joins the show to talk about making Apache Cassandra accessible, adding vector support at DataStax, envisioning the future application stack for AI, and more. Full Disclosure: The post DataStax with Ed Anuff appeared first on Software Engineering Daily.

DataStax is a generative AI data company that provides tools and services to build AI and other data-intensive applications. Ed Anuff is the Chief Product Officer at DataStax. He joins the show to talk about making Apache Cassandra accessible, adding vector support at DataStax, envisioning the future application stack for AI, and more. Full Disclosure: The post DataStax with Ed Anuff appeared first on Software Engineering Daily.

An airhacks.fm conversation with Jonathan Ellis (@spyced) about: Jonathan's first computer experiences with IBM PC 8086 and Thinkpad laptop with Red Hat Linux, becoming a key contributor to Apache Cassandra and founding datastax, starting DataStax to provide commercial support for Cassandra, early experiences with Java, C++, and python, discussion about the evolution of Java and its ecosystem, the importance of vector databases for semantic search and retrieval augmented generation, the development of JVector for high-performance vector search in Java, the potential of integrating JVector with LangChain for Java / langchain4j and quarkus for serverless deployment, the advantages of Java's productivity and performance for building concurrent data structures, the shift from locally installed software to cloud-based services, the challenges of being a manager and the benefits of taking a sabbatical to focus on creative pursuits, the importance of separating storage and compute in cloud databases, Cassandra's write-optimized architecture and improvements in read performance, DataStax's investment in Apache Pulsar for stream processing, the llama2java project for high-performance language models in Java Jonathan Ellis on twitter: @spyced

Aaron (@aarondelp) and Brian (@bgracely) talk about all the major news stories in Cloud and AI from April 2024SHOW: 817TRANSCRIPT: Cloudcast #817 - CNOTM - April 2024CLOUD NEWS OF THE WEEK - http://bit.ly/cloudcast-cnotwNEW TO CLOUD? CHECK OUT OUR OTHER PODCAST - "CLOUDCAST BASICS"SHOW NOTES: LINKS TO ALL ARTICLES FOR APRIL 2024 CLOUD NEWSSegments Covered in the Show:Good Old Fashioned Cloud NewsThe AI Innovation Continues - Speed RoundTrend 1 - 2024 is going to be a year of big announcementsTrend 2 - We're starting to see some (early) reality set in with AITrend 3 - Lots of things are being lost between Broadcom/VMware and AI discussionsFEEDBACK?Email: show at the cloudcast dot netTwitter: @cloudcastpodInstagram: @cloudcastpodTikTok: @cloudcastpod

DataStax made a name for itself by commercializing the open source Apache Cassandra NoSQL database, but these days, the company's focus is squarely on using its database chops to build a “one-stop GenAI stack.” Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In this episode of ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠BragTalks⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, host Heather VanCura interviews Mary Grygleski about participating in user group communities. Mary shares her vast experiences engaging in communities and some tips for getting involved in user group communities. Listen to hear about how she approached participation and the impact it made in her career. Season 7 is about sharing the experiences of technical professionals and building on the interviews from the recently published book '⁠Developer Career Masterplan'⁠. This episode is a story that links to Chapter 8 of the book..hope you enjoy our new look and Season 7 of BragTalks! Biography: Mary is a Java Champion, and an experienced, passionate Developer Advocate.  She has serviced companies as an advocate, such as IBM and DataStax in topic areas that include, most recently, GenAI, Streaming systems, Open source, Java, Cloud, and Distributed Messaging systems..  She started as an engineer in Unix/C, then transitioned to Java around 2000 and has never looked back since then.   She is an active tech community builder outside of her day job, and currently the President of the Chicago Java Users Group (CJUG), as well as the Chicago Chapter Co-Lead for AICamp.

Slightly different The Business of Open Source episode today! I spoke with Patrick McFadin and Mick Semb Wever about the relationship between Apache Cassandra and DataStax — how it was at the beginning and how the relationship has evolved over the years. We talked about:— How there was a dynamic around Cassandra where many of the many of the contributors ended up being sucked into the DataStax orbit, simply because it allowed those contributors to work on on Cassandra full-time— How there can be tensions between different stakeholders simply because everyone involved ultimately has their own interests at heart, and those interests are not always aligned. — How it is actually hard to really have open discussions about new features, and how often there can be a new feature dropped in a project that clearly had been developed behind closed doors for some time, and sometimes that created tension in the community— Some open source projects are just too complex to be hobby projects — Cassandra is so complex that you won't become a code contributor unless you're working full-time on Cassandra, because that's the level of skill you need to keep up. — How the relationship between a company and a project often changes as the technology matures. — The importance of addressing tensions between company and community head-on, as adults, when they occur — as well as why you need to remember to treat people as humans and remember that they have good days, bad days, goals and interests. Patrick on LinkedInMick on LinkedIn

In this riveting episode of our Generative AI Meetup podcast, we dive deep into the transformative world of Generative AI with Carter Rabasa, a seasoned Developer Relations Manager at DataStax. With over 20 years of experience in the tech industry, Carter shares his unique journey from software engineering to the forefront of developer relations, highlighting pivotal moments at Microsoft and Twilio. He offers an in-depth look at the evolution of API and developer ecosystems, the emergence of Generative AI, and the crucial role of developer relations in fostering innovation and community engagement. Carter discusses the significance of DataStax's Astra DB in leveraging NoSQL and vector databases for Generative AI applications, emphasizing the simplicity and power of building retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) solutions. He paints a vivid picture of the potential future applications, from enhanced organizational search capabilities to intuitive, conversational interfaces that could revolutionize user interaction with data. For those curious about stepping into the world of developer relations or Generative AI, Carter offers invaluable advice and insights, underlining the importance of empathy, technical proficiency, and a genuine desire to support developer success. This episode is a must-listen for anyone interested in the cutting-edge of technology and the community-driven efforts shaping the next wave of digital innovation.

Today we're joined by Ed Anuff, chief product officer at DataStax. In our conversation, we discuss Ed's insights on RAG, vector databases, embedding models, and more. We dig into the underpinnings of modern vector databases (like HNSW and DiskANN) that allow them to efficiently handle massive and unstructured data sets, and discuss how they help users serve up relevant results for RAG, AI assistants, and other use cases. We also discuss embedding models and their role in vector comparisons and database retrieval as well as the potential for GPU usage to enhance vector database performance. The complete show notes for this episode can be found at twimlai.com/go/664.

This episode features an interview with Charna Parkey, Real-Time AI Product and Strategy Leader at DataStax. Charna has been developing AI and ML products over the last 17 years and has worked with 90 of the Fortune 100 in her various roles. She is also a co-author and inventor on several patents.In this episode, Sam and Charna discuss handing over the role as host, Sam's new startup journey, and how their thinking has evolved during the explosion of LLMs.-------------------“Now, it seems like we have this opportunity where the conversation and the place that society is at is different. Where we want to contribute to the right set of data when we talk open source data. We want to make sure that we have the right data to train this model in order to get the right outcome. We want to provide a lens of, ‘All right, you are this persona. How would you say this thing?' I do think that from a lot of what the LLMs have today, the outcome of those words are still missing. And we need to solve that. Like, ‘Is this piece of writing actually going to achieve the outcome I want versus am I following legal's guidelines? Am I technically correct? Is my CEO going to like it?' That doesn't mean you're achieving impact in the world. There's an aspect there where we've given feedback loops, it seems, to be like, ‘Did I like the answer or not?' But not, ‘Did I take an action?' As we get to autonomousness, we're going to have to have an outcome or multiple outcomes associated with the reward of the system.” – Charna Parkey“I personally believe that all cognition is bias. My degree is in cognitive science. One of the things that we trained on is attention. And to pay attention, literally means to selectively choose what data is coming in from the world that you're going to pay attention to and what you're going to discard. Which is also, to me, the definition of bias. All cognition is bias, but what do we care about? Do you trust this thing? What does that mean? Well, do you trust it to do these particular actions to a level of consistency in this particular domain? It doesn't mean that you're going to trust it in all environments. There's a lot more nuance that hopefully will evolve in this strange age of nuanced destruction machines.” – Sam Ramji-------------------Episode Timestamps:(01:04): Sam and Charna catch up (06:05): Sam explains his new company, Sailplane (14:21): How Charna's thinking has evolved during the LLM explosion(25:45): Sam's thoughts after 5 seasons of Open||Source||Data(38:52): What Charna is looking forward to in the next season of the podcast(40:44): A question Sam wishes to be asked(45:45): Backstage takeaways with executive producer, Audra Montenegro-------------------Links:LinkedIn - Connect with CharnaLinkedIn - Connect with SamLearn more about Sailplane

In this episode 68, I had an engaging conversation with Patrick McFadin from DataStax on the aspects of vector databases and their impact on production level GenAI. We talked about how these vector databases are revolutionizing the way we store, access and analyze data making GenAI more efficient and effective than ever before. Stay tuned for more interesting conversations from the (XTrawAI.com) podcast series on machine learning and AI applications.  --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/raghu-banda/message

Earlier this year, I had a conversation with Sam Ramji, Chief Strategy Officer at DataStax and host of the Open||Source||Data podcast,  where we talked about the evolution of big data and AI technologies. I'm airing our original conversation in its entirety on this holiday weekend in the U.S. Subscribe to the Gradient Flow Newsletter:  https://gradientflow.substack.com/Subscribe: Apple • Spotify • Overcast • Google • AntennaPod • Podcast Addict • Amazon •  RSS.Detailed show notes can be found on The Data Exchange web site.

Back to talking Data with Ed Anuff, CPO, DataStax.  With experience at Google, Apigee, Six Apart, Vignette, Epicentric, and Wired, Ed talks the future of databases with AI and GenAI.  05:04 The Crazy life of Ed Anuff08:12 DataStax defined10:06 Vector Database11:58 GenAI and RAG Pattern18:03 DataStax Differentiation21:39 NoSQL vs SQL24:27 Common AI Use Cases25:47 The Secret to ChatGPT31:10 DataStax 2min Pitch31:42 The Future35:47 Bring AI to the DataLinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/edanuffWebsite: https://www.datastax.com/Want to be featured as a guest on Making Data Simple?  Reach out to us at almartintalksdata@gmail.com and tell us why you should be next.  The Making Data Simple Podcast is hosted by Al Martin, WW VP Technical Sales, IBM, where we explore trending technologies, business innovation, and leadership ... while keeping it simple & fun. 

This episode is sponsored by Celonis ,the global leader in process mining. AI has landed and enterprises are adapting. To give customers slick experiences and teams the technology to deliver. The road is long, but you're closer than you think. Your business processes run through systems. Creating data at every step. Celonis reconstructs this data to generate Process Intelligence. A common business language. So AI knows how your business flows. Across every department, every system and every process. With AI solutions powered by Celonis enterprises get faster, more accurate insights. A new level of automation potential. And a step change in productivity, performance and customer satisfaction Process Intelligence is the missing piece in the AI Enabled tech stack. Go to https://celonis.com/eyeonai to find out more. In episode #153 of Eye on AI, Craig Smith sits down with Ed Anuff, Chief Product Office at DataStax.  We take a deep dive into the world of vector databases and their integration with AI. Ed sheds light on the innovative ways AI is being incorporated into database technologies, with a special focus on the advancements and applications of Cassandra in this realm. Ed elaborates on the challenges and opportunities in melding AI with database management systems. He talks about the evolving landscape of data storage and retrieval in the age of AI, and how these advancements are reshaping businesses and data strategies. We also explore the broader implications of AI in database technology, including scalability, efficiency, and the future of AI-driven data solutions. Ed shares his insights on how companies like DataStax are at the forefront of this technological convergence, driving innovation and transformation in the industry. If you find this episode insightful, please support us by leaving a 5-star rating on Spotify and a review on Apple Podcasts.    Craig Smith Twitter: https://twitter.com/craigss Eye on A.I. Twitter: https://twitter.com/EyeOn_AI (00:00) Preview, Celonis and Introduction  (02:19) Ed Anuff's Background and Journey to DataStax (03:33) The Role of Cassandra in DataStax (05:06) Understanding Cassandra: A NoSQL Database (07:50) Impact of ChatGPT and Vector Databases in AI (11:58) DataStax's Introduction of Vector Databases (17:26) Addressing Data Accumulation and Usage (22:18) Managing Data Expiration in DataStax (29:24) Introducing AstraDB: DataStax's Cloud Product (36:42) Business Growth and AI Integrations in DataStax (42:18) Rate Limits, AI Experiments, and Enterprise Integration (49:47) The Future of AI in Databases  (55:20) Evaluating Databases: Performance and Relevancy

Host Jess Larsen explores the cutting-edge world of data innovation in this insightful episode. Join him and special guest Chet Kapoor, Chairman, and CEO of DataStax, as they discuss the latest trends, technologies, and strategies that are driving data innovation into the future. Learn how Chet Kapoor and his team are at the forefront of revolutionizing data management. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Ian, Kito, and Josh are joined by Java Champion, Streaming Developer Advocate at DataStax, and President of Chicago-JUG, Mary Grygleski. They discuss news about Capacitor, Angular, PrimeNG Designer for Tailwind, JetBraiins Compose Multiplatform for iOS, JDK 21,  AI developer tools, Jakarta EE 10, and more. Kito announces the work he is doing on the Jakarta EE Tutorial, and then they delve into Mary's background and event streaming with Apache Pulsar, plus tools like Apache Pinot, Apache Flink, RisingWave, ByteWax and Apache Cassandra. We Thank DataDog for sponsoring this podcast! https://www.pubhouse.net/datadog Front End  - Announcing Capacitor 5.0 - Ionic Blog (https://ionic.io/blog/announcing-capacitor-5)  - Angular v16 is here! (https://blog.angular.io/angular-v16-is-here-4d7a28ec680d)  - Compose Multiplatform (https://blog.jetbrains.com/kotlin/2023/05/compose-multiplatform-for-ios-is-in-alpha/)  - PrimeNG Designer - Tailwind (Q3 2023) (https://www.primefaces.org/primeng-theme-designer-with-tailwind/) Server Side Java  - Kito is working with Bauke Scholtz and Arjan Tjmes to refresh the Jakarta EE Tutorial     - Eclipse Documentation for Jakarta EE (https://projects.eclipse.org/projects/ee4j.jakartaee-documentation)    - Antora (https://antora.org)    - Asciidoc (http://asciidoc.org)  - Jakarta EE 10; MicroProfile 6; Java SE 20; Open Liberty (https://openliberty.io/blog/2023/04/04/23.0.0.3.html)  - Jakarta EE Starter (https://start.jakarta.ee/) AI/ML  - Phind - AI search engine for developers (https://www.phind.com/)  - 92% of devs using AI coding assistants (https://www.zdnet.com/article/github-developer-survey-finds-92-of-programmers-using-ai-tools/) Java Platform  - JDK 21, the next LTS release, due out in September (https://www.infoworld.com/article/3689880/jdk-21-the-new-features-in-java-21.html) IDE and Tools  - Grazie Professional - IntelliJ IDEs Plugin | Marketplace (https://plugins.jetbrains.com/plugin/16136-grazie-professional) Chat w/Mary  - Twitter: @mgrygles (https://twitter.com/mgrygles)  - Discord server:  https://discord.gg/RMU4Juw  - LinkedIn:  https://www.linkedin.com/in/mary-grygleski/  - Apache Pulsar (https://pulsar.apache.org/)  - Apache Pinot (https://pinot.apache.org/)  - Apache Flink (https://flink.apache.org/)  - RisingWave (https://www.risingwave.dev/)  - ByteWax (https://bytewax.io/)  - Apache Cassandra (https://cassandra.apache.org/)  - Apache Kafka (https://kafka.apache.org/) Picks   - Quantum Energy Squares (Kito) (https://quantumsquares.com/)  - JBOSS EAP on Azure (Josh) (https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/developer/java/ee/jboss-on-azure)  - Interstellar (Mary) (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0816692/)  - Black Mirror Season 6 Episode 1 - Joan Is Awful - Netflix (Ian) (https://www.rottentomatoes.com/tv/black_mirror/s06/e01) Other Pubhouse Network podcasts   - Breaking into Open Source (https://www.pubhouse.net/breaking-into-open-source)  - OffHeap (https://www.javaoffheap.com/)  - Java Pubhouse (https://www.javapubhouse.com/) Events  - Lone Star Software Symposium - July 14 - 15, Austin, TX, USA (https://nofluffjuststuff.com/austin)  - ÜberConf - July 18 - 21, Denver, CO, USA (https://uberconf.com/)  - Nebraska.code() - July 19-20, Lincoln, NE, USA (https://nebraskacode.amegala.com/)

Ian, Kito, and Josh are joined by Java Champion, Streaming Developer Advocate at DataStax, and President of Chicago-JUG, Mary Grygleski. They discuss news about Capacitor, Angular, PrimeNG Designer for Tailwind, JetBraiins Compose Multiplatform for...

In this conversation we explore the different categories of AI applications, including generative, predictive, and prescriptive AI, and highlights how combining these elements can lead to innovative and powerful AI solutions for businesses. My guest is Davor Bonaci, CTO and Executive Vice President of DataStax.

Tim LoGrasso of Kickdrum and Matt Thompson of AWS host a roundtable sharing best practices for software mergers and acquisitions.Topic include:Karthik Krishnamurthy introductionTim LoGrasso, Kickdrum introductionMaturity model for calculating risk in M&AM&A changes and challenges in 2023Matt Thompson, AWS introductionIs architecture a focus when considering M&A?Most M&A struggles due to product team misalignmentContainers, APIs in compute infrastructure easier to integrate than MonolithsM&As are often driven by Finance and Business Development, not so much Product TeamsTime metric to measure success and failure for M&AsBuilding a case for M&A vs buildPreethi Srinivasan (Druva, DataStax) on due diligence for M&A considerationsPre-integration Proof of Concepts increase the success rate90 day and 12 month plans with funding models to deliver the joint opportunityUnderstand the ‘white space' to address with the combination of productsWhat can product teams do to accelerate value?Identify potential friction points and how to addressAccess to cheap compute power is importantGuidance on managing customer data during M&AThe customer data to reviewManaging people risk during an M&ASession wrap up

Deepak Thakral, VP of eCommerce at McAfee and Bob Page, SVP of Product at Tealium discuss Software Data Architectures and share best practices in a roundtable hosted by AWS's Denise Zelt.Topics include:Deepak Thakral of McAfee introductionBob Page of Tealium introductionBob Page on helping customers with their end users and creating business valueSetting up priorities for data architecture and roadmapLessons learned from TealiumDeepak: How McAfee manages high performance & security with increasing dataShankar Venkataraman of Jivox on scaling and processing 10 times data volume in past 3 yearsSteven Tiell of DataStax on performing real time AI of time series dataBob Page on adoption of microservices and best practicesTradeoffs of transitioning from monolithic to micro servicesYuan Liu of Stripe on service oriented architecture vs microservicesAmit Pande of Dhruva providing SaaS based data protectionFinal thoughts and recommendations from Bob Page and Deepak Thakral

In this episode we welcome serial investor, CEO and board member Tom Reilly who shares his insight into business growth, leadership and the role of a CEO. KEY TAKEAWAYS FROM THIS EPISODE What is the role of a CEO? The Three Essential Ingredients to Scaling a Business How to lead leaders The Story of a Ten Figure Exit THIS WEEK'S GUEST Tom Reilly has a thirty year career forming, leading, scaling and advising high-growth enterprise software and cybersecurity vendors. After an early career with IBM and running sales in the 90s for Lotus and BroadQuest, he became CEO of Trigeo, which was sold to IBM in 2004, and then became President and CEO of ArcSight, which he scaled globally, took through an IPO and exited to HP for over $1.5Bn and then CEO of Cloudera which he IPO'd with a $3Bn valuation and a $5.2Bn merger with HortonWorks. He has served on the boards of companies such as ELoqua, Jive Software, Trusona, Incorta, Datastax and Anomali, and served as the Chair of the Economic Development and Advisory Committee for the City of Sausalito. Tom is proud to support the work of Cybermindz.org, for more information about their incredible work in mental health within the cybersecurity community, please visit https://cybermindz.org/ YOUR HOST Simon Lader is the host of The Conference Room, Co-Founder of global executive search firm Salisi Human Capital, and podcast growth consultancy Viva Podcasts. Since 1997, Simon has helped cybersecurity vendors to build highly effective teams, and since 2022 he has helped people make money from podcasting. Get to know more about Simon at: Website: https://simonlader.com/ Make Money from Podcasting: https://www.vivapodcasts.com/podcastpowerups Twitter: https://twitter.com/simonlader LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/headhuntersimonlader The Conference Room is available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music iHeartRadio And everywhere else you listen to podcasts!

Highlights from this week's conversation include:Davor's journey from Google and what he was building there (3:32)How work in stream processing changed Davor's journey (5:10)Analytical predictive models and infrastructure (9:39)How Kaskada serves as a recommendation engine with data (14:05)Kaskada's user experience as an event processing platform (20:06)Enhancing typical feature store architecture to achieve better results (23:34)What is needed to improve stream and batch processes (27:39)Using another syntax instead of SQL (36:44)DataStax acquiring Kaskada and what will come from that merger (40:24)Operationalizing and democratizing ML (47:54)Final thoughts and takeaways (56:04) The Data Stack Show is a weekly podcast powered by RudderStack, the CDP for developers. Each week we'll talk to data engineers, analysts, and data scientists about their experience around building and maintaining data infrastructure, delivering data and data products, and driving better outcomes across their businesses with data.RudderStack helps businesses make the most out of their customer data while ensuring data privacy and security. To learn more about RudderStack visit rudderstack.com.

In this bonus episode, Eric and Kostas preview their upcoming conversation with Davor Bonaci of DataStax.

Patrick McFadin, VP of Developer Relations at DataStax and Chief Evangelist for Apache Cassandra, joins the Hacking Open Source Business Podcast on Episode 26 to deep dive into open source.  In this episode Patrick talks about:- His time working in open source database community, including Apache Cassandra's journey and upcoming developments.- The role of evangelism and contributors in driving adoption and getting people to try your project.- The challenges and mistakes companies make when commercializing open source, with lessons he has learned from his time in the database community.- How new features are chosen based on his experience with Cassandra highlighting features such as transactions and open-source tool Guardrails?- Does open source innovation slow down as products mature?- What is cloud-native anyways?  And what does it mean in the database context?- Building a diverse and gloabl team by building trust.- DevRel Best practices includeing, how do you measuring DevRel success.- Patrick McFadin's LinkedIn profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/patrick-mcfadin-53a8046/- Learn more about Apache Cassandra: https://cassandra.apache.org/Checkout our other interviews, clips, and videos: https://l.hosbp.com/YoutubeDon't forget to visit the open-source business community at: https://opensourcebusiness.community/Visit our primary sponsor, Scarf, for tools to help analyze your #opensource growth and adoption: https://about.scarf.sh/Subscribe to the podcast on your favorite app:Spotify: https://l.hosbp.com/SpotifyApple: https://l.hosbp.com/AppleGoogle: https://l.hosbp.com/GoogleBuzzsprout: https://l.hosbp.com/Buzzsprout

In this episode of Tech Talks Daily, we are thrilled to host Mala Tejwani, the operations lead at DataStax, who shares her inspiring journey from a world champion in Indian classical dance to a leading role in Silicon Valley's tech industry. Mala's unconventional background provides a fresh perspective on how her experiences as a dancer translate to the tech world. Mala reflects on how her dance career taught her the importance of fluidity, agility, passion, precision, and creativity, and how these qualities are crucial for anyone starting a new career in any industry. Mala started her tech career at Google in an entry-level position, but her passion for solving complex problems and creating efficient solutions led her to grow within the organization and eventually take on a leading role at DataStax. During the conversation, Mala shares insights into her experience leading operations at DataStax through significant periods of activity and growth. She also advises professionals looking to pivot into tech from other industries and how to harness their unique skills and experiences to succeed. Mala's story is a testament to the power of resilience, adaptability, and pursuing your passion in the face of challenges. If you're interested in hearing how Mala's background in dance helped her succeed in the tech industry, this episode is a must-listen. 

This episode features a panel discussion with Charna Parkey, a Real-Time AI Product and Strategy leader at DataStax; and Sam Bean, Staff Engineer at You.com. Charna is a co-author and inventor on several patents, including patent-pending work on ML/coordinated feature engine at the edge. Sam helped create the Spark connector to Weaviate, and is passionate about Big Data, Spark, NLP, Hugging Face, and large language models.In this episode, Charna and Sam discuss adapting to user expectations, what's missing in the AI stack, and how to become an advanced citizen in open source.-------------------"We've seen these companies start to better understand that these streaming technologies have a place, whether it's Kafka or Flink or Pulsar, but it's still incredibly difficult to use and we need a different level of abstraction. [...] We're starting to see the stack change so that it becomes more interchangeable of the components and try to sort of raise that layer of abstraction so that we can get these types of models and these types of capabilities to more people." – Charna Parkey"I think that a lot of what you need to adjust to are these, what you were discussing as I call interaction data, you were calling it event data. But these interactions that people have with the internet and trying to find ways to model that in a way that even if your models aren't real-time, having ways to featurize real-time data in a way that's interpretable by a model. [...] I think Spark and Kafka and Delta and all of those things, give you a lot more flexibility now to move in different directions and readjust and I think, pivot what you want to do with the system." – Sam Bean-------------------Episode Timestamps:(01:29): Sam explains his background(03:36): Charna explains her background(18:13): Sam explains the problems You.com is solving for(28:21): Changes in user expectations in the AI-native stack(39:09): Advice for becoming an advanced citizen in open source(47:25): What's missing in the AI stack(54:51): What open source data means to the panelists(58:22): How technologists should prepare for the future(01:03:10): Executive producer, Audra Montenegro's backstage takeaways-------------------Links:LinkedIn - Connect with CharnaVisit DataStaxLinkedIn - Connect with SamVisit You.com

About GeneGene Kim is a multiple award-winning CTO, researcher and author, and has been studying high-performing technology organizations since 1999. He was founder and CTO of Tripwire for 13 years. He has written six books, including The Unicorn Project (2019), The Phoenix Project (2013), The DevOps Handbook (2016), the Shingo Publication Award winning Accelerate (2018), and The Visible Ops Handbook (2004-2006) series. Since 2014, he has been the founder and organizer of DevOps Enterprise Summit, studying the technology transformations of large, complex organizations.Links: The Phoenix Project: https://www.amazon.com/Phoenix-Project-DevOps-Helping-Business/dp/1942788290/ The Unicorn Project: https://www.amazon.com/Unicorn-Project-Developers-Disruption-Thriving/dp/B0812C82T9 The DevOps Enterprise Summit: https://events.itrevolution.com/ @RealGeneKim TranscriptAnnouncer: Hello, and welcome to Screaming in the Cloud with your host, Cloud Economist Corey Quinn. This weekly show features conversations with people doing interesting work in the world of cloud, thoughtful commentary on the state of the technical world, and ridiculous titles for which Corey refuses to apologize. This is Screaming in the Cloud.Corey: If you asked me to rank which cloud provider has the best developer experience, I'd be hard-pressed to choose a platform that isn't Google Cloud. Their developer experience is unparalleled and, in the early stages of building something great, that translates directly into velocity. Try it yourself with the Google for Startups Cloud Program over at cloud.google.com/startup. It'll give you up to $100k a year for each of the first two years in Google Cloud credits for companies that range from bootstrapped all the way on up to Series A. Go build something, and then tell me about it. My thanks to Google Cloud for sponsoring this ridiculous podcast.Corey: This episode is brought to us by our friends at Pinecone. They believe that all anyone really wants is to be understood, and that includes your users. AI models combined with the Pinecone vector database let your applications understand and act on what your users want… without making them spell it out. Make your search application find results by meaning instead of just keywords, your personalization system make picks based on relevance instead of just tags, and your security applications match threats by resemblance instead of just regular expressions. Pinecone provides the cloud infrastructure that makes this easy, fast, and scalable. Thanks to my friends at Pinecone for sponsoring this episode. Visit Pinecone.io to understand more.Corey Quinn: Welcome to Screaming in the Cloud. I'm Corey Quinn. I'm joined this week by a man who needs no introduction but gets one anyway. Gene Kim, most famously known for writing The Phoenix Project, but now the Wall Street Journal best-selling author of The Unicorn Project, six years later. Gene, welcome to the show.Gene Kim: Corey so great to be on. I was just mentioning before how delightful it is to be on the other side of the podcast. And it's so much smaller in here than I had thought it would be.Corey Quinn: Excellent. It's always nice to wind up finally meeting people whose work was seminal and foundational. Once upon a time, when I was a young, angry Unix systems administrator—because it's not like there's a second type of Unix administrator—[laughing] The Phoenix Project was one of those texts that was transformational, as far as changing the way I tended to view a lot of what I was working on and gave a glimpse into what could have been a realistic outcome for the world, or the company I was at, but somehow was simultaneously uplifting and incredibly depressing all at the same time. Now, The Unicorn Project does that exact same thing only aimed at developers instead of traditional crusty ops folks.Gene Kim: [laughing] Yeah, yeah. Very much so. Yeah, The Phoenix Project was very much aimed at ops leadership. So, Bill Palmer, the protagonist of that book was the VP of Operations at Parts Unlimited, and the protagonist in The Unicorn Project is Maxine Chambers, Senior Architect, and Developer, and I love the fact that it's told in the same timeline as The Phoenix Project, and in the first scene, she is unfairly blamed for causing the payroll outage and is exiled to The Phoenix Project, where she recoils in existential horror and then finds that she can't do anything herself. She can't do a build, she can't run her own tests. She can't, God forbid, do her own deploys. And I just love the opening third of the book where it really does paint that tundra that many developers find themselves in where they're just caught in decades of built-up technical debt, unable to do even the simplest things independently, let alone be able to independently develop tests or create value for customers. So, it was fun, very much fun, to revisit the Parts Unlimited universe.Corey Quinn: What I found that was fun about—there are few things in there I want to unpack. The first is that it really was the, shall we say, retelling of the same story in, quote/unquote, “the same timeframe”, but these books were written six years apart.Gene Kim: Yeah, and by the way, I want to first acknowledge all the help that you gave me during the editing process. Some of your comments are just so spot on with exactly the feedback I needed at the time and led to the most significant lift to jam a whole bunch of changes in it right before it got turned over to production. Yeah, so The Phoenix Project is told, quote, “in the present day,” and in the same way, The Unicorn Project is also told—takes place in the present day. In fact, they even start, plus or minus, on the same day. And there is a little bit of suspension of disbelief needed, just because there are certain things that are in the common vernacular, very much in zeitgeist now, that weren't six years ago, like “digital disruption”, even things like Uber and Lyft that feature prominently in the book that were just never mentioned in The Phoenix Project, but yeah, I think it was the story very much told in the same vein as like Ender's Shadow, where it takes place in the same timeline, but from a different perspective.Corey Quinn: So, something else that—again, I understand it's an allegory, and trying to tell an allegorical story while also working it into the form of a fictional work is incredibly complicated. That's something that I don't think people can really appreciate until they've tried to do something like it. But I still found myself, at various times, reading through the book and wondering, asking myself questions that, I guess, say more about me than they do about anyone else. But it's, “Wow, she's at a company that is pretty much scapegoating her and blaming her for all of us. Why isn't she quitting? Why isn't she screaming at people? Why isn't she punching the boss right in their stupid, condescending face and storming out of the office?” And I'm wondering how much of that is my own challenges as far as how life goes, as well as how much of it is just there for, I guess, narrative devices. It needed to wind up being someone who would not storm out when push came to shove.Gene Kim: But yeah, I think she actually does the last of the third thing that you mentioned where she does slam the sheet of paper down and say, “Man, you said the outage is caused by a technical failure and a human error, and now you're telling me I'm the human error?” And just cannot believe that she's been put in that position. Yeah, so thanks to your feedback and the others, she actually does shop her resume around. And starts putting out feelers, because this is no longer feeling like the great place to work that attracted her, eight years prior. The reality is for most people, is that it's sometimes difficult to get a new job overnight, even if you want to. But I think that Maxine stays because she believes in the mission. She takes a great deal of pride of what she's created over the years, and I think like most great brands, they do create a sense of mission and there's a deep sense of the customers they serve. And, there's something very satisfying about the work to her. And yeah, I think she is very much, for a couple of weeks, very much always thinking about, she won't be here for long, one way or another, but by the time she stumbles into the rebellion, the crazy group of misfits, the ragtag bunch of misfits, who are trying to find better ways of working and willing to break whatever rules it takes to take over the very ancient powerful order, she falls in love with a group. She found a group of kindred spirits who very much, like her, believe that developer productivity is one of the most important things that we can do as an organization. So, by the time that she looks up with that group, I mean, I think she's all thoughts of leaving are gone.Corey Quinn: Right. And the idea of, if you stick around, you can theoretically change things for the better is extraordinarily compelling. The challenge I've seen is that as I navigate the world, I've met a number of very gifted employees who, frankly wind up demonstrating that same level of loyalty and same kind of loyalty to companies that are absolutely not worthy of them. So my question has always been, when do I stick around versus when do I leave? I'm very far on the bailout as early as humanly possible side of that spectrum. It's why I'm a great consultant but an absolutely terrible employee.Gene Kim: [laughing] Well, so we were honored to have you at the DevOps Enterprise Summit. And you've probably seen that The Unicorn Project book is really dedicated to the achievements of the DevOps Enterprise community. It's certainly inspired by and dedicated to their efforts. And I think what was so inspirational to me were all these courageous leaders who are—they know what the mission is. I mean, they viscerally understand what the mission is and understand that the ways of working aren't working so well and are doing whatever they can to create better ways of working that are safer, faster, and happier. And I think what is so magnificent about so many of their journeys is that their organization in response says, “Thank you. That's amazing. Can we put you in a position of even more authority that will allow you to even make a more material, more impactful contribution to the organization?” And so it's been my observation, having run the conference for, now, six years, going on seven years is that this is a population that is being out promoted—has been promoted at a rate far higher than the population at large. And so for me, that's just an incredible story of grit and determination. And so yeah, where does grit and determination becomes sort of blind loyalty? That's ultimately self-punishing? That's a deep question that I've never really studied. But I certainly do understand that there is a time when no amount of perseverance and grit will get from here to there, and that's a fact.Corey Quinn: I think that it's a really interesting narrative, just to see it, how it tends to evolve, but also, I guess, for lack of a better term, and please don't hold this against me, it seems in many ways to speak to a very academic perspective, and I don't mean that as an insult. Now, the real interesting question is why I would think, well—why would accusing someone of being academic ever be considered as an insult, but my academic career was fascinating. It feels like it aligns very well with The Five Ideals, which is something that you have been talking about significantly for a long time. And in an academic setting that seems to make sense, but I don't see it thought of or spoken of in the same way on the ground. So first, can you start off by giving us an intro to what The Five Ideals are, and I guess maybe disambiguate the theory from the practice?Gene Kim: Oh for sure, yeah. So The Five Ideals are— oh, let's go back one step. So The Phoenix Project had The Three Ways, which were the principles for which you can derive all the observed DevOps practices from and The Four Types of Work. And so in The Five Ideals I used the concept of The Five Ideals and they are—the first—Corey Quinn: And the next version of The Nine whatever you call them at that point, I'm sure. It's a geometric progression.Gene Kim: Right or actually, isn't it the pri—oh, no. four isn't, four isn't prime. Yeah, yeah, I don't know. So, The Five Ideals is a nice small number and it was just really meant to verbalize things that I thought were very important, things I just gravitate towards. One is Locality and Simplicity. And briefly, that's just, to what degree can teams do what they need to do independently without having to coordinate, communicate, prioritize, sequence, marshal, deconflict, with scores of other teams. The Second Ideal is what I think the outcomes are when you have that, which is Focus, Flow and Joy. And so, Dr. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, he describes flow as a state when we are so engrossed in the work we love that we lose track of time and even sense of self. And that's been very much my experience, coding ever since I learned Clojure, this functional programming language. Third Ideal is Improvement of Daily Work, which shows up in The Phoenix Project to say that improvement daily work is even more important than daily work itself. Fourth Ideal is Psychological Safety, which shows up in the State of DevOps Report, but showed up prominently in Google's Project Oxygen, and even in the Toyota production process where clearly it has to be—in order for someone to pull the andon cord that potentially stops the assembly line, you have to have an environment where it's psychologically safe to do so. And then Fifth Ideal is Customer Focus, really focus on core competencies that create enduring, durable business value that customers are willing to pay for, versus context, which is everything else. And yeah, to answer your question, Where did it come from? Why do I think it is important? Why do I focus on that? For me, it's really coming from the State of DevOps Report, that I did with Dr. Nicole Forsgren and Jez Humble. And so, beyond all the numbers and the metrics and the technical practices and the architectural practices and the cultural norms, for me, what that really tells the story of is of The Five Ideals, as to what one of them is very much a need for architecture that allows teams to work independently, having a higher predictor of even, continuous delivery. I love that. And that from the individual perspective, the ideal being, that allows us to focus on the work we want to do to help achieve the mission with a sense of flow and joy. And then really elevating the notion that greatness isn't free, we need to improve daily work, we have to make it psychologically safe to talk about problems. And then the last one really being, can we really unflinchingly look at the work we do on an everyday basis and ask, what the customers care about it? And if customers don't care about it, can we question whether that work really should be done or not. So that's where for me, it's really meant to speak to some more visceral emotions that were concretized and validated through the State of DevOps Report. But these notions I am just very attracted to.Corey Quinn: I like the idea of it. The question, of course, is always how to put these into daily practice. How do you take these from an idealized—well, let's not call it a textbook, but something very similar to that—and apply it to the I guess, uncontrolled chaos that is the day-to-day life of an awful lot of people in their daily jobs.Gene Kim: Yeah. Right. So, the protagonist is Maxine and her role in the story, in the beginning, is just to recognize what not great looks like. She's lived and created greatness for all of her career. And then she gets exiled to this terrible Phoenix project that chews up developers and spits them out and they leave these husks of people they used to be. And so, she's not doing a lot of problem-solving. Instead, it's this recoiling from the inability for people to do builds or do their own tests or be able to do work without having to open up 20 different tickets or not being able to do their own deploys. She just recoil from this spending five days watching people do code merges, and for me, I'm hoping that what this will do, and after people read the book, will see this all around them, hopefully, will have a similar kind of recoiling reaction where they say, “Oh my gosh, this is terrible. I should feel as bad about this as Maxine does, and then maybe even find my fellow rebels and see if we can create a pocket of greatness that can become like the sublimation event in Dr. Thomas Kuhn's book, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions.” Create that kernel of greatness, of which then greatness then finds itself surrounded by even more greatness.Corey Quinn: What I always found to be fascinating about your work is how you wind up tying so many different concepts together in ways you wouldn't necessarily expect. For example, when I was reviewing one of your manuscripts before this went to print, you did reject one of my suggestions, which was just, retitle the entire thing. Instead of calling it The Unicorn Project. Instead, call it Gene Kim's Love Letter to Functional Programming. So what is up with that?Gene Kim: Yeah, to put that into context, for 25 years or more, I've self-identified as an ops person. The Phoenix Project was really an ops book. And that was despite getting my graduate degree in compiler design and high-speed networking in 1995. And the reason why I gravitated towards ops, because that was my observation, that that's where the saves were made. It was ops who saved the customer from horrendous, terrible developers who just kept on putting things into production that would then blow up and take everyone with it. It was ops protecting us from the bad adversaries who were trying to steal data because security people were so ineffective. But four years ago, I learned a functional programming language called Clojure and, without a doubt, it reintroduced the joy of coding back into my life and now, in a good month, I spend half the time—in the ideal—writing, half the time hanging out with the best in the game, of which I would consider this to be a part of, and then 20% of time coding. And I find for the first time in my career, in over 30 years of coding, I can write something for years on end, without it collapsing in on itself, like a house of cards. And that is an amazing feeling, to say that maybe it wasn't my inability, or my lack of experience, or my lack of sensibilities, but maybe it was just that I was sort of using the wrong tool to think with. That comes from the French philosopher Claude Lévi-Strauss. He said of certain things, “Is it a good tool to think with?” And I just find functional programming is such a better tool to think with, that notions like composability, like immutability, what I find so exciting is that these things aren't just for programming languages. And some other programming languages that follow the same vein are, OCaml, Lisp, ML, Elixir, Haskell. These all languages that are sort of popularizing functional programming, but what I find so exciting is that we see it in infrastructure and operations, too. So Docker is fundamentally immutable. So if you want to change a container, we have to make a new one. Kubernetes composes these containers together at the level of system of systems. Kafka is amazing because it usually reveals the desire to have this immutable data model where you can't change the past. Version control is immutable. So, I think it's no surprise that as our systems get more and more complex and distributed, we're relying on things like immutability, just to make it so that we can reason about them. So, it is something I love addressing in the book, and it's something I decided to double down on after you mentioned it. I'm just saying, all kidding aside is this a book for—Corey Quinn: Oh good, I got to make it worse. Always excited when that happens.Gene Kim: Yeah, I mean, your suggestion really brought to the forefront a very critical decision, which was, is this a book for technology leaders, or even business leaders, or is this a book developers? And, after a lot of soul searching, I decided no, this is a book for developers, because I think the sensibilities that we need to instill and the awareness we need to create these things around are the developers and then you just hope and pray that the book will be good enough that if enough engineers like it, then engineering leaders will like it. And if enough engineering leaders like it, then maybe some business leaders will read it as well. So that's something I'm eagerly seeing what will happen as the weeks, months, and years go by. Corey Quinn: This episode is sponsored in part by DataStax. The NoSQL event of the year is DataStax Accelerate in San Diego this May from the 11th through the 13th. I've given a talk previously called the myth of multi-cloud, and it's time for me to revisit that with... A sequel! Which is funny given that it's a NoSQL conference, but there you have it. To learn more, visit datastax.com that's D-A-T-A-S-T-A-X.com and I hope to see you in San Diego. This May.Corey Quinn: One thing that I always admired about your writing is that you can start off trying to make a point about one particular aspect of things. And along the way you tie in so many different things, and the functional programming is just one aspect of this. At some point, by the end of it, I half expected you to just pick a fight over vi versus Emacs, just for the sheer joy you get in effectively drawing interesting and, I guess, shall we say, the right level of conflict into it, where it seems very clear that what you're talking about is something thing that has the potential to be transformative and by throwing things like that in you're, on some level, roping people in who otherwise wouldn't weigh in at all. But it's really neat to watch once you have people's attention, just almost in spite of what they want, you teach them something. I don't know if that's a fair accusation or not, but it's very much I'm left with the sense that what you're doing has definite impact and reverberations throughout larger industries.Gene Kim: Yeah, I hope so. In fact, just to reveal this kind of insecurity is, there's an author I've read a lot of and she actually read this blog post that she wrote about the worst novel to write, and she called it The Yeomans Tour of the Starship Enterprise. And she says, “The book begins like this: it's a Yeoman on the Starship Enterprise, and all he does is admire the dilithium crystals, and the phaser, and talk about the specifications of the engine room.” And I sometimes worry that that's what I've done in The Unicorn Project, but hopefully—I did want to have that technical detail there and share some things that I love about technology and the things I hate about technology, like YAML files, and integrate that into the narrative because I think it is important. And I would like to think that people reading it appreciate things like our mutual distaste of YAML files, that we've all struggled trying to escape spaces and file names inside of make files. I mean, these are the things that are puzzles we have to solve, but they're so far removed from the business problem we're trying to solve that really, the purpose of that was trying to show the mistake of solving puzzles in our daily work instead of solving real problems.Corey Quinn: One thing that I found was really a one-two punch, for me at least, was first I read and give feedback on the book and then relatively quickly thereafter, I found myself at my first DevOps Enterprise Summit, and I feel like on some level, I may have been misinterpreted when I was doing my live-tweeting/shitposting-with-style during a lot of the opening keynotes, and the rest, where I was focusing on how different of a conference it was. Unlike a typical DevOps Days or big cloud event, it wasn't a whole bunch of relatively recent software startups. There were serious institutions coming out to have conversations. We're talking USAA, we're talking to US Air Force, we're talking large banks, we're talking companies that have a 200-year history, where you don't get to just throw everything away and start over. These are companies that by and large, have, in many ways, felt excluded to some extent, from the modern discussions of, well, we're going to write some stuff late at night, and by the following morning, it's in production. You don't get to do that when you're a 200-year-old insurance company. And I feel like that was on some level interpreted as me making fun of startups for quote/unquote, “not being serious,” which was never my intention. It's just this was a different conversation series for a different audience who has vastly different constraints. And I found it incredibly compelling and I intend to go back.Gene Kim: Well, that's wonderful. And, in fact, we have plans for you, Mr. Quinn.Corey Quinn: Uh-oh.Gene Kim: Yeah. I think when I say I admire the DevOps Enterprise community. I mean that I'm just so many different dimensions. The fact that these, leaders and—it's not leaders just in terms of seniority on the organization chart—these are people who are leading technology efforts to survive and win in the marketplace. In organizations that have been around sometimes for centuries, Barclays Bank was founded in the year 1634. That predates the invention of paper cash. HMRC, the UK version of the IRS was founded in the year 1200. And, so there's probably no code that goes that far back, but there's certainly values and—Corey Quinn: Well, you'd like to hope not. Gene Kim: Yeah, right. You never know. But there are certainly values and traditions and maybe even processes that go back centuries. And so that's what's helped these organizations be successful. And here are a next generation of leaders, trying to make sure that these organizations see another century of greatness. So I think that's, in my mind, deeply admirable.Corey Quinn: Very much so. And my only concern was, I was just hoping that people didn't misinterpret my snark and sarcasm as aimed at, “Oh, look at these crappy—these companies are real companies and all those crappy SAS companies are just flashes in the pan.” No, I don't believe that members of the Fortune 500 are flash in the pan companies, with a couple notable exceptions who I will not name now, because I might want some of them on this podcast someday. The concern that I have is that everyone's work is valuable. Everyone's work is important. And what I'm seeing historically, and something that you've nailed, is a certain lack of stories that apply to some of those organizations that are, for lack of a better term, ossified into their current process model, where they there's no clear path for them to break into, quote/unquote, “doing the DevOps.”Gene Kim: Yeah. And the business frame and the imperative for it is incredible. Tesla is now offering auto insurance bundled into the car. Banks are now having to compete with Apple. I mean, it is just breathtaking to see how competitive the marketplaces and the need to understand the customer and deliver value to them quickly and to be able to experiment and innovate and out-innovate the competition. I don't think there's any business leader on the planet who doesn't understand that software is eating the world and they have to that any level of investment they do involves software at some level. And so the question is, for them, is how do they get educated enough to invest and manage and lead competently? So, to me it really is like the sleeping giant awakening. And it's my genuine belief is that the next 50 years, as much value as the tech giants have created: Facebook, Amazon, Netflix, Google, Microsoft, they've generated trillions of dollars of economic value. When we can get eighteen million developers, as productive as an engineer at a tech giant is, that will generate tens of trillions of dollars of economic value per year. And so, when you generate that much economic activity, all problems become solvable, you look at climate change, you take a look at the disparity between rich and poor. All things can be fixed when you significantly change the economic economy in this way. So, I'm extremely hopeful and I know that the need for things like DevOps are urgent and important.Corey Quinn: I guess that that's probably the best way of framing this. So you wrote one version that was aimed at operators back in 2013, this one was aimed at developers, and effectively retails and clarifies an awful lot of the same points. As a historical ops person, I didn't feel left behind by The Unicorn Project, despite not being its target market. So I guess the question on everyone's mind, are you planning on doing a third iteration, and if so, for what demographic?Gene Kim: Yeah, nothing at this point, but there is one thing that I'm interested in which is the role of business leaders. And Sarah is an interesting villain. One of my favorite pieces of feedback during the review process was, “I didn't think I could ever hate Sarah more. And yet, I did find her even to be more loathsome than before.” She's actually based on a real person, someone that I worked with.Corey Quinn: That's the best part, is these characters are relatable enough that everyone can map people they know onto various aspects of them, but can't ever disclose the entire list in public because that apparently has career consequences.Gene Kim: That's right. Yes, I will not say who the character is based on but there's, in the last scene of the book that went to print, Sarah has an interesting interaction with Maxine, where they meet for lunch. And, I think the line was, “And it wasn't what Maxine had thought, and she's actually looking forward to the next meeting.” I think that leaves room for it. So one of the things I want to do with some friends and colleagues is just understand, why does Sarah act the way she does? I think we've all worked with someone like her. And there are some that are genuinely bad actors, but I think a lot of them are doing something, based on genuine, real motives. And it would be fun, I thought, to do something with Elizabeth Henderson, who we decided to start having a conversation like, what does she read? What is her background? What is she good at? What does her resume look like? And what caused her to—who in technology treated her so badly that she treats technology so badly? And why does she behave the way she does? And so I think she reads a lot of strategy books. I think she is not a great people manager, I think she maybe has come from the mergers and acquisition route that viewed people as fungible. And yeah, I think she is definitely a creature of economics, was lured by an external investor, about how good it can be if you can extract value out of the company, squeeze every bit of—sweat every asset and sell the company for parts. So I would just love to have a better understanding of, when people say they work with someone like a Sarah, is there a commonality to that? And can we better understand Sarah so that we can both work with her and also, compete better against her, in our own organizations?Corey Quinn: I think that's probably a question best left for people to figure out on their own, in a circumstance where I can't possibly be blamed for it.Gene Kim: [laughing].That can be arranged, Mr. Quinn.Corey Quinn: All right. Well, if people want to learn more about your thoughts, ideas, feelings around these things, or of course to buy the book, where can they find you?Gene Kim: If you're interested in the ideas that are in The Unicorn Project, I would point you to all of the freely available videos on YouTube. Just Google DevOps Enterprise Summit and anything that's on the plenary stage are specifically chosen stories that very much informed The Unicorn Project. And the best way to reach me is probably on Twitter. I'm @RealGeneKim on Twitter, and feel free to just @ mention me, or DM me. Happy to be reached out in whatever way you can find me. Corey Quinn: You know where the hate mail goes then. Gene, thank you so much for taking the time to speak with me, I appreciate it.Gene Kim: And Corey, likewise, and again, thank you so much for your unflinching feedback on the book and I hope you see your fingerprints all over it and I'm just so delighted with the way it came out. So thanks to you, Corey. Corey Quinn: As soon as my signed copy shows up, you'll be the first to know.Gene Kim: Consider it done. Corey Quinn: Excellent, excellent. That's the trick, is to ask people for something in a scenario in which they cannot possibly say no. Gene Kim, multiple award-winning CTO, researcher, and author. Pick up his new book, The Wall Street Journal best-selling The Unicorn Project. I'm Cloud Economist Corey Quinn, and this is Screaming in the Cloud. If you've enjoyed this podcast, please leave a five-star review on Apple Podcasts. If you hated this podcast, please leave a five-star review on Apple Podcasts and leave a compelling comment.Announcer: This has been this week's episode of Screaming in the Cloud. You can also find more Corey at ScreamingintheCloud.com or wherever fine snark is sold.This has been a HumblePod production. Stay humble.

In the final episode of season two of the Recession-Proof podcast, Alex and Kimia discuss the most impactful insights from previous episodes with Sam Mallikarjunan of OneScreen.ai, Geoffrey Woo of Anti Fund Investment Fund, Dan Chen of Deltec, Anup Singh of Illumio, Keith Masuda of Modern Treasury, Liz Christo of Stage 2 Capital, Kelly Battles of DataStax, and Ken Suchoski of Autonomous Research.Each of them share advice on how to overcome the challenges of the current state of the market, prioritize investments, and grow your business through the end of 2022 and the start of 2023.Here are a few highlights, check out the full episode for the rest… Why Sam Mallikarjunan, Co-founder and Chief Executive Officer of OneScreen.ai emphasizes the importance of connecting the finance and marketing functions“I will say there is an adversarial relationship between finance and basically every other part of the company. But to treat the finance team and the finance leadership as if it's an adversarial relationship or to not actually proactively reach out to them, to me, that therefore has always been like, you're yelling at the person who's sitting in the top of the ship's sails being like, Hey, there's an iceberg up ahead, or, Hey, there's land over there that's just like filled with random gold. Why are we ignoring it? And we're not creating clear lines of communication in alignment with a partner whose objectives are fundamentally aligned with our own.”Geoffrey Woo, Co-founder and Partner of Anti Fund Investment Fund explains why attention is more valuable than capital“We all have 24 hours in a day times 8 billion people. That is the max limit of attention that exists in this world. You can print money, do weird financial engineering with money, but literally, the max attention cap of humanity is some 8 billion times 24 hours a day. Anything that can wield attention, I think, is going to be increasingly powerful over time.”How Kelly Battles, a Board Member and Audit Committee Chair for DataStax, Arista Networks, and Genesys thinks you can become a more well-rounded finance professional by…“Get on a board if you can, even as a full-time executive, because it makes you a better executive. When you're a full-time exec, especially in an intense startup or private company scaling company, you can get tunnel vision. And I think having another company and seeing from a bird's eye view what they're going through gives you perspective, context, and learnings, and you start building your pattern recognition.”Learn more about our season two guests: Sam Mallikarjunan on LinkedIn Geoffrey Woo on LinkedIn Dan Chen on LinkedIn Anup Singh on LinkedIn Keith Masuda on LinkedIn Liz Christo on LinkedIn Kelly Battles on LinkedIn Ken Suchoski on LinkedIn Check out the full transcript here.For more episodes from Recession-Proof, check us out on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and our RSS or your favorite podcast player. Instructions on how to follow, rate, and review Recession-Proof are here.

Kelly Battles joins Alex Song on Recession-Proof this week to discuss how exceptional finance leaders help their executive team make the best decisions to increase the likelihood of growth during a recession. Kelly is currently a Board Member and Audit Committee Chair for DataStax, Arista Networks, Genesys, Alpha Medical, Clari, and Plex. Kelly has a thirty-plus-year career in finance through various leadership roles at companies like Quora, Bracket Computing, Wikimedia Foundation, Host Analytics, IronPort Systems, and HP.Kelly and Alex discuss: Quora's mission of sharing and growing the world's knowledge base What all economic downturns have in common Why all full time executives should seek board positions How great finance leaders help their executive teams make the best decision The role of a CFO in setting the right company culture during economic growth and downturn Key takeaways When choosing a new company to join, Kelly focuses on culture, market opportunity, product-market fit, and her role in that company. Quora nailed all of these, so she decided to accept the role of a CFO. What sets Quora apart from social media apps is its noble mission to share and grow the world's knowledge base through quality content that aims to help people. Quora is also an example of what makes an online platform succeed through clear policies and processes that match its mission, a great product, community, and team.“I was watching what was happening in some social media companies and thinking there's so much power for good in these companies, and there are so many missteps. And I believe in a hundred years when people look back at the internet, they will see some bad actors. History is not gonna treat some of these companies well. And I think Quora and Wikipedia are two examples of where history will treat them very well as examples of the power of the internet for good.” Whether discussing the current recession, the great financial crisis of 2008, or the Dot-com bubble, Kelly recognizes a pattern that she calls the “overreaction to the fear-greed cycle”. Good time manifests the greed cycle, companies being encouraged to spend unreasonably because of growth, and in bad times, the fear cycle, where it's all about hyper-analysis of every spending decision. The best companies are disciplined during the greed cycles and then emerge with strength from the fear cycle.“Companies that have been raising so much money in the last couple of years because it was so plentiful and didn't spend it will be able to come out with strong balance sheets in an environment where it's gonna be easier to hire, cheaper to take share, and easier to buy assets than companies that didn't raise the money or raised it and spent it.” The best CFOs are true business partners to the executive team and bring a synthesized proliferation of data to help their business partners make better decisions. The finance function exists to help executives overcome obstacles and challenges during economic struggles. CFO's must learn from these challenges, take those lessons, and apply them to the future. Finance also has a significant role in setting the right spending culture to ensure the company is disciplined during the good times and conservative during hard times.“As a CFO, joining the CEO in the future and understanding the past, understanding what you can learn from it, understanding current performance, what it means for the future, what you need to do differently in the future, or what you need to double down on or stop doing, to me, that is how you do this right.” Learn more about Kelly:Kelly on LinkedIn Episode resources: Quora Wikipedia Ramp For more episodes from Recession-Proof, check us out on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and our RSS or your favorite podcast player.Instructions on how to follow, rate, and review Recession-Proof are here.

Most companies experience the same pain point when working with data: it takes too long to get the right data to the right people. This creates a huge opportunity for data scientists to find innovative solutions to accelerate that process. One very effective method is to implement real-time data solutions that can increase business revenue and make it easier for anyone relying on the data to access the data they need, understand it, and make accurate decisions with it. George Trujillo joins the show to share how he believes real-time data has the potential to completely transform the way companies work with data. George is the Principal Data Strategist at DataStax, a tech company that helps businesses scale by mobilizing real-time data on a single, unified stack. With a career spanning 30 years and companies like Charles Schwab, Fidelity Investments, and Overstock.com, George is an expert in data-driven executive decision-making and tying data initiatives to tangible business value outcomes. In this episode, we talk about the real-world use cases of real-time analytics, why reducing data complexity is key to improving the customer experience, the common problems that slow data-driven decision-making, and how data practitioners can start implementing real-time data through small high-value analytical assets.

In this episode, we talk about introducing children and teens to coding with Jon Mattingly, co-founder and CEO of Kodable, and Pete Ingram-Cauchi, CEO of ID Tech. Show Notes DevNews (sponsor) CodeNewbie (sponsor) DataStax (sponsor) Cockroach Labs (DevDiscuss) (sponsor) Swimm (DevDiscuss) (sponsor) Stellar (sponsor) Kodable IDTech Code.org Grace Hopper Head First Book Series Susan Wojcicki

In this episode, we talk about how technology is being used as a tool for abuse and coercive control with Bindu Oommen Fernandes, executive director at Freedom Forward, and Sony Mital, community engagement lead at Narika. We discuss possible warning signs of abuse to keep an eye out for, tactics abusers use on their victims, and the different ways technology is also helping survivors overcome these circumstances. Show Notes DevNews (sponsor) CodeNewbie (sponsor) DataStax (sponsor) Cockroach Labs (DevDiscuss) (sponsor) Swimm (DevDiscuss) (sponsor) Stellar (sponsor) Narika Freedom Forward

In this episode, we talk with Jim Walker, principal product evangelist at Cockroach Labs about the evolution of SQL. Learn more about the origins and importance of SQL and how it's managed to not only last but also evolve throughout time. Show Notes DevNews (sponsor) CodeNewbie (sponsor) DataStax (sponsor) Cockroach Labs (DevDiscuss) (sponsor) Swimm (DevDiscuss) (sponsor) Stellar (sponsor) Smalltalk Quel Jeff Dean and Sanjay Ghemawat article in "Wired" 100 millisecond rule The Secret Lives of Data Michael Stonebraker Assembler Language