Podcast appearances and mentions of Diane Greene

Last week, we featured an interview with John Markoff, the legendary New York Times Silicon Valley correspondent. If Markoff has an East Coast equivalent, it's Steven Levy, the former Newsweek technology correspondent and author of best-selling books about hacking, crypto, Google and Facebook. Levy is now Wired's editor-at-large and when I visited Levy at New York City's glittering Conde Nast offices, we talked about what has and hasn't surprised him about the last twenty years of tech history and why he may be the last journalist with the good fortune of being paid to write long articles about Microsoft.Steven Levy is Wired's editor at large. The Washington Post has called him “America's premier technology journalist.”For almost four decades Levy has chronicled the digital revolution, its impact on humanity, and the people behind it. He has written the foundational work on computer culture (Hackers, 1984) and with Crypto (2001) the indispensable book on story behind that groundbreaking technology—years before people began gushing about Bitcoin and the blockchain. He has written the definitive books on Facebook, Google, the Macintosh, and the iPod. World-class engineers tell him that they pursued AI after reading his 1992 book Artificial Life. And he currently covers the breadth of tech stories—the good and the disturbing—for WIRED, where he has been a contributor since its inception. Levy's previous positions include founder of Backchannel and chief technology writer and senior editor for Newsweek. His work has also appeared in Rolling Stone, Harper's Magazine, Macworld, The New York Times Magazine, Esquire, The New Yorker, and Premiere. Among his honors: PC Magazine named Hackers the best sci-tech book written in the last twenty years. Crypto won the grand e-book prize at the 2001 Frankfurt Book Fair. In the Plex was Amazon's best business book of 2011. In 2008 he was inducted as a SVForum Visionary, alongside Reed Hastings and Diane Greene. (Previous winners include Bill Gates, Steve Wozniak, and Vin Cerf.) He has won several Computer Press Association Awards, been finalist for the National Magazine Award and the Loeb Award, winner of a Clarion Award and many others.  His 1988 book, The Unicorn's Secret, was the source material for a two-night NBC miniseries, “The Hunt for the Unicorn Killer.” Levy hails from Philadelphia, where he began his career writing for weekly papers and writing stories for Philadelphia Magazine and the Philadelphia Inquirer Sunday Magazine. He wrote extensively on rock music and sports. In 1982, he published a Rolling Stone story on computer hackers that drew him into the world of technology.  He lives in New York City with his wife, Pulitzer Prize winner and bestselling author Teresa Carpenter.Named as one of the "100 most connected men" by GQ magazine, Andrew Keen is amongst the world's best known broadcasters and commentators. In addition to presenting KEEN ON, he is the host of the long-running How To Fix Democracy show. He is also the author of four prescient books about digital technology: CULT OF THE AMATEUR, DIGITAL VERTIGO, THE INTERNET IS NOT THE ANSWER and HOW TO FIX THE FUTURE. Andrew lives in San Francisco, is married to Cassandra Knight, Google's VP of Litigation & Discovery, and has two grown children.Keen On is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit keenon.substack.com/subscribe

Kelsey Hightower joins Corey on Screaming in the Cloud to discuss his reflections on how the tech industry is progressing. Kelsey describes what he's been getting out of retirement so far, and reflects on what he learned throughout his high-profile career - including why feature sprawl is such a driving force behind the complexity of the cloud environment and the tactics he used to create demos that are engaging for the audience. Corey and Kelsey also discuss the importance of remaining authentic throughout your career, and what it means to truly have an authentic voice in tech. About KelseyKelsey Hightower is a former Distinguished Engineer at Google Cloud, the co-chair of KubeCon, the world's premier Kubernetes conference, and an open source enthusiast. He's also the co-author of Kubernetes Up & Running: Dive into the Future of Infrastructure. Recently, Kelsey announced his retirement after a 25-year career in tech.Links Referenced:Twitter: https://twitter.com/kelseyhightower TranscriptAnnouncer: Hello, and welcome to Screaming in the Cloud with your host, Chief Cloud Economist at The Duckbill Group, 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: Do you wish there were cheat codes for database optimization? Well, there are – no seriously. If you're using Postgres or MySQL on Amazon Aurora or RDS, OtterTune uses AI to automatically optimize your knobs and indexes and queries and other bits and bobs in databases. OtterTune applies optimal settings and recommendations in the background or surfaces them to you and allows you to do it. The best part is that there's no cost to try it. Get a free, thirty-day trial to take it for a test drive. Go to ottertune dot com to learn more. That's O-T-T-E-R-T-U-N-E dot com.Corey: Welcome to Screaming in the Cloud. I'm Corey Quinn. You know, there's a great story from the Bible or Torah—Old Testament, regardless—that I was always a big fan of where you wind up with the Israelites walking the desert for 40 years in order to figure out what comes next. And Moses led them but could never enter into what came next. Honestly, I feel like my entire life is sort of going to be that direction. Not the biblical aspects, but rather always wondering what's on the other side of a door that I can never cross, and that door is retirement. Today I'm having returning guest Kelsey Hightower, who is no longer at Google. In fact, is no longer working and has joined the ranks of the gloriously retired. Welcome back, and what's it like?Kelsey: I'm happy to be here. I think retirement is just like work in some ways: you have to learn how to do it. A lot of people have no practice in their adult life what to do with all of their time. We have small dabs in it, like, you get the weekend off, depending on what your work, but you never have enough time to kind of unwind and get into something else. So, I'm being honest with myself. It's going to be a learning curve, what to do with that much time.You're probably still going to do work, but it's going to be a different type of work than you're used to. And so, that's where I am. 30 days into this, I'm in that learning mode, I'm on-the-job training.Corey: What's harder than you expected?Kelsey: It's not the hard part because I think mentally I've been preparing for, like, the last ten years, being a minimalist, learning how to kind of live within my means, learn to appreciate things that are just not work-related or status symbols. And so, to me, it felt like a smooth transition because I started to value my time more than anything else, right? Just waking up the next day became valuable to me. Spending time in the moment, right, you go to these conferences, there's, like, 10,000 people, but you learn to value those one-on-one encounters, those one-off, kind of, let's just go grab lunch situations. So, to me, retirement just makes more room for that, right? I no longer have this calendar that is super full, so I think for me, it was a nice transition in terms of getting more of that valuable time back.Corey: It seems to me that you're in a similar position to the one that I find myself in where the job that you were doing and I still am is tied, more or less, to a sense of identity as opposed to a particular task or particular role that you fill. You were Kelsey Hightower. That was a complete sentence. People didn't necessarily need to hear the rest of what you were working on or what you were going to be talking about at a given conference or whatnot. So, it seemed, at least from the outside, that an awful lot of what you did was quite simply who you were. Do you feel that your sense of identity has changed?Kelsey: So, I think when you have that much influence, when you have that much reputation, the words you say travel further, they tend to come with a little bit more respect, and so when you're working with a team on new product, and you say, “Hey, I think we should change some things.” And when they hear those words coming from someone that they trust or has a name that is attached to reputation, you tend to be able to make a lot of impact with very few words. But what you also find is that no matter what you get involved in—configuration management, distributed systems, serverless, working with customers—it all is helped and aided by the reputation that you bring into that line of work. And so yes, who you are matters, but one thing that I think helped me, kind of greatly, people are paying attention maybe to the last eight years of my career: containers, Kubernetes, but my career stretches back to the converting COBOL into Python days; the dawn of DevOps, Puppet, Chef, and Ansible; the Golang appearance and every tool being rewritten from Ruby to Golang; the Docker era.And so, my identity has stayed with me throughout those transitions. And so, it was very easy for me to walk away from that thing because I've done it three or four times before in the past, so I know who I am. I've never had, like, a Twitter bio that said, “Company X. X person from company X.” I've learned long ago to just decouple who I am from my current employer because that is always subject to change.Corey: I was fortunate enough to not find myself in the public eye until I owned my own company. But I definitely remember times in my previous incarnations where I was, “Oh, today I'm working at this company,” and I believed—usually inaccurately—that this was it. This was where I really found my niche. And then surprise I'm not there anymore six months later for, either their decision, my decision, or mutual agreement. And I was always hesitant about hanging a shingle out that was tied too tightly to any one employer.Even now, I was little worried about doing it when I went independent, just because well, what if it doesn't work? Well, what if, on some level? I think that there's an authenticity that you can bring with you—and you certainly have—where, for a long time now, whenever you say something, I take it seriously, and a lot of people do. It's not that you're unassailably correct, but I've never known you to say something you did not authentically believe in. And that is an opinion that is very broadly shared in this industry. So, if nothing else, you definitely were a terrific object lesson in speaking the truth, as you saw it.Kelsey: I think what you describe is one way that, whether you're an engineer doing QA, working in the sales department, when you can be honest with the team you're working with, when you can be honest with the customers you're selling into when you can be honest with the community you're part of, that's where the authenticity gets built, right? Companies, sometimes on the surface, you believe that they just want you to walk the party line, you know, they give you the lines and you just read them verbatim and you're doing your part. To be honest, you can do that with the website. You can do that with a well-placed ad in the search queries.What people are actually looking for are real people with real experiences, sharing not just fact, but I think when you mix kind of fact and opinion, you get this level of authenticity that you can't get just by pure strategic marketing. And so, having that leverage, I remember back in the day, people used to say, “I'm going to do the right thing and if it gets me fired, then that's just the way it's going to be. I don't want to go around doing the wrong thing because I'm scared I'm going to lose my job.” You want to find yourself in that situation where doing the right thing, is also the best thing for the company, and that's very rare, so when I've either had that opportunity or I've tried to create that opportunity and move from there.Corey: It resonates and it shows. I have never had a lot of respect for people who effectively are saying one thing today and another thing the next week based upon which way they think that the winds are blowing. But there's also something to be said for being able and willing to publicly recant things you have said previously as technology evolves, as your perspective evolves and, in light of new information, I'm now going to change my perspective on something. I've done that already with multi-cloud, for example. I thought it was ridiculous when I heard about it. But there are also expressions of it that basically every company is using, including my own. And it's a nuanced area. Where I find it challenging is when you see a lot of these perspectives that people are espousing that just so happen to deeply align with where their paycheck comes from any given week. That doesn't ring quite as true to me.Kelsey: Yeah, most companies actually don't know how to deal with it either. And now there has been times at any number of companies where my authentic opinion that I put out there is against party line. And you get those emails from directors and VPs. Like, “Hey, I thought we all agree to think this way or to at least say this.” And that's where you have to kind of have that moment of clarity and say, “Listen, that is undeniably wrong. It's so wrong in fact that if you say this in public, whether a small setting or large setting, you are going to instantly lose credibility going forward for yourself. Forget the company for a moment. There's going to be a situation where you will no longer be effective in your job because all of your authenticity is now gone. And so, what I'm trying to do and tell you is don't do that. You're better off saying nothing.”But if you go out there, and you're telling what is obviously misinformation or isn't accurate, people are not dumb. They're going to see through it and you will be classified as a person not to listen to. And so, I think a lot of people struggle with that because they believe that enterprise's consensus should also be theirs.Corey: An argument that I made—we'll call it a prediction—four-and-a-half years ago, was that in five years, nobody would really care about Kubernetes. And people misunderstood that initially, and I've clarified since repeatedly that I'm not suggesting it's going away: “Oh, turns out that was just a ridiculous fever dream and we're all going back to running bare metal with our hands again,” but rather that it would slip below the surface-level of awareness. And I don't know that I got the timing quite right on that, I think it's going to depend on the company and the culture that you find yourself in. But increasingly, when there's an application to run, it's easy to ask someone just, “Oh, great. Where's the Kubernetes cluster live so we can throw this on there and just add it to the rest of the pile?”That is sort of what I was seeing. My intention with that was not purely just to be controversial, as much fun as that might be, but also to act as a bit of a warning, where I've known too many people who let their identities become inextricably tangled with the technology. But technologies rise and fall, and at some point—like, you talk about configuration management days; I learned to speak publicly as a traveling trainer for Puppet. I wrote part of SaltStack once upon a time. But it was clear that that was not the direction the industry was going, so it was time to find something else to focus on. And I fear for people who don't keep an awareness or their feet underneath them and pay attention to broader market trends.Kelsey: Yeah, I think whenever I was personally caught up in linking my identity to technology, like, “I'm a Rubyist,” right?“, I'm a Puppeteer,” and you wear those names proudly. But I remember just thinking to myself, like, “You have to take a step back. What's more important, you or the technology?” And at some point, I realized, like, it's me, that is more important, right? Like, my independent thinking on this, my independent experience with this is far more important than the success of this thing.But also, I think there's a component there. Like when you talked about Kubernetes, you know, maybe being less relevant in five years, there's two things there. One is the success of all infrastructure things equals irrelevancy. When flights don't crash, when bridges just work, you do not think about them. You just use them because they're so stable and they become very boring. That is the success criteria.Corey: Utilities. No one's wondering if the faucet's going to work when they turn it on in the morning.Kelsey: Yeah. So, you know, there's a couple of ways to look at your statement. One is, you believe Kubernetes is on the trajectory that it's going to stabilize itself and hit that success criteria, and then it will be irrelevant. Or there's another part of the irrelevancy where something else comes along and replaces that thing, right? I think Cloud Foundry and Mesos are two good examples of Kubernetes coming along and stealing all of the attention from that because those particular products never gained that mass adoption. Maybe they got to the stable part, but they never got to the mass adoption part. So, I think when it comes to infrastructure, it's going to be irrelevant. It's just what side of that [laugh] coin do you land on?Corey: It's similar to folks who used to have to work at a variety of different companies on very specific Linux kernel subsystems because everyone had to care because there were significant performance impacts. Time went on and now there's still a few of those people that very much need to care, but for the rest of us, it is below the level of things that we have to care about. For me, the signs of the unsustainability were, oh, you can run Kubernetes effectively in production? That's a minimum of a quarter-million dollars a year in comp or up in some cases. Not every company is going to be able to field a team of those people and still remain a going concern in business. Nor frankly, should they have to.Kelsey: I'm going to pull on that thread a little bit because it's about—we're hitting that ten-year mark of Kubernetes. So, when Kubernetes comes out, why were people drawn to it, right? Why did it even get the time of day to begin with? And I think Docker kind of opened Pandora's box there. This idea of Chef, Puppet, Ansible, ten thousand package managers, and honestly, that trajectory was going to continue forever and it was helping no one. It was literally people doing duplicate work depending on the operating system you're dealing with and we were wasting time copying bits to servers—literally—in a very glorified way.So, Docker comes along and gives us this nicer, better abstraction, but it has gaps. It has no orchestration. It's literally this thing where now we've unified the packaging situation, we've learned a lot from Red Hat, YUM, Debian, and the various package repo combinations out there and so we made this universal thing. Great. We also learned a little bit about orchestration through brute force, bash scripts, config management, you name it, and so we serialized that all into this thing we call Kubernetes.It's pretty simple on the surface, but it was probably never worthy of such fanfare, right? But I think a lot of people were relieved that now we finally commoditized this expertise that the Googles, the Facebooks of the world had, right, building these systems that can copy bits to other systems very fast. There you go. We've gotten that piece. But I think what the market actually wants is in the mobile space, if you want to ship software to 300 million people that you don't even know, you can do it with the app store.There's this appetite that the boring stuff should be easy. Let's Encrypt has made SSL certificates beyond easy. It's just so easy to do the right thing. And I think for this problem we call deployments—you know, shipping apps around—at some point we have to get to a point where that is just crazy easy. And it still isn't.So, I think some of the frustration people express ten years later, they're realizing that they're trying to recreate a Rube Goldberg machine with Kubernetes is the base element and we still haven't understood that this whole thing needs to simplify, not ten thousand new pieces so you can build your own adventure.Corey: It's the idea almost of what I'm seeing AWS go through, and to some extent, its large competitors. But building anything on top of AWS from scratch these days is still reminiscent of going to Home Depot—or any hardware store—and walking up and down the aisles and getting all the different components to piece together what you want. Sometimes just want to buy something from Target that's already assembled and you have to do all of that work. I'm not saying there isn't value to having a Home Depot down the street, but it's also not the panacea that solves for all use cases. An awful lot of customers just want to get the job done and I feel that if we cling too tightly to how things used to be, we lose it.Kelsey: I'm going to tell you, being in the cloud business for almost eight years, it's the customers that create this. Now, I'm not blaming the customer, but when you start dealing with thousands of customers with tons of money, you end up in a very different situation. You can have one customer willing to pay you a billion dollars a year and they will dictate things that apply to no one else. “We want this particular set of features that only we will use.” And for a billion bucks a year times ten years, it's probably worth from a business standpoint to add that feature.Now, do this times 500 customers, each major provider. What you end up with is a cloud console that is unbearable, right? Because they also want these things to be first-class citizens. There's always smaller companies trying to mimic larger peers in their segment that you just end up in that chaos machine of unbound features forever. I don't know how to stop it. Unless you really come out maybe more Apple style and you tell people, “This is the one and only true way to do things and if you don't like it, you have to go find an alternative.” The cloud business, I think, still deals with the, “If you have a large payment, we will build it.”Corey: I think that that is a perspective that is not appreciated until you've been in the position of watching how large enterprises really interact with each other. Because it's, “Well, what customer the world is asking for yet another way to run containers?” “Uh, this specific one and their constraints are valid.” Every time I think I've seen everything there is to see in the world of cloud, I just have to go talk to one more customer and I'm learning something new. It's inevitable.I just wish that there was a better way to explain some of this to newcomers, when they're looking at, “Oh, I'm going to learn how this cloud thing works. Oh, my stars, look at how many services there are.” And then they wind up getting lost with analysis paralysis, and every time they get started and ask someone for help, they're pushed in a completely different direction and you keep spinning your wheels getting told to start over time and time again when any of these things can be made to work. But getting there is often harder than it really should be.Kelsey: Yeah. I mean, I think a lot of people don't realize how far you can get with, like, three VMs, a load balancer, and Postgres. My guess is you can probably build pretty much any clone of any service we use today with at least 1 million customers. Most people never reached that level—I don't even want to say the word scale—but that blueprint is there and most people will probably be better served by that level of simplicity than trying to mimic the behaviors of large customers—or large companies—with these elaborate use cases. I don't think they understand the context there. A lot of that stuff is baggage. It's not [laugh] even, like, best-of-breed or great design. It's like happenstance from 20 years of trying to buy everything that's been sold to you.Corey: I agree with that idea wholeheartedly. I was surprising someone the other day when I said that if you were to give me a task of getting some random application up and running by tomorrow, I do a traditional three-tier architecture, some virtual machines, a load balancer, and a database service. And is that the way that all the cool kids are doing it today? Well, they're not talking about it, but mostly. But the point is, is that it's what I know, it's where my background is, and the thing you already know when you're trying to solve a new problem is incredibly helpful, rather than trying to learn everything along that new path that you're forging down. Is that architecture the best approach? No, but it's perfectly sufficient for an awful lot of stuff.Kelsey: Yeah. And so, I mean, look, I've benefited my whole career from people fantasizing about [laugh] infrastructure—Corey: [laugh].Kelsey: And the truth is that in 2023, this stuff is so powerful that you can do almost anything you want to do with the simplest architecture that's available to us. The three-tier architecture has actually gotten better over the years. I think people are forgotten: CPUs are faster, RAM is much bigger quantities, the networks are faster, right, these databases can store more data than ever. It's so good to learn the fundamentals, start there, and worst case, you have a sound architecture people can reason about, and then you can go jump into the deep end, once you learn how to swim.Corey: I think that people would be depressed to understand just how much the common case for the value that Kubernetes brings is, “Oh yeah, now we can lose a drive or a server and the application stays up.” It feels like it's a bit overkill for that one somewhat paltry use case, but that problem has been hounding companies for decades.Kelsey: Yeah, I think at some point, the whole ‘SSH is my only interface into these kinds of systems,' that's a little low level, that's a little bare bones, and there will probably be a feature now where we start to have this not Infrastructure as Code, not cloud where we put infrastructure behind APIs and you pay per use, but I think what Kubernetes hints at is a future where you have APIs that do something. Right now the APIs give you pieces so you can assemble things. In the future, the APIs will just do something, “Run this app. I need it to be available and here's my money budget, my security budget, and reliability budget.” And then that thing will say, “Okay, we know how to do that, and here's roughly what is going to cost.”And I think that's what people actually want because that's how requests actually come down from humans, right? We say, “We want this app or this game to be played by millions of people from Australia to New York.” And then for a person with experience, that means something. You kind of know what architecture you need for that, you know what pieces that need to go there. So, we're just moving into a realm where we're going to have APIs that do things all of a sudden.And so, Kubernetes is the warm-up to that era. And that's why I think that transition is a little rough because it leaks the pieces part, so where you can kind of build all the pieces that you want. But we know what's coming. Serverless also hints at this. But that's what people should be looking for: APIs that actually do something.Corey: This episode is sponsored in part by Panoptica.  Panoptica simplifies container deployment, monitoring, and security, protecting the entire application stack from build to runtime. Scalable across clusters and multi-cloud environments, Panoptica secures containers, serverless APIs, and Kubernetes with a unified view, reducing operational complexity and promoting collaboration by integrating with commonly used developer, SRE, and SecOps tools. Panoptica ensures compliance with regulatory mandates and CIS benchmarks for best practice conformity. Privacy teams can monitor API traffic and identify sensitive data, while identifying open-source components vulnerable to attacks that require patching. Proactively addressing security issues with Panoptica allows businesses to focus on mitigating critical risks and protecting their interests. Learn more about Panoptica today at panoptica.app.Corey: You started the show by talking about how your career began with translating COBOL into Python. I firmly believe someone starting their career today listening to this could absolutely find that by the time their career starts drawing to their own close, that Kubernetes is right in there as far as sounding like the deprecated thing that no one really talks about or thinks about anymore. And I hope so. I want the future to be brighter than the past. I want getting a business or getting software together in a way that helps people to not require the amount of, “First, spend six weeks at a boot camp,” or, “Learn how to write just enough code that you can wind up getting funding and then have it torn apart.”What's the drag-and-drop story? What's the describe the application to a robot and it builds it for you? I'm optimistic about the future of infrastructure, just because based upon its power to potentially make reliability and scale available to folks who have no idea of what's involved with that. That's kind of the point. That's the end game of having won this space.Kelsey: Well, you know what? Kubernetes is providing the metadata to make that possible, right? Like in the early days, people were writing one-off scripts or, you know, writing little for loops to get things in the right place. And then we get config management that kind of formalizes that, but it still had no metadata, right? You'd have things like Puppet report information.But in the world of, like, Kubernetes, or any cloud provider, now you get semantic meaning. “This app needs this volume with this much space with this much memory, I need three of these behind this load balancer with these protocols enabled.” There is now so much metadata about applications, their life cycles, and how they work that if you were to design a new system, you can actually use that data to craft a much better API that made a lot of this boilerplate the defaults. Oh, that's a web application. You do not need to specify all of this boilerplate. Now, we can give you much better nouns and verbs to describe what needs to happen.So, I think this is that transition as all the new people coming up, they're going to be dealing with semantic meaning to infrastructure, where we were dealing with, like, tribal knowledge and intuition, right? “Run this script, pipe it to this thing, and then this should happen. And if it doesn't, run the script again with this flag.” Versus, “Oh, here's the semantic meaning to a working system.” That's a game-changer.Corey: One other topic I wanted to ask you about—I've it's been on my list of things to bring up the next time I ran into you and then you went ahead and retired, making it harder to run into you. But a little while back, I was at a tech conference and someone gave a demo, and it didn't go as well as they had hoped. And a few of us were talking about it afterwards. We've all been speakers, we've all lived that life. Zero shade.But someone brought you up in particular—unprompted; your legend does precede you—and the phrase that they used was that Kelsey's demos were always picture-perfect. He was so lucky with how the demos worked out. And I just have to ask—because you don't strike me as someone who is not careful, particularly when all eyes are upon you—and real experts make things look easy, did you have demos periodically go wrong that the audience just didn't see going wrong along the way? Or did you just actually YOLO all of your demos and got super lucky every single time for the last eight years?Kelsey: There was a musician who said, “Hey, your demos are like jazz. You improvise the whole thing.” There's no script, there's no video. The way I look at the demo is, like, you got this instrument, the command prompt, and the web browser. You can do whatever you want with them.Now, I have working code. I wrote the code, I wrote the deployment scenarios, I delete it all and I put it all back. And so, I know how it's supposed to work from the ground up. And so, what that means is if anything goes wrong, I can improvise. I could go into fixing the code. I can go into doing a redeploy.And I'll give you one good example. The first time Kubernetes came out, there was this small meetup in San Francisco with just the core contributors, right? So, there is no community yet, there's no conference yet, just people hacking on Kubernetes. And so, we decided, we're going to have the first Kubernetes meetup. And everyone got, like, six, seven minutes, max. That's it. You got to move.And so, I was like, “Hey, I noticed that in the lineup, there is no ‘What is Kubernetes?' talk. We're just getting into these nuts and bolts and I don't think that's fair to the people that will be watching this for the first time.” And I said, “All right, Kelsey, you should give maybe an intro to what it is.” I was like, “You know what I'll do? I'm going to build a Kubernetes cluster from the ground up, starting with VMs on my laptop.”And I'm in it and I'm feeling confident. So, confidence is the part that makes it look good, right? Where you're confident in the commands you type. One thing I learned to do is just use your history, just hit the up arrow instead of trying to copy all these things out. So, you hit the up arrow, you find the right command and you talk through it and no one looks at what's happening. You're cycling through the history.Or you have multiple tabs where you know the next up arrow is the right history. So, you give yourself shortcuts. And so, I'm halfway through this demo. We got three minutes left, and it doesn't work. Like, VMware is doing something weird on my laptop and there's a guy calling me off stage, like, “Hey, that's it. Cut it now. You're done.”I'm like, “Oh, nope. Thou shalt not go out like this.” It's time to improvise. And so, I said, “Hey, who wants to see me finish this?” And now everyone is locked in. It's dead silent. And I blow the whole thing away. I bring up the VMs, I [pixie 00:28:20] boot, I installed the kubelet, I install Docker. And everyone's clapping. And it's up, it's going, and I say, “Now, if all of this works, we run this command and it should start running the app.” And I do kubectl apply-f and it comes up and the place goes crazy.And I had more to the demo. But you stop. You've gotten the point across, right? This is what Kubernetes is, here's how it works, and look how you do it from scratch. And I remember saying, “And that's the end of my presentation.” You need to know when to stop, you need to know when to pivot, and you need to have confidence that it's supposed to work, and if you've seen it work a couple of times, your confidence is unshaken.And when I walked off that stage, I remember someone from Red Hat was like—Clayton Coleman; that's his name—Clayton Coleman walked up to me and said, “You planned that. You planned it to fail just like that, so you can show people how to go from scratch all the way up. That was brilliant.” And I was like, “Sure. That's exactly what I did.”Corey: “Yeah, I meant to do that.” I like that approach. I found there's always things I have to plan for in demos. For example, I can never count on having solid WiFi from a conference hall. The show has to go on. It's, okay, the WiFi doesn't work. I've at one point had to give a talk where the projector just wasn't working to a bunch of students. So okay, close the laptop. We're turning this into a bunch of question-and-answer sessions, and it was one of the better talks I've ever given.But the alternative is getting stuck in how you think a talk absolutely needs to go. Now, keynotes are a little harder where everything has been scripted and choreographed and at that point, I've had multiple fallbacks for demos that I've had to switch between. And people never noticed I was doing it for that exact reason. But it takes work to look polished.Kelsey: I will tell you that the last Next keynote I gave was completely irresponsible. No dry runs, no rehearsals, no table reads, no speaker notes. And I think there were 30,000 people at that particular Next. And Diane Greene was still CEO, and I remember when marketing was like, “Yo, at least a backup recording.” I was like, “Nah, I don't have anything.”And that demo was extensive. I mean, I was building an app from scratch, starting with Postgres, adding the schema, building an app, deploying the app. And something went wrong halfway. And there's this joke that I came up with just to pass over the time, they gave me a new Chromebook to do the demo. And so, it's not mine, so none of the default settings were there, I was getting pop-ups all over the place.And I came up with this joke on the way to the conference. I was like, “You know what'd be cool? When I show off the serverless stuff, I would just copy the code from Stack Overflow. That'd be like a really cool joke to say this is what senior engineers do.” And I go to Stack Overflow and it's getting all of these pop-ups and my mouse couldn't highlight the text.So, I'm sitting there like a deer in headlights in front of all of these people and I'm looking down, and marketing is, like, “This is what… this is what we're talking about.” And so, I'm like, “Man do I have to end this thing here?” And I remember I kept trying, I kept trying, and came to me. Once the mouse finally got in there and I cleared up all the popups, I just came up with this joke. I said, “Good developers copy.” And I switched over to my terminal and I took the text from Stack Overflow and I said, “Great developers paste,” and the whole room start laughing.And I had them back. And we kept going and continued. And at the end, there was like this Google Assistant, and when it was finished, I said, “Thank you,” to the Google Assistant and it was talking back through the live system. And it said, “I got to admit, that was kind of dope.” So, I go to the back and Diane Greene walks back there—the CEO of Google Cloud—and she pats me on the shoulder. “Kelsey, that was dope.”But it was the thrill because I had as much thrill as the people watching it. So, in real-time, I was going through all these emotions. But I think people forget, the demo is supposed to convey something. The demo is supposed to tell some story. And I've seen people overdo their demos with way too much code, way too many commands, almost if they're trying to show off their expertise versus telling a story. And so, when I think about the demo, it has to complement the entire narrative. And so, sometimes you don't need as many commands, you don't need as much code. You can keep things simple and that gives you a lot more ins and outs in case something does go crazy.Corey: And I think the key takeaway here that so many people lose sight of is you have to know the material well enough that whatever happens, well, things don't always go the way I planned during the day, either, and talking through that is something that I think serves as a good example. It feels like a bit more of a challenge when you're trying to demo something that a company is trying to sell someone, “Oh, yeah, it didn't work. But that's okay.” But I'm still reminded by probably one of the best conference demo fails I've ever seen on video. One day, someone was attempting to do a talk that hit Amazon S3 and it didn't work.And the audience started shouting at him that yeah, S3 is down right now. Because that was the big day that S3 took a nap for four hours. It was one of those foundational things you'd should never stop to consider. Like, well, what if the internet doesn't work tomorrow when I'm doing my demo? That's a tough one to work around. But rough timing.Kelsey: [breathy sound]Corey: He nailed the rest of the talk, though. You keep going. That's the thing that people miss. They get stuck in the demo that isn't working, they expect the audience knows as much as they do about what's supposed to happen next. You're the one up there telling a story. People forget it's storytelling.Kelsey: Now, I will be remiss to say, I know that the demo gods have been on my side for, like, ten, maybe fifteen years solid. So, I retired from doing live demos. This is why I just don't do them anymore. I know I'm overdue as an understatement. But the thing I've learned though, is that what I found more impressive than the live demo is to be able to convey the same narratives through story alone. No slides. No demo. Nothing. But you can still make people feel where you would try to go with that live demo.And it's insanely hard, especially for technologies people have never seen before. But that's that new challenge that I kind of set up for myself. So, if you see me at a keynote and you've noticed why I've been choosing these fireside chats, it's mainly because I'm also trying to increase my ability to share narrative, technical concepts, but now in a new form. So, this new storytelling format through the fireside chat has been my substitute for the live demo, normally because I think sometimes, unless there's something really to show that people haven't seen before, the live demo isn't as powerful to me. Once the thing is kind of known… the live demo is kind of more of the same. So, I think they really work well when people literally have never seen the thing before, but outside of that, I think you can kind of move on to, like, real-life scenarios and narratives that help people understand the fundamentals and the philosophy behind the tech.Corey: An awful lot of tools and tech that we use on a day-to-day basis as well are thankfully optimized for the people using them and the ergonomics of going about your day. That is orthogonal, in my experience, to looking very impressive on stage. It's the rare company that can have a product that not only works well but also presents well. And that is something I don't tend to index on when I'm selecting a tool to do something with. So, it's always a question of how can I make this more visually entertaining? For while I got out of doing demos entirely, just because talking about things that have more staying power than a screenshot that is going to wind up being irrelevant the next week when they decide to redo the console for some service yet again.Kelsey: But you know what? That was my secret to doing software products and projects. When I was at CoreOS, we used to have these meetups we would used to do every two weeks or so. So, when we were building things like etcd, Fleet was a container management platform that came before Kubernetes, we would always run through them as a user, start install them, use them, and ask how does it feel? These command line flags, they don't feel right. This isn't a narrative you can present with the software alone.But once we could, then the meetups were that much more engaging. Like hey, have you ever tried to distribute configuration to, like, a thousand servers? It's insanely hard. Here's how you do with Puppet. But now I'm going to show you how you do with etcd. And then the narrative will kind of take care of itself because the tool was positioned behind what people would actually do with it versus what the tool could do by itself.Corey: I think that's the missing piece that most marketing doesn't seem to quite grasp is, they talk about the tool and how awesome it is, but that's why I love customer demos so much. They're showing us how they use a tool to solve a real-world problem. And honestly, from my snarky side of the world and the attendant perspective there, I can make an awful lot of fun about basically anything a company decides to show me, but put a customer on stage talking about how whatever they've built is solving a real-world problem for them, that's the point where I generally shut up and listen because I'm going to learn something about a real-world story. Because you don't generally get to tell customers to go on stage and just make up a story that makes us sound good, and have it come off with any sense of reality whatsoever. I haven't seen that one happen yet, but I'm sure it's out there somewhere.Kelsey: I don't know how many founders or people building companies listen in to your podcast, but this is right now, I think the number one problem that especially venture-backed startups have. They tend to have great technology—maybe it's based off some open-source project—with tons of users who just know how that tool works, it's just an ingredient into what they're already trying to do. But that isn't going to ever be your entire customer base. Soon, you'll deal with customers who don't understand the thing you have and they need more than technology, right? They need a product.And most of these companies struggle painting that picture. Here's what you can do with it. Or here's what you can't do now, but you will be able to do if you were to use this. And since they are missing that, a lot of these companies, they produce a lot of code, they ship a lot of open-source stuff, they raise a lot of capital, and then it just goes away, it fades out over time because they can bring on no newcomers. The people who need help the most, they don't have a narrative for them, and so therefore, they're just hoping that the people who have all the skills in the world, the early adopters, but unfortunately, those people are tend to be the ones that don't actually pay. They just kind of do it themselves. It's the people who need the most help.Corey: How do we monetize the bleeding edge of adoption? In many cases you don't. They become your community if you don't hug them to death first.Kelsey: Exactly.Corey: Ugh. None of this is easy. I really want to thank you for taking the time to catch up and talk about how you seen the remains of a career well spent, and now you're going off into that glorious sunset. But I have a sneaking suspicion you'll still be around. Where should people go if they want to follow up on what you're up to these days?Kelsey: Right now I still use… I'm going to keep calling it Twitter.Corey: I agree.Kelsey: I kind of use that for my real-time interactions. And I'm still attending conferences, doing fireside chats, and just meeting people on those conference floors. But that's what where I'll be for now. So yeah, I'll still be around, but maybe not as deep. And I'll be spending more time just doing normal life stuff, maybe less building software.Corey: And we will, of course, put a link to that in the show notes. Thank you so much for taking the time to catch up and share your reflections on how the industry is progressing.Kelsey: Awesome. Thanks for having me, Corey.Corey: Kelsey Hightower, now gloriously retired. 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 your podcast platform of choice, whereas if you've hated this podcast, please leave a five-star review on your podcast platform of choice along with an angry comment that you're going to type on stage as part of a conference talk, and then accidentally typo all over yourself while you're doing it.Corey: If your AWS bill keeps rising and your blood pressure is doing the same, then you need The Duckbill Group. We help companies fix their AWS bill by making it smaller and less horrifying. The Duckbill Group works for you, not AWS. We tailor recommendations to your business and we get to the point. Visit duckbillgroup.com to get started.

In this KEEN ON episode, Andrew talks to Steven Levy, Wired editor-at-large and author of FACEBOOK: THE INSIDE STORY, about the history of social media from Friendster and MySpace to Facebook and TikTok. Steven Levy is Wired's editor at large. The Washington Post has called him “America's premier technology journalist.” For almost four decades Levy has chronicled the digital revolution, its impact on humanity, and the people behind it. He has written the foundational work on computer culture (Hackers, 1984) and with Crypto (2001) the indispensable book on story behind that groundbreaking technology—years before people began gushing about Bitcoin and the blockchain. He has written the definitive books on Facebook, Google, the Macintosh, and the iPod. World-class engineers tell him that they pursued AI after reading his 1992 book Artificial Life. And he currently covers the breadth of tech stories—the good and the disturbing—for WIRED, where he has been a contributor since its inception. Levy's previous positions include founder of Backchannel and chief technology writer and senior editor for Newsweek. His work has also appeared in Rolling Stone, Harper's Magazine, Macworld, The New York Times Magazine, Esquire, The New Yorker, and Premiere. Among his honors: PC Magazine named Hackers the best sci-tech book written in the last twenty years. Crypto won the grand e-book prize at the 2001 Frankfurt Book Fair. In the Plex was Amazon's best business book of 2011. In 2008 he was inducted as a SVForum Visionary, alongside Reed Hastings and Diane Greene. (Previous winners include Bill Gates, Steve Wozniak, and Vin Cerf.) He has won several Computer Press Association Awards, been finalist for the National Magazine Award and the Loeb Award, winner of a Clarion Award and many others. His 1988 book, The Unicorn's Secret, was the source material for a two-night NBC miniseries, “The Hunt for the Unicorn Killer.” Levy hails from Philadelphia, where he began his career writing for weekly papers and writing stories for Philadelphia Magazine and the Philadelphia Inquirer Sunday Magazine. He wrote extensively on rock music and sports. In 1982, he published a Rolling Stone story on computer hackers that drew him into the world of technology. He lives in New York City with his wife, Pulitzer Prize winner and bestselling author Teresa Carpenter. Named as one of the "100 most connected men" by GQ magazine, Andrew Keen is amongst the world's best known broadcasters and commentators. In addition to presenting KEEN ON, he is the host of the long-running How To Fix Democracy show. He is also the author of four prescient books about digital technology: CULT OF THE AMATEUR, DIGITAL VERTIGO, THE INTERNET IS NOT THE ANSWER and HOW TO FIX THE FUTURE. Andrew lives in San Francisco, is married to Cassandra Knight, Google's VP of Litigation & Discovery, and has two grown children. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Dotty is finally getting some answers from the newly enthroned Diane Greene the Hunt. Lucas and Danny learn about how Woodmoore VI "One" runs his operation. They group up and head out on their first mission since they've been back. Strangers in the Pines is an actual play roleplaying podcast using the monster of the week rules, inspired by things like Gravity Falls, Stranger Things, and Fringe. Follow the exploits of 3 unusual high school students as they try to unravel the mysteries in the strange small town, Pineforge, Oregon. OTHER PROJECTS FROM THE RPG EMPIRE: Dust World RPG Podcast - Neon City: Welcome to Neon City a cyberpunk-inspired city in the sci-fi western future. It follows the crew: Dr. Miller a grave doctor, Silent Mondy the sword monk, and Clarence Wells returns as the Psychomancer as they struggle against the corps, peacekeepers, and their oppressive debt in this megacity. This takes place 10 years after Dust World Season 1. This season of Dust World RPG Actual Actual play podcast is played using our new Powered By the apocalypse game Dust World RPG PBTA. https://www.therpgempire.com/dust-world-2 
 GET THE NEW DUST WORLD RPG PBTA GAME QUICKSTARTER HERE AND PLAY ALONG FOR FREE: https://www.therpgempire.com/shop/p/b2ck9ai8u8d7i6j5xs48oojt742uq2 OR JOIN THE DUST WORLD RPG MAILING LIST TO STAY UP TO DATE ON THE PROJECT AND UPCOMING THE LAUNCH: https://mailchi.mp/fa9c20a64e0e/join-the-empire-mailing-list CONNECT WITH US: Join our Discord and chat with the cast: https://discord.gg/kArf7tQ Join the Empire! SPONSOR: To sponsor one of our shows contact us at theRPGempire.sponsor@gmail.com Neon Laser Horizon by Kevin MacLeod Link: https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/7015-neon-laser-horizon License: https://filmmusic.io/standard-license Support this podcast

About JasonJason is now the Managing Director at Redpoint Ventures.Links: GitHub: https://github.com/ @jasoncwarner: https://twitter.com/jasoncwarner GitHub: https://github.com/jasoncwarner Jasoncwarner/ama: https://github.com/jasoncwarner/ama TranscriptAnnouncer: Hello, and welcome to Screaming in the Cloud with your host, Chief Cloud Economist at The Duckbill Group, 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: This episode is sponsored in part by Honeycomb. When production is running slow, it's hard to know where problems originate: is it your application code, users, or the underlying systems? I've got five bucks on DNS, personally. Why scroll through endless dashboards, while dealing with alert floods, going from tool to tool to tool that you employ, guessing at which puzzle pieces matter? Context switching and tool sprawl are slowly killing both your team and your business. You should care more about one of those than the other, which one is up to you. Drop the separate pillars and enter a world of getting one unified understanding of the one thing driving your business: production. With Honeycomb, you guess less and know more. Try it for free at Honeycomb.io/screaminginthecloud. Observability, it's more than just hipster monitoring.Corey: This episode is sponsored in part by Liquibase. If you're anything like me, you've screwed up the database part of a deployment so severely that you've been banned from touching every anything that remotely sounds like SQL, at at least three different companies. We've mostly got code deployments solved for, but when it comes to databases we basically rely on desperate hope, with a roll back plan of keeping our resumes up to date. It doesn't have to be that way. Meet Liquibase. It is both an open source project and a commercial offering. Liquibase lets you track, modify, and automate database schema changes across almost any database, with guardrails to ensure you'll still have a company left after you deploy the change. No matter where your database lives, Liquibase can help you solve your database deployment issues. Check them out today at liquibase.com. Offer does not apply to Route 53.Corey: Welcome to Screaming in the Cloud. I'm Corey Quinn. I'm joined this week by Jason Warner, the Chief Technology Officer at GifHub, although he pronounces it differently. Jason, welcome to the show.Jason: Thanks, Corey. Good to be here.Corey: So, GitHub—as you insist on pronouncing it—is one of those companies that's been around for a long time. In fact, I went to a training conducted by one of your early folks, Scott Chacon, who taught how Git works over the course of a couple of days, and honestly, I left more confused than I did when I entered. It's like, “Oh, this is super awful. Good thing I'll never need to know this because I'm not really a developer.” And I'm still not really a developer and I still don't really know how Git works, but here we are.And it's now over a decade later; you folks have been acquired by Microsoft, and you are sort of the one-stop-shop, from the de facto perspective of, “I'm going to go share some code with people on the internet. I'll use GitHub to do it.” Because, you know, copying and pasting and emailing Microsoft Word documents around isn't ideal.Jason: That is right. And I think that a bunch of things that you mentioned there, played into, you know, GitHub's early and sustained success. But my God, do you remember the old days when people had to email tar files around or drop them in weird spots?Corey: What the hell do you mean, by, “Old days?” It still blows my mind that the Linux kernel is managed by—they use Git, obviously. Linus Torvalds did write Git once upon a time—and it has the user interface you would expect for that. And the way that they collaborate is not through GitHub or anything like that. No, they use Git to generate patches, which they then email to the mailing list. Which sounds like I'm making it up, like, “Oh, well, yeah, tell another one, but maybe involve a fax machine this time.” But no, that is actually what they do.Jason: It blew my mind when I saw that, too, by the way. And you realize, too, that workflows are workflows, and people will build interesting workflows to solve their use case. Now, obviously, anyone that you would be talking to in 2021, if you walked in and said, “Yeah, install Git. Let's set up an email server and start mailing patches to each other and we're going to do it this way.” They would just kind of politely—or maybe impolitely—show you out of the room, and rightfully [laugh] so. But it works for one of the most important software projects in history: Linux.Corey: Yeah, and it works almost in spite of itself to some extent. You've come a long way as a company because initially, it was, “Oh, there's this amazing, decentralized version control system. How do we make it better? I know, we're going to take off the decentralized part of it and give it a central point that everything can go through.” And collaboratively, it works well, but I think that viewing GitHub as a system that is used to sell free Git repositories to people is rather dramatically missing the point. It feels like it's grown significantly beyond just code repository hosting. Tell me more about that.Jason: Absolutely. I remember talking to a bunch of folks right around when I was joining GitHub, and you know, there was still talk about GitHub as, you know, GitHub for lawyers, or GitHub for doctors, or what could you do in a different way? And you know, social coding as an aspect, and maybe turning into a social network with a resume. And all those things are true to a percentage standpoint. But what GitHub should be in the world is the world's most important software development platform, end-to-end software development platform.We obviously have grown a bunch since me joining in that way which we launched dependency management packages, Actions with built-in CI, we've got some deployment mechanisms, we got advanced security underneath it, we've Codespaces in beta and alpha on top of it now. But if you think about GitHub as, join, share, and see other people's code, that's evolution one. If you see it as world's largest, maybe most developed software development platform, that's evolution two, and in my mind, its natural place where it should be, given what it has done already in the world, is become the world's most important software company. I don't mean the most profitable. I just mean the most important.Corey: I would agree. I had a blog post that went up somewhat recently about the future of cloud being Microsoft's to lose. And it's not because Azure is the best cloud platform out there, with respect, and I don't need you to argue the point. It is very clearly not. It is not like other clouds, but I can see a path to where it could become far better than it is.But if I'm out there and I'm just learning how to write code—because I make terrible life choices—and I go to a boot camp or I follow a tutorial online or I take a course somewhere, I'm going to be writing code probably using VS Code, the open-source editor that you folks launched after the acquisition. And it was pretty clear that Atom wasn't quite where the world was going. Great. Then I'm going to host it on GitHub, which is a natural evolution. Then you take a look at things like GitHub Actions that build in CI/CD pipelines natively.All that's missing is a ‘Deploy to Azure' button that is the next logical step, and you're mostly there for an awful lot of use cases. But you can't add that button until Azure itself gets better. Done right, this has the potential to leave, effectively, every other cloud provider in the dust because no one can touch this.Jason: One hundred percent. I mean, the obvious thing that any other cloud should be looking at with us—or should have been before the acquisition, looking at us was, “Oh, no, they could jump over us. They could stop our funnel.” And I used internal metrics when I was talking to them about partnership that led to the sale, which was I showed them more about their running business than they knew about themselves. I can tell them where they were stacked-ranked against each other, based on the ingress and egress of all the data on GitHub, you know, and various reactions to that in those meetings was pretty astounding.And just with that data alone, it should tell you what GitHub would be capable of and what Azure would be capable of in the combination of those two things. I mean, you did mention the ‘Deploy to Azure' button; this has been a topic, obviously, pre and post-acquisition, which is, “When is that coming?” And it was the one hard rule I set during the acquisition was, there will be no ‘Deploy to Azure' button. Azure has to earn the right to get things deployed to, in my opinion. And I think that goes to what you're saying is, if we put a ‘Deploy to Azure' button on top of this and Azure is not ready for that, or is going to fail, ultimately, that looks bad for all of us. But if it earned the right and it gets better, and it becomes one of those, then, you know, people will choose it, and that is, to me, what we're after.Corey: You have to choose the moment because if you do it too soon, you'll set the entire initiative back five years. Do it too late, and you get leapfrogged. There's a golden window somewhere and finding it is going to be hard. And I think it's pretty clear that the other hyperscalers in this space are learning, or have learned, that the next 10 years of cloud or 15 years of cloud or whatever they want to call it, and the new customers that are going to come are not the same as the customers that have built the first half of the business. And they're trying to wrap their heads around that because a lot of where the growth is going to come from is established blue chips that are used to thinking in very enterprise terms.And people think I'm making fun of them when I say this, but Microsoft has 40 years' experience apologizing to enterprises for computer failures. And that is fundamentally what cloud is. It's about talking computers to business executives because as much as we talk about builders, that is not the person at an established company with an existing IT estate, who gets to determine where $50 million a year in cloud-spend is going to go.Jason: It's [laugh] very, [laugh] very true. I mean, we've entered a different spot with cloud computing in the bell curve of adoption, and if you think that they will choose the best technology every time, well, history of computing is littered with better technologies that have failed because the distribution was better on one side. As you mentioned, Microsoft has 40 years, and I wager that Microsoft has the best sales organizations and the best enterprise accounts and, you know, all that sort of stuff, blah, blah, blah, on that side of the world than anyone in the industry. They can sell to enterprises better than almost anyone in the industry. And the other hyperscalers—there's a reason why [TK 00:08:34] is running Google Cloud right now. And Amazon, classically, has been very, very bad assigned to the enterprises. They just happened to be the first mover.Corey: In the early days, it was easy. You'd have an Amazon salesperson roll up to a company, and the exec would say, “Great, why should we consider running things on AWS?” And the answer was, “Oh, I'm sorry, wrong conversation. Right now you have 80 different accounts scattered throughout your org. I'm just here to help you unify them, get some visibility into it, and possibly give you a discount along the way.” And it was a different conversation. Shadow IT was the sole driver of cloud adoption for a long time. That is no longer true. It has to go in the front door, and that is a fundamental shift in how you go to market.Jason: One hundred percent true, and it's why I think that Microsoft has been so successful with Azure, in the last, let's call it five years in that, is that the early adopters in the second wave are doing that; they're all enterprise IT, enterprise dev shops who are buying from the top down. Now, there is still the bottoms-up adoption that going to be happening, and obviously, bottom-up adoption will happen still going forward, but we've entered the phase where that's not the primary or sole mechanism I should say. The sole mechanism of buying in. We have tops-down selling still—or now.Corey: When Microsoft announced it was acquiring GitHub, there was a universal reaction of, “Oh, shit.” Because it's Microsoft; of course they're going to ruin GitHub. Is there a second option? No, unless they find a way to ruin it twice. And none of it came to pass.It is uniformly excellent, and there's a strong argument that could be made by folks who are unaware of what happened—I'm one of them, so maybe I'm right, maybe I'm wrong—that GitHub had a positive effect on Microsoft more than Microsoft had an effect on GitHub. I don't know if that's true or not, but I could believe it based upon what I've seen.Jason: Obviously, the skepticism was well deserved at the time of acquisition, let's just be honest with it, particularly given what Microsoft's history had been for about 15—well, 20 years before, previous to Satya joining. And I was one of those people in the late '90s who would write ‘M$' in various forums. I was 18 or 19 years old, and just got into—Corey: Oh, hating Microsoft was my entire personality.Jason: [laugh]. And it was, honestly, well-deserved, right? Like, they had anti-competitive practices and they did some nefarious things. And you know, I talked about Bill Gates as an example. Bill Gates is, I mean, I don't actually know how old he is, but I'm going to guess he's late '50s, early '60s, but he's basically in the redemption phase of his life for his early years.And Microsoft is making up for Ballmer years, and later Gates years, and things of that nature. So, it was well-deserved skepticism, and particularly for a mid-career to older-career crowd who have really grown to hate Microsoft over that time. But what I would say is, obviously, it's different under Satya, and Scott, and Amy Hood, and people like that. And all we really telling people is give us a chance on this one. And I mean, all of us. The people who were running GitHub at the time, including myself and, you know, let Scott and Satya prove that they are who they say they are.Corey: It's one of those things where there's nothing you could have said that would have changed the opinion of the world. It was, just wait and see. And I think we have. It's now, I daresay, gotten to a point where Microsoft announces that they're acquiring some other beloved company, then people, I think, would extend a lot more credit than they did back then.Jason: I have to give Microsoft a ton of credit, too, on this one for the way in which they handled acquisitions, like us and others. And the reason why I think it's been so successful is also the reason why I think so many others die post-acquisition, which is that Microsoft has basically—I'll say this, and I know I won't get fired because it feels like it's true. Microsoft is essentially a PE holding company at this point. It is acquired a whole bunch of companies and lets them run independent. You know, we got LinkedIn, you got Minecraft, Xbox is its own division, but it's effectively its own company inside of it.Azure is run that way. GitHub's got a CEO still. I call it the archipelago model. Microsoft's the landmass underneath the water that binds them all, and finance, and HR, and a couple of other things, but for the most part, we manifest our own product roadmap still. We're not told what to go do. And I think that's why it's successful. If we're going to functionally integrate GitHub into Microsoft, it would have died very quickly.Corey: You clearly don't mix the streams. I mean, your gaming division writes a lot of interesting games and a lot of interesting gaming platforms. And, like, one of the most popularly played puzzle games in the world is a Microsoft property, and that is, of course, logging into a Microsoft account correctly. And I keep waiting for that to bleed into GitHub, but it doesn't. GitHub is a terrific SAML provider, it is stupidly easy to log in, it's great.And at some level, I wish that would bleed into other aspects, but you can't have everything. Tell me what it's like to go through an acquisition from a C-level position. Because having been through an acquisition before, the process looks a lot like a surprise all-hands meeting one day after the markets close and, “Listen up, idiots.” And [laugh] there we go. I have to imagine with someone in your position, it's a slightly different experience.Jason: It's definitely very different for all C-levels. And then myself in particular, as the primary driver of the acquisition, obviously, I had very privy inside knowledge. And so, from my position, I knew what was happening the entire time as the primary driver from the inside. But even so, it's still disconcerting to a degree because, in many ways, you don't think you're going to be able to pull it off. Like, you know, I remember the months, and the nights, and the weekends, and the weekend nights, and all the weeks I spent on the road trying to get all the puzzle pieces lined up for the Googles, or the Microsofts, or the eventually AWSs, the VMwares, the IBMs of the world to take seriously, just from a product perspective, which I knew would lead to, obviously, acquisition conversations.And then, once you get the call from the board that says, “It's done. We signed the letter of intent,” you basically are like, “Oh. Oh, crap. Okay, hang on a second. I actually didn't—I don't actually believe in my heart of hearts that I was going to actually be able to pull that off.” And so now, you probably didn't plan out—or at least I didn't. I was like, “Shit if we actually pulled this off what comes next?” And I didn't have that what comes next, which is odd for me. I usually have some sort of a loose plan in place. I just didn't. I wasn't really ready for that.Corey: It's got to be a weird discussion, too, when you start looking at shopping a company around to be sold, especially one at the scale of GitHub because you're at such a high level of visibility in the entire environment, where—it's the idea of would anyone even want to buy us? And then, duh, of course they would. And you look the hyperscalers, for example. You have, well, you could sell it to Amazon and they could pull another Cloud9, where they shove it behind the IAM login process, fail to update the thing meaningfully over a period of years, to a point where even now, a significant portion of the audience listening to this is going to wonder if it's a service I just made up; it sounds like something they might have done, but Cloud9 sounds way too inspired for an AWS service name, so maybe not. And—which it is real. You could go sell to Google, which is going to be awesome until some executive changes roles, and then it's going to be deprecated in short order.Or then there's Microsoft, which is the wild card. It's, well, it's Microsoft. I mean, people aren't really excited about it, but okay. And I don't think that's true anymore at all. And maybe I'm not being fair to all the hyperscalers there. I mean, I'm basically insulting everyone, which is kind of my shtick, but it really does seem that Microsoft was far and away the best acquirer possible because it has been transformative. My question—if you can answer it—is, how the hell did you see that beforehand? It's only obvious—even knowing what I know now—in hindsight.Jason: So, Microsoft was a target for me going into it, and the reason why was I thought that they were in the best overall position. There was enough humility on one side, enough hubris on another, enough market awareness, probably, organizational awareness to, kind of, pull it off. There's too much hubris on one side of the fence with some of the other acquirers, and they would try to hug us too deeply, or integrate us too quickly, or things of that nature. And I think it just takes a deep understanding of who the players are and who the egos involved are. And I think egos has actually played more into acquisitions than people will ever admit.What I saw was, based on the initial partnership conversations, we were developing something that we never launched before GitHub Actions called GitHub Launch. The primary reason we were building that was GitHub launches a five, six-year journey, and it's got many, many different phases, which will keep launching over the next couple of years. The first one we never brought to market was a partnership between all of the clouds. And it served a specific purpose. One, it allowed me to get into the room with the highest level executive at every one of those companies.Two allow me to have a deep economic conversation with them at a partnership level. And three, it allowed me to show those executives that we knew what GitHub's value was in the world, and really flip the tables around and say, “We know what we're worth. We know what our value is in the world. We know where we sit from a product influence perspective. If you want to be part of this, we'll allow it.” Not, “Please come work with us.” It was more of a, “We'll allow you to be part of this conversation.”And I wanted to see how people reacted to that. You know how Amazon reacted that told me a lot about how they view the world, and how Google reacted to that showed me exactly where they viewed it. And I remember walking out of the Google conversation, feeling a very specific way based upon the reaction. And you know, when I talked to Microsoft, got a very different feel and it, kind of, confirmed a couple of things. And then when I had my very first conversation with Nat, who have known for a while before that, I realized, like, yep, okay, this is the one. Drive hard at this.Corey: If you could do it all again, would you change anything meaningful about how you approached it?Jason: You know, I think I got very lucky doing a couple of things. I was very intentional aspects of—you know, I tried to serendipitously show up, where Diane Greene was at one point, or a serendipitously show up where Satya or Scott Guthrie was, and obviously, that was all intentional. But I never sold a company like this before. The partnership and the product that we were building was obviously very intentional. I think if I were to go through the sale, again, I would probably have tried to orchestrate at least one more year independent.And it's not—for no other reason alone than what we were building was very special. And the world sees it now, but I wish that the people who built it inside GitHub got full credit for it. And I think that part of that credit gets diffused to saying, “Microsoft fixed GitHub,” and I want the people inside GitHub to have gotten a lot more of that credit. Microsoft obviously made us much better, but that was not specific to Microsoft because we're run independent; it was bringing Nat in and helping us that got a lot of that stuff done. Nat did a great job at those things. But a lot of that was already in play with some incredible engineers, product people, and in particular our sales team and finance team inside of GitHub already.Corey: When you take a look across the landscape of the fact that GitHub has become for a certain subset of relatively sad types of which I'm definitely one a household name, what do you think the biggest misconception about the company is?Jason: I still think the biggest misconception of us is that we're a code host. Every time I talk to the RedMonk folks, they get what we're building and what we're trying to be in the world, but people still think of us as SourceForge-plus-plus in many ways. And obviously, that may have been our past, but that's definitely not where we are now and, for certain, obviously, not our future. So, I think that's one. I do think that people still, to this day, think of GitLab as one of our main competitors, and I never have ever saw GitLab as a competitor.I think it just has an unfortunate naming convention, as well as, you know, PRs, and MRs, and Git and all that sort of stuff. But we take very different views of the world in how we're approaching things. And then maybe the last thing would be that what we're doing at the scale that we're doing it as is kind of easy. When I think that—you know, when you're serving almost every developer in the world at this point at the scale at which we're doing it, we've got some scale issues that people just probably will never thankfully encounter for themselves.Corey: Well, everyone on Hacker News believes that they will, as soon as they put up their hello world blog, so Kubernetes is the only way to do anything now. So, I'm told.Jason: It's quite interesting because I think that everything breaks at scale, as we all know about from the [hyperclouds 00:20:54]. As we've learned, things are breaking every day. And I think that when you get advice, either operational, technical, or managerial advice from people who are running 10 person, 50 person companies, or X-size sophisticated systems, it doesn't apply. But for whatever reason, I don't know why, but people feel inclined to give that feedback to engineers at GitHub directly, saying, “If you just…” and in many [laugh] ways, you're just like, “Well, I think that we'll have that conversation at some point, you know, but we got a 100-plus-million repos and 65 million developers using us on a daily basis.” It's a very different world.Corey: This episode is sponsored by our friends at Oracle HeatWave is a new high-performance accelerator for the Oracle MySQL Database Service. Although I insist on calling it “my squirrel.” While MySQL has long been the worlds most popular open source database, shifting from transacting to analytics required way too much overhead and, ya know, work. With HeatWave you can run your OLTP and OLAP, don't ask me to ever say those acronyms again, workloads directly from your MySQL database and eliminate the time consuming data movement and integration work, while also performing 1100X faster than Amazon Aurora, and 2.5X faster than Amazon Redshift, at a third of the cost. My thanks again to Oracle Cloud for sponsoring this ridiculous nonsense.Corey: One of the things that I really appreciate personally because, you know, when you see something that company does, it's nice to just thank people from time to time, so I'm inviting the entire company on the podcast one by one, at some point, to wind up thanking them all individually for it, but Codespaces is one of those things that I think is transformative for me. Back in the before times, and ideally the after times, whenever I travel the only computer I brought with me for a few years now has been an iPad or an iPad Pro. And trying to get an editor on that thing that works reasonably well has been like pulling teeth, my default answer has just been to remote into an EC2 instance and use vim like I have for the last 20 years. But Code is really winning me over. Having to play with code-server and other things like that for a while was obnoxious, fraught, and difficult.And finally, we got to a point where Codespaces was launched, and oh, it works on an iPad. This is actually really slick. I like this. And it was the thing that I was looking for but was trying to have to monkey patch together myself from components. And that's transformative.It feels like we're going back in many ways—at least in my model—to the days of thin clients where all the heavy lifting was done centrally on big computers, and the things that sat on people's desks were mostly just, effectively, relatively simple keyboard, mouse, screen. Things go back and forth and I'm sure we'll have super powerful things in our pockets again soon, but I like the interaction model; it solves for an awful lot of problems and that's one of the things that, at least from my perspective, that the world may not have fully wrapped it head around yet.Jason: Great observation. Before the acquisition, we were experimenting with a couple of different editors, that we wanted to do online editors. And same thing; we were experimenting with some Action CI stuff, and it just didn't make sense for us to build it; it would have been too hard, there have been too many moving parts, and then post-acquisition, we really love what the VS Code team was building over there, and you could see it; it was just going to work. And we had this one person, well, not one person. There was a bunch of people inside of GitHub that do this, but this one person at the highest level who's just obsessed with make this work on my iPad.He's the head of product design, his name's Max, he's an ex-Heroku person as well, and he was just obsessed with it. And he said, “If it works on my iPad, it's got a chance to succeed. If it doesn't work on my iPad, I'm never going to use this thing.” And the first time we booted up Codespaces—or he booted it up on the weekend, working on it. Came back and just, “Yep. This is going to be the one. Now, we got to work on those, the sanding the stones and those fine edges and stuff.”But it really does unlock a lot for us because, you know, again, we want to become the software developer platform for everyone in the world, you got to go end-to-end, and you got to have an opinion on certain things, and you got to enable certain functionality. You mentioned Cloud9 before with Amazon. It was one of the most confounding acquisitions I've ever seen. When they bought it I was at Heroku and I thought, I thought at that moment that Amazon was going to own the next 50 years of development because I thought they saw the same thing a lot of us at Heroku saw, and with the Cloud9 acquisition, what they were going to do was just going to stomp on all of us in the space. And then when it didn't happen, we just thought maybe, you know, okay, maybe something else changed. Maybe we were wrong about that assumption, too. But I think that we're on to it still. I think that it just has to do with the way you approach it and, you know, how you design it.Corey: Sorry, you just said something that took me aback for a second. Wait, you mean software can be designed? It's not this emergent property of people building thing on top of thing? There's actually a grand plan behind all these things? I've only half kidding, on some level, where if you take a look at any modern software product that is deployed into the world, it seems impossible for even small aspects of it to have been part of the initial founding design. But as a counterargument, it would almost have to be for a lot of these things. How do you square that circle?Jason: I think you have to, just like anything on spectrums and timelines, you have to flex at various times for various things. So, if you think about it from a very, very simple construct of time, you just have to think of time horizons. So, I have an opinion about what GitHub should look like in 10 years—vaguely—in five years much more firmly, and then very, very concretely, for the next year, as an example. So, a lot of the features you might see might be more emergent, but a lot of long-term work togetherness has to be loosely tied together with some string. Now, that string will be tightened over time, but it loosely has to see its way through.And the way I describe this to folks is that you don't wake up one day and say, “I'm going on vacation,” and literally just throw a finger on the map. You have to have some sort of vague idea, like, “Hey, I want to have a beach vacation,” or, “I want to have an adventure vacation.” And then you can kind of pick a destination and say, “I'm going to Hawaii,” or, “I'm going to San Diego.” And if you're standing on the East Coast knowing you're going to San Diego, you basically know that you have to just start marching west, or driving west, or whatever. And now, you don't have to have the route mapped out just yet, but you know that hey, if I'm going due southeast, I'm off course, so how do I reorient to make sure I'm still going in the right direction?That's basically what I think about as high-level, as scale design. And it's not unfair to say that a lot of the stuff is not designed today. Amazon is very famous for not designing anything; they design a singular service. But there's no cohesiveness to what Amazon—or AWS specifically, I should say, in this case—has put out there. And maybe that's not what their strategy is. I don't know the internal workings of them, but it's very clear.Corey: Well, oh, yeah. When I first started working in the AWS space and looking through the console, it like, “What is this? It feels like every service's interface was designed by a different team, but that would—oh…” and then the light bulb went on. Yeah. You ship your culture.Jason: It's exactly it. It works for them, but I think if you're going to try to do something very, very, very different, you know, it's going to look a certain way. So, intentional design, I think, is part of what makes GitHub and other products like it special. And if you think about it, you have to have an end-to-end view, and then you can build verticals up and down inside of that. But it has to work on the horizontal, still.And then if you hire really smart people to build the verticals, you get those done. So, a good example of this is that I have a very strong opinion about the horizontal workflow nature of GitHub should look like in five years. I have a very loose opinion about what the matrix build system of Actions looks like. Because we have very, very smart people who are working on that specific problem, so long as that maps back and snaps into the horizontal workflows. And that's how it can work together.Corey: So, when you look at someone who is, I don't know, the CTO of a wildly renowned company that is basically still catering primarily to developers slash engineers, but let's be honest, geeks, it's natural to think that, oh, they must be the alpha geek. That doesn't really apply to you from everything I've been able to uncover. Am I just not digging deeply enough, or are you in fact, a terrible nerd?Jason: [laugh]. I am. I'm a terrible nerd. I am a very terrible nerd. I feel very lucky, obviously, to be in the position I'm in right now, in many ways, and people call me up and exactly that.It's like, “Hey, you must be king of the geeks.” And I'm like, “[laugh], ah, funny story here.” But um, you know, I joke that I'm not actually supposed to be in tech in first place, the way I grew up, and where I did, and how, I wasn't supposed to be here. And so, it's serendipitous that I am in tech. And then turns out I had an aptitude for distributed systems, and complex, you know, human systems as well. But when people dig in and they start talking about topics, I'm confounded. I never liked Star Wars, I never like Star Trek. Never got an anime, board games, I don't play video games—Corey: You are going to get letters.Jason: [laugh]. When I was at Canonical, oh, my goodness, the stuff I tried to hide about myself, and, like, learn, like, so who's this Boba Fett dude. And, you know, at some point, obviously, you don't have to pretend anymore, but you know, people still assume a bunch stuff because, quote, “Nerd” quote, “Geek” culture type of stuff. But you know, some interesting facts that people end up being surprised by with me is that, you know, I was very short in high school and I grew in college, so I decided that I wanted to take advantage of my newfound height and athleticism as you grow into your body. So, I started playing basketball, but I obsessed over it.I love getting good at something. So, I'd wake up at four o'clock in the morning, and go shoot baskets, and do drills for hours. Well, I got really good at it one point, and I end up playing in a Pro-Am basketball game with ex-NBA Harlem Globetrotter legends. And that's just not something you hear about in most engineering circles. You might expect that out of a salesperson or a marketing person who played pro ball—or amateur ball somewhere, or college ball or something like that. But not someone who ends up running the most important software company—from a technical perspective—in the world.Corey: It's weird. People counterintuitively think that, on some level, that code is the answer to all things. And that, oh, all this human interaction stuff, all the discussions, all the systems thinking, you have to fit a certain profile to do that, and anyone outside of that is, eh, they're not as valuable. They can get ignored. And we see that manifesting itself in different ways.And even if we take a look at people whose profess otherwise, we take a look at folks who are fresh out of a boot camp and don't understand much about the business world yet; they have transformed their lives—maybe they're fresh out of college, maybe didn't even go to college—and 18 weeks later, they are signing up for six-figure jobs. Meanwhile, you take a look at virtually any other business function, in order to have a relatively comparable degree of earning potential, it takes years of experience and being very focused on a whole bunch of other things. There's a massive distortion around technical roles, and that's a strange and difficult thing to wrap my head around. But as you're talking about it, it goes both ways, too. It's the idea of, “Oh, I'll become technical than branch into other things.” It sounded like you started off instead with a non-technical direction and then sort of adopted that from other sides. Is that right, or am I misremembering exactly how the story unfolds?Jason: No, that's about right. People say, “Hey, when did I start programming?” And it's very in vogue, I think, for a lot of people to say, “I started programming at three years old,” or five years old, or whatever, and got my first computer. I literally didn't get my first computer until I was 18-years-old. And I started programming when I got to a high school co-op with IBM at 17.It was Lotus Notes programming at the time. Had no exposure to it before. What I did, though, in college was IBM told me at the time, they said, “If you get a computer science degree will guarantee you a job.” Which for a kid who grew up the way I grew up, that is manna from heaven type of deal. Like, “You'll guarantee me a job inside where don't have to dig ditches all day or lay asphalt? Oh, my goodness. What's computer science? I'll go figure it out.”And when I got to school, what I realized was I was really far behind. Everyone was that ubergeek type of thing. So, what I did is I tried to hack the system, and what I said was, “What is a topic that nobody else has an advantage on from me?” And so I basically picked the internet because the internet was so new in the mid-'90s that most people were still not fully up to speed on it. And then the underpinnings in the internet, which basically become distributed systems, that's where I started to focus.And because no one had a real advantage, I just, you know, could catch up pretty quickly. But once I got into computers, it turned out that I was probably a very average developer, maybe even below average, but it was the system's thinking that I stood out on. And you know, large-scale distributed systems or architectures were very good for me. And then, you know, that applies not, like, directly, but it applies decently well to human systems. It's just, you know, different types of inputs and outputs. But if you think about organizations at scale, they're barely just really, really, really complex and kind of irrational distributed systems.Corey: Jason, thank you so much for taking the time to speak with me today. If people want to learn more about who you are, what you're up to, how you think about the world, where can they find you?Jason: Twitter's probably the best place at this point. Just @jasoncwarner on Twitter. I'm very unimaginative. My name is my GitHub handle. It's my Twitter username. And that's the best place that I, kind of, interact with folks these days. I do an AMA on GitHub. So, if you ever want to ask me anything, just kind of go to jasoncwarner/ama on GitHub and drop a question in one of the issues and I'll get to answering that. Yeah, those are the best spots.Corey: And we will, of course, include links to those things in the [show notes 00:33:52]. Thank you so much for taking the time to speak with me today. I really appreciate it.Jason: Thanks, Corey. It's been fun.Corey: Jason Warner, Chief Technology Officer at GitHub. 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 your podcast platform of choice, whereas if you've hated this podcast, please leave a five-star review in your podcast platform of choice anyway, along with a comment that includes a patch.Corey: If your AWS bill keeps rising and your blood pressure is doing the same, then you need The Duckbill Group. We help companies fix their AWS bill by making it smaller and less horrifying. The Duckbill Group works for you, not AWS. We tailor recommendations to your business and we get to the point. Visit duckbillgroup.com to get started.Announcer: This has been a HumblePod production. Stay humble.

David Helgason is the Founder @ Unity, the company that gives content creators the tools to create innovative RT3D experiences and deliver better processes for almost every industry. Prior to their IPO in 2020, Unity raised from the likes of Sequoia, Thrive, DFJ, SilverLake and then individuals including Max Levchin and VMWare's Diane Greene. If that was not enough, David is currently a Partner @ Nordic Makers, a group of ten top Nordic angels working together to be the best angel investors in the Nordics. David also serves on the board of Labster, Realm.io and Quizup. In Today’s Episode You Will Learn: 1.) How David made his way from founding Unity in a cafe in Denmark to the $10Bn+ public company it is today? 2.) How would David describe his leadership style? How has it changed over time? What were the biggest challenges David faced as the Founding CEO? 3.) What was the decision-making behind David's transition out of the CEO role? What was challenging? What was key to make the transition successful? How did David know John Riccitiello was the right person for the role? How does David advise other founders contemplating the same? 4.) How does David analyse his own board management style? What are the most important elements a board member can do to help the company and founder? What makes Roelof Botha such a special board member to have? How does David advise new board members today to be successful? 5.) Why does David believe running a company is like a liberal art? How does David think about the importance of vision? How does David assess the current state of the European tech landscape? What can be done to improve it? How can investor approach change for the better? As always you can follow Harry and The Twenty Minute VC on Twitter here! Likewise, you can follow Harry on Instagram here for mojito madness and all things 20VC.

Chris Schroeder is a global angel investor & advisor to tech startups with a keen interest in emerging markets. Chris is the co-founder of Next Billion Ventures, a venture capital fund focused on the next billion digital consumers across global emerging markets, he is a Network Partner for Village Global, an early venture capital fund backed by Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, Diane Greene, Sara Blakely, Jeff Bezos, Reid Hoffman and many more exceptional entrepreneurs. He sits on the investment committees of Wamda Capital & Saudi Telecom Ventures and he is on the board of several private and NGO boards. And that's just the tip of the iceberg. Chris started out in politics with the George W Bush (Senior) presidential campaign before becoming the CEO of the Washington Post/ Newsweek interactive. In 2005 he co-founded Health Central, a platform that helps people find and share real-life experiences related to their health needs. Health Central was backed by the likes of Sequoia, Polaris Ventures and the Carlyle Group to name a few and was acquired by Remedy Health in 2012. In 2013, Chris published the first book on the Middle East & North Africa's entrepreneurship scene called: Startup Rising — The Entrepreneurial Revolution Remaking the Middle East — with a forward by renowned investor Marc Andreessen. I've known Chris for nearly a decade and am delighted he let me ask the questions this time as he is the one who is always curious and eager to be of service. We talked about Chris's transition into entrepreneurship from politics and corporate life, his fascination with entrepreneurship in the Middle East and emerging markets, the sectors he's currently considering for investment and we touch on our need to step up and take control of our lives and also our biases. For those interested in learning more about fundraising for startups and venture capital, check out these 2 books: [Venture deals](https://www.venturedeals.com) by Brad Feld and (Secrets of Sand Hill Road](Secrets of Sand Hill Road) by Scott Kupor. Thanks to [Joi Gifts](http://joigifts.com) for their support on this episode. Joi Gifts is the largest gifting marketplace in the Middle East, operating in 7 countries and covering 22 major cities. Use the code loulou15 to get a 15% discount on everything. Enjoy!

Chris Schroeder is a global angel investor & advisor to tech startups with a keen interest in emerging markets. Chris is the co-founder of Next Billion Ventures, a venture capital fund focused on the next billion digital consumers across global emerging markets, he is a Network Partner for Village Global, an early venture capital fund backed by Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, Diane Greene, Sara Blakely, Jeff Bezos, Reid Hoffman and many more exceptional entrepreneurs. He sits on the investment committees of Wamda Capital & Saudi Telecom Ventures and he is on the board of several private and NGO boards. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Chris started out in politics with the George W Bush (Senior) presidential campaign before becoming the CEO of the Washington Post/ Newsweek interactive. In 2005 he co-founded Health Central, a platform that helps people find and share real-life experiences related to their health needs. Health Central was backed by the likes of Sequoia, Polaris Ventures and the Carlyle Group to name a few and was acquired by Remedy Health in 2012. In 2013, Chris published the first book on the Middle East & North Africa’s entrepreneurship scene called: Startup Rising — The Entrepreneurial Revolution Remaking the Middle East — with a forward by renowned investor Marc Andreessen. I’ve known Chris for nearly a decade and am delighted he let me ask the questions this time as he is the one who is always curious and eager to be of service. We talked about Chris's transition into entrepreneurship from politics and corporate life, his fascination with entrepreneurship in the Middle East and emerging markets, the sectors he’s currently considering for investment and we touch on our need to step up and take control of our lives and also our biases. For those interested in learning more about fundraising for startups and venture capital, check out these 2 books: Venture deals by Brad Feld and (Secrets of Sand Hill Road](Secrets of Sand Hill Road) by Scott Kupor. Thanks to Joi Gifts for their support on this episode. Joi Gifts is the largest gifting marketplace in the Middle East, operating in 7 countries and covering 22 major cities. Use the code loulou15 to get a 15% discount on everything. Enjoy!

Links mentioned in the podcast: Fireblocks >>> https://www.fireblocks.com/ The Four Steps to the Epiphany: Successful Strategies for Products That Win >>> https://www.amazon.co.uk/Four-Steps-Epiphany-Successful-Strategies/dp/0989200507 Play Bigger: How Pirates, Dreamers, and Innovators Create and Dominate Markets >>> https://www.amazon.co.uk/Play-Bigger-Dreamers-Innovators-Dominate/dp/0062407619 Masters Of Scale - Escape the competition - Peter Thiel, Co-founder & CEO of PayPal >>> https://mastersofscale.com/peter-thiel-escape-the-competition/ About this episode: PayPal's Peter Thiel knows: Your goal isn’t to beat the competition — it’s to escape the competition altogether. Thiel is a former colleague, frequent co-investor and long-time intellectual sparring partner with Host Reid Hoffman. Enjoy the sparks. Masters Of Scale - Look Sideways - Diane Greene, Co-founder & Former CEO of VMware >>> https://mastersofscale.com/diane-greene-look-sideways/ About this episode: Cloud computing pioneer Diane Greene knows: You don’t need a scaleable idea from day one. You might not know what your product will look like, or how you’ll get to market, or how you’ll make money. It's OK. The most scalable ideas often come at you sideways.

Rachel Hepworth is VP of Marketing @ Pilot, the startup that offers the best bookkeeping, tax and CFO services for growing businesses. To date they have raised over $58M from some of the best in the business including Index Ventures, John Collison, Paul English, Drew Houston, Frederic Kerrest, Diane Greene and more incredible names. As for Rachel, prior to joining Pilot, she saw the hyper-growth of Slack firsthand enjoying a couple of different roles including Head of Growth Marketing and then also Head of Self Service and Platform Marketing. Before Slack, Rachel spent 4 years at LinkedIn where she led the product marketing team for content experiences. Finally, before LinkedIn, Rachel spent close to 3 years at Climate Corporation, prior to their $1Bn exit to Monsanto.   In Today’s Episode We Discuss: How Rachel made her way from marketing manager at Climate Corporation to VP of marketing at Pilot today? What were Rachel’s biggest takeaways from her time seeing the hyper-growth at Slack? How does Rachel think about organic growth and inciting word of mouth today? How does Rachel think they can be more accurately tracked and measured? How does Rachel think about the optimal ratio of paid to organic in growth? Would Rachel agree in paid, your payback period doubles every $5M you spend? With the rise of product-led growth, are we seeing a fundamental shift in the structure of sales and marketing? How does Rachel see marketing move ever close to the function of customer success today? What is the optimal way for customer success and marketing to work together?  How does Rachel think about the importance of getting in front of your customers? Why does Rachel believe that data tells you the what and customer conversations tell you the why? What is the right way to structure your customer conversations? Where do so many people go wrong here?       Rachel’s 60 Second SaaStr: Hardest element of your role with Pilot today? If Rachel could change one thing about SaaS today, what would it be? Who is killing it in SaaS marketing? Why? If you would like to find out more about the show and the guests presented, you can follow us on Twitter here: Jason Lemkin Harry Stebbings SaaStr Rachel Hepworth

Google anunció un panel para discutir las implicaciones éticas del manejo de inteligencia artificial y es buen momento para discutir la manera en que se desarrolla, que se busca y cómo tratamos a estas herramientas. Lecturas de Interés:Panel de Google para discutir ética en IAhttps://www.bbc.com/news/technology-47714921It will discuss recommendations about how to use technologies such as facial recognition. Last year, Google’s then-head of cloud computing, Diane Greene, described facial recognition tech as having "inherent bias” due to a lack of diverse data.Los principios de inteligencia artificial de Googlehttps://www.blog.google/technology/ai/ai-principles/We recognize that such powerful technology raises equally powerful questions about its use. How AI is developed and used will have a significant impact on society for many years to come. As a leader in AI, we feel a deep responsibility to get this right.Robots Should be Slaves - Texto de Joanna J. Bryson sobre el papel que deben cubrir nuestros compañeros artificiales.http://www.cs.bath.ac.uk/~jjb/ftp/Bryson-Slaves-Book09.htmlRobots should not be described as persons, nor given legal nor moral responsibility for their actions. Robots are fully owned by us. We determine their goals and behaviour, either directly or indirectly through specifying their intelligence or how their intelligence is acquired. In humanising them, we not only further dehumanise real people, but also encourage poor human decision making in the allocation of resources and responsibility.

Google anunció un panel para discutir las implicaciones éticas del manejo de inteligencia artificial y es buen momento para discutir la manera en que se desarrolla, que se busca y cómo tratamos a estas herramientas. Lecturas de Interés:Panel de Google para discutir ética en IAhttps://www.bbc.com/news/technology-47714921It will discuss recommendations about how to use technologies such as facial recognition. Last year, Google’s then-head of cloud computing, Diane Greene, described facial recognition tech as having "inherent bias” due to a lack of diverse data.Los principios de inteligencia artificial de Googlehttps://www.blog.google/technology/ai/ai-principles/We recognize that such powerful technology raises equally powerful questions about its use. How AI is developed and used will have a significant impact on society for many years to come. As a leader in AI, we feel a deep responsibility to get this right.Robots Should be Slaves - Texto de Joanna J. Bryson sobre el papel que deben cubrir nuestros compañeros artificiales.http://www.cs.bath.ac.uk/~jjb/ftp/Bryson-Slaves-Book09.htmlRobots should not be described as persons, nor given legal nor moral responsibility for their actions. Robots are fully owned by us. We determine their goals and behaviour, either directly or indirectly through specifying their intelligence or how their intelligence is acquired. In humanising them, we not only further dehumanise real people, but also encourage poor human decision making in the allocation of resources and responsibility.

Show: 372Overview: Aaron and Brian talk with Kurt Schrader (@kurt, Founder/CEO of @Clubhouse) and Mitch Wainer (@MitchWainer, CMO of @Clubhouse) about the evolution of project management for software development teams. Cloud News of the Week:Google hires Thomas Kurian to replace Diane Greene - https://www.cnbc.com/2018/11/16/google-cloud-ceo-greene-being-replaced-by-former-oracle-exec-kurian.htmlShow Interview Links:Clubhouse Homepage - https://clubhouse.io/Clubhouse Enterprise Edition - https://www.clubhouse.io/enterpriseShow Sponsor Links:Datadog Homepage - Modern Monitoring and Analytics[Datadog] Try it yourself by starting a free, 14-day trial today. Listeners of this podcast will also receive a free Datadog T-shirtTopic 1 - Welcome to the show, both us you. Give us a little bit of your backgrounds, and how you got together to start Clubhouse. Topic 2 - Tell us about the Clubhouse platform. It’s focused on helping companies build software more rapidly and with better collaboration. What was broken about software development before Clubhouse came along? Topic 3 - Both of your have been involved in software development for many years. We love talking to founders that have a built a product that they need/want to use. What were some of your moments that convinced you that it was time to build something new vs. being frustrated with what existed?Topic 4 - Let’s talk about the Clubhouse platform. What makes it unique, and what are some of the benefits of bringing together things like Stories, Project Metrics, Kanbana boards, integrated Collaboration into a single platform vs. many tools. Topic 5 - The Enterprise version of Clubhouse just shipped. The company already has more than 1000 active customers. What have you learned from them that helped shape the Enterprise product? Feedback?Email: show at thecloudcast dot netTwitter: @thecloudcastnet and @ServerlessCast

Google parent Alphabet generated 86 percent of its revenue from advertising last year. On Friday the woman leading its best shot at building a second big revenue stream said she is moving on. Diane Greene, a storied cloud computing entrepreneur and executive, has been leading Google's cloud computing division since early 2016.

Welcome to The Story After Show, Week 5!  In this week's show, CEO and Founder of The Mission, Chad Grills, talks with Stephanie Postles, Ian Faison, and special guest Ellen Petry Leanse as they discuss: the four BIG ideas/principles that come from the stories this week that feature Angie Hicks, Diane Greene, Steven Ross, and Daniel Alarick Plus, they show you how to apply these big ideas in your own life  We hope you enjoy this After Show. Whether you work in: business, technology, a startup, or something completely different, it's our goal to create an after show that helps give you actionable ideas and tactics to apply to your own life to increase your health, wealth, and wisdom!  Show Timestamps 1:10 Angie Hicks 12:28 Diane Greene 20:30 Steven Ross 27:10 Daniel Alarick

With Coté away attending to family matters, Matt Ray and Brandon have a lively discussion about the origins of VMware, product strategy and preview possible AWS Re:invent announcements. We also discuss how to celebrate Thanksgiving when you are an living down under. Most importantly, we reveal the new Software Define Talk logo! Show Notes: VMware Origins: Masters of Scale: Look Sideways — with Google / VMware’s Diane Greene (https://overcast.fm/+I6DDWoxy4). Strategy Discussion: Many Strategies Fail Because They’re Not Actually Strategies (https://hbr.org/2017/11/many-strategies-fail-because-theyre-not-actually-strategies) Bonus Links: Mesosphere, a San Francis (https://www.businessinsider.com.au/florian-leibert-mesosphere-ceo-reveals-50-million-run-rate-2017-11)c (https://www.businessinsider.com.au/florian-leibert-mesosphere-ceo-reveals-50-million-run-rate-2017-11)o cloud-infrastructure startup that once famously turned down an acquisition from Microsoft, is now on a $US50 million annualized run rate. (https://www.businessinsider.com.au/florian-leibert-mesosphere-ceo-reveals-50-million-run-rate-2017-11) Introducing Certified Kubernetes (and Google Kubernetes Engine!) (https://cloudplatform.googleblog.com/2017/11/introducing-Certified-Kubernetes-and-Google-Kubernetes-Engine.html) Stressed about serverless lock-in? Don't be (https://www.techrepublic.com/article/stressed-about-serverless-lock-in-dont-be/) Sponsor: This episode is sponsored by SolarWinds Cloud, Sign up for a free trial of SolarWinds AppOptics by visiting www.solarwinds.com/sdt (http://www.solarwinds.com/sdt) and get a free launch t-shirt, Listener Survey & More Get a SDT Laptop Sticker when your fill out the SDT audience survey (https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/SSCKN86) Check out the Software Defined Talk Members Only White-Paper Ex (https://www.patreon.com/sdt)e (https://www.patreon.com/sdt)g (https://www.patreon.com/sdt)esi (https://www.patreon.com/sdt)s (https://www.patreon.com/sdt) podcast Join us all in the SDT Slack (http://www.softwaredefinedtalk.com/slack). Recommendations Matt Ray: Laughing for Days (https://twitter.com/matwhi/status/932104788182933505) Brandon: Movie: American Made (https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/american_made_2017/)

Business plan not entirely clear? Not sure how you’ll make enough money or find your users? That's OK. Really. The most scalable ideas often come at you sideways. You'll find yourself crabwalking from a small market to a bigger one to one of unimaginable scale. We talk to the master of the entrepreneurial crabwalk, Diane Greene, who brought us into the age of cloud computing. As the founding CEO of VMWare and now the head of Google’s cloud division, she shares how she scampered sideways into a market of boundless potential.

This week, if you can stand it, we talk about why kubernetes won (no solid conclusions are reached), the announcement around Cisco and Google, and IBM’s new private cloud stack, “IBM Cloud Private.” This week’s exegesis The Corporate Podcast, plus EBC’ing - sign-up and listen (https://www.patreon.com/posts/corporate-ebcing-15181785)! Last week we looked at The Lone Wolf Analyst, by way of Ben Thompson (https://www.patreon.com/posts/lone-wolf-15073204). This week in kubernetes Why did kubernetes win? (Nerds like to tinker, Google brand? Did the rest of us just need to buy more native advertising in The New Stack?) Cisco and Google https://d2mxuefqeaa7sj.cloudfront.net/s_209EE5C7BA94C1300EA3F28BFEF5BA18054817A141C02AC7895880D0A1E4AA6D_1509630972019_image.png Not really sure what this Cisco/Google thing i (https://www.enterprisetech.com/2017/10/25/cisco-google-join-forces-hybrid-cloud/)s. What does Cisco bring to the table? “Cisco's HyperFlex platform that includes management tools to enforce security and other policies as applications and services are released with greater frequency.” Private cloud bundling of kubernetes, Istio, all the great cloud natives. "This is what we hear customers ask for," Diane Greene. Big picture: what’s Google’s goal here? Is it really as simple as “on-ramp?” Even bigger picture: how did it kubernetes win? IBM’s private cloud stack https://d2mxuefqeaa7sj.cloudfront.net/s_209EE5C7BA94C1300EA3F28BFEF5BA18054817A141C02AC7895880D0A1E4AA6D_1509643774051_image.png So, is the “Blue Mix” brand out the mix? IBM page (https://www.ibm.com/developerworks/community/wikis/home?lang=en#!/wiki/W1559b1be149d_43b0_881e_9783f38faaff/page/Overview%20of%20IBM%20Cloud%20Private): “Overview of IBM Cloud Private.” Another announcement overview (https://www-01.ibm.com/common/ssi/cgi-bin/ssialias?infotype=AN&subtype=CA&htmlfid=897/ENUS217-466&appname=USN). “Is built on the latest versions of Kubernetes and Docker” - what that (https://www-01.ibm.com/common/ssi/cgi-bin/ssialias?infotype=AN&subtype=CA&htmlfid=897/ENUS217-466&appname=USN) mean? Jeffrey Burt (https://www.nextplatform.com/2017/11/01/ibm-builds-private-cloud-stack-kubernetes-containers/): “IBM Cloud Private can run on a variety of infrastructures, including the vendor’s own mainframe and Power systems, its hyperconverged infrastructure that runs Nutanix software, and IBM Storage’s Spectrum Access solution. In addition, it can run on systems from Dell EMC, Lenovo, Cisco Systems and NetApp, and can be deployed by such VMware, Canonical and other OpenStack distributions as well as bare-metal systems. The private cloud platform also includes such developer services for data analytics as Db2, Db2 Warehouse, PostgreSQL and MongoDB, developer tools like Netcool, UrbanCode, and Cloud Brokerage and open-source management software such as Jenkins, Prometheus, Grafana, and ElasticSearch.” Chris Mellor, (https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/11/01/ibms_containerised_cloud_private/) The Register (https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/11/01/ibms_containerised_cloud_private/): All the great middleware now in (Docker) containers: “IBM has provided containerised versions of WebSphere Liberty and Open Liberty, MQ, and DB2, plus Microservice Builder as software bundle components. For example, Cloud Private for Application Modernization provides Cloud Private capabilities plus WebSphere Application Server Network Deployment, MQ Advanced, API Connect Professional, DB2 Direct Advanced and Urban Code Deploy.” Value-prop’in! “The standout aim is to help legacy apps transition to a more cloud-native style of construction and operation so that they can run inside a public cloud-like environment on-premises – private cloud – and connect to and/or be integrated with public clouds in some fashion. The destination in IBM's view, of the evolution of legacy apps is the hybrid cloud with private cloud as a stepping stone.” The white papers also mention “regulated industries” and the like. Goin’ for that enterprise cloud, hey, boy. Also: Coté’s highlights (https://cote.io/2017/11/01/ibms-new-private-cloud-stack-its-got-the-kubernetes-containers/), brief coverage from Tom Krazit at GeekWire (https://www.geekwire.com/2017/ibm-launches-new-version-private-cloud-built-kubernetes-support/). An oral history of “bursting”: from 2010 to 2017. Congress now follows you Kind of a dick move to not send the CEOs (https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/11/01/facebook_twitter_google_senate_russia/). Holy Shit! “Revealing exactly what was smeared all over the internet during the 2016 elections would, we reckon, be like opening Pandora's box: it would allow citizens to join the dots between Kremlin-crafted lies, the gradual acceptance of those lies online, the discussion and even promotion of said lies on mainstream news networks, resulting in, presumably, dozens of clips of senators responding with indignation about made-up information. In short, everyone is going to look like a chump if it turns out everything argued over last year was based on nothing but Kremlin-devised myths and urban legends. Rumors, in other words, designed to destabilize American politics and perhaps install a preferred candidate in the White House.” Looks like my rep has been keeping up on Ben Thompson: ‘Senator John Cornyn (R-TX) asked: "Why should you be treated any differently to the press?" All three California outfits responded with a version of the fact that they are "platforms" and not publishers, that their content is user-created, and that they protect people's right to free speech and expression. Cornyn made it clear he was not persuaded. "They may be a distinction lost on most of us," he said.’ Speaking of (https://stratechery.com/2017/tech-goes-to-washington/)…Ben nails the analysis: “Facebook served [an estimated] 276 million unique ads per quarter, and my entire point was the same as Kennedy’s: there is no way that Facebook could ever review every ad, much less investigate who is behind them, without completely ruining their revenue model.” ‘What this hearing highlighted, though, is the degree to which the position of Facebook in particular has become more tenuous. The fact of the matter is that Facebook (and Google) is more powerful than any entity we have seen before. Magnifying the problem is that, over the last year, Facebook has decided to “take responsibility”, and what is that but a commitment to exercise their control over what people see?’ Tech industry doesn’t think/care about the effects of their products https://twitter.com/kumailn/status/925828976882282496 BONUS LINKS! Not covered in show MongoIPO Don’t hate if you have options (http://news.architecht.io/issues/why-enterprise-it-startups-should-be-rooting-for-mongodb-79152). ## Australasian technology update - what’s the long-term plan at Atlassian? "Revenue climbed 41.7% year over year to $193.8 million.” Things are going well down under (https://cote.io/2017/10/20/atlassian-revenue-up-47-yy/). Well, they do spend as much on R&D as sales & marketing (https://finance.google.com/finance?q=NASDAQ%3ATEAM&fstype=ii&ei=bCL7WamlC5K2e5LttLgP). Compare to Mongo, which is 1:2 or so (https://finance.google.com/finance?q=NASDAQ%3AMDB&fstype=ii&ei=8iH7Wfi2NMTEeKLXj7gF). Misc Using the Correct Tool for the Job (http://jjasghar.github.io/blog/2017/10/31/using-the-correct-tool-for-the-job/) written by J Asghar (https://twitter.com/jjasghar) (http://jjasghar.github.io/blog/2017/10/31/using-the-correct-tool-for-the-job/)- Monetizing The Hot Dog (https://www.theverge.com/circuitbreaker/2017/10/18/16500522/snap-dancing-hot-dog-costume-halloween-for-sale) - I’m sure the ~~VC~~ stockholders are ecstatic about this development Meta, follow-up, etc. Patreon (https://www.patreon.com/sdt) - like anyone who starts these things, I have no idea WTF it is, if it’s a good idea, or if I should be ashamed. Need some product/market fit. Check out the Software Defined Talk Members Only White-Paper Exegesis podcast over there. Join us all in the SDT Slack (http://www.softwaredefinedtalk.com/slack). Mid-roll & Conferences Get $50 off Casper mattresses with the code: horraymattray The Register’s conference, Continuous Lifecycle (https://continuouslifecycle.london/), in London (May 2018) has it’s CFP open, closed October 20th - submit something (https://continuouslifecycle.london/call-for-papers/)! Coté’s junk: Innotech Microservices Conference (http://www.innotechconferences.com/austin/about-2/microservices-day/), Austin, 11/16/2017. SpringOne Platform registration open (https://2017.springoneplatform.io/ehome/s1p/registration), Dec 4th to 5th. Use the code S1P200_Cote for $200 off registration (https://2017.springoneplatform.io/ehome/s1p/registration). Coté and many others speaking. Matt’s on the Road! November 6-7 - AgileNZ (http://www.agilenz.co.nz) November 10 - Microsoft Open Source Roadshow (https://www.microsoftevents.com/profile/form/index.cfm?PKformID=0x2525006abcd&) Recommendations Matt Ray: Kevin Shields/Brian Eno collaboration, “Only Once Away My Son (https://pitchfork.com/reviews/tracks/brian-eno-kevin-shields-only-once-away-my-son/). (https://pitchfork.com/reviews/tracks/brian-eno-kevin-shields-only-once-away-my-son/)” (https://pitchfork.com/reviews/tracks/brian-eno-kevin-shields-only-once-away-my-son/) Brandon: Mindhunter (https://www.netflix.com/title/80114855) and Netflix Skip Intro (https://www.theverge.com/2017/3/17/14959650/netflix-skip-intro-button) Coté: Programmed Inequality (http://amzn.to/2z9iF3q).

Diane Greene is SVP of Google Cloud and she was also the CEO and cofounder of VMware.Jessica Livingston is cofounder of YC.

In this episode of the ARCHITECHT Show, co-hosts Derrick Harris (ARCHITECHT) and Barb Darrow (Fortune) speak with Anthony Goldbloom, co-founder and CEO of machine learning competition platform Kaggle. Goldbloom discusses Google's recent acquisition of Kaggle and how that affects the company, as well as a wide variety of machine learning topics. Among them: the rise of deep learning and AI, the best machine learning techniques for certain jobs, and the evolution of data science since Kaggle began. In the news segment, Derrick and Barb discuss AWS's 5,600 open positions, Google boss Diane Greene's claim that her company can overtake AWS in 5 years, and the state of OpenStack and the private cloud.

Google IO Google Home Tensor Processing Unit Cloud chief Diane Greene on how Google can beat Amazon and Microsoft How to Import IP Address Reputation Lists to Automatically Update AWS WAF IP Blacklists

SPONSORS Get $50 off DevOpsDays Minneapolis, July 20th and 21st, with the code SDT2016. I'll be getting some for Chicago and Seattle sometime too. Interested in speeding your software's cycle time, reducing release cycles, and a resilient cloud platform? Check out the free ebook on Cloud Foundry (http://pivotal.io/cloud-foundry-the-cloud-native-platform?utm_source=Cote-promo&utm_medium=LP-link&utm_campaign=Duncan-Winn-OReilly-Cloud-Native-eBook-Q116) or take Cloud Foundry for a test drive with Pivotal Web Services (http://try.run.pivotal.io/SDT?utm_source=cotepivotallandingpage&utm_medium=landingpage&utm_term=FreeTwoMonthsPWS&utm_content=button&utm_campaign=cote). See those and other things at cote.io/pivotal (http://cote.io/pivotal/). Show notes If you like video, see this episodes' video recording (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y8HsST6BzTc). Cost Cutting Perks in Silicon Valley More from the snack-track files (http://www.businessinsider.com/cost-cutting-at-dropbox-and-silicon-valley-startups-2016-5). Employees at Kabam, the online-gaming startup worth $1 billion, recently felt like there was a decrease in the number of office snack stands. Although the company denies it, some believe the snack stands are now placed more sporadically in order to reduce the employees' frequency of snack consumption by making it a little harder to get to them. No Uber in Austin Brandon sets us straight on the details. Coté defends the uber-haters. Will Containers Replace Hypervisors, Almost Certainly Yes TL;DR; is the title :) (https://cloudscaling.com/blog/cloud-computing/will-containers-replace-hypervisors-almost-certainly/) Randy Bias, the "pets vs. cattle" godfather, makes a strong case for hypervisors being on the way out. Once all the legacy apps are re-written to be in containers (cloud native) or decom'ed (you know, in the future (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kmzpdd4pWvM&feature=youtu.be&t=1m19s)), and we don't want to run multiple OSes (so don't need the driver handling that hypervisors give us)...no need for hypervisors. QED. Cloud chief Diane Greene on how Google can beat Amazon and Microsoft A brief interview (http://siliconangle.com/blog/2016/05/06/cloud-chief-diane-greene-on-how-google-can-beat-amazon-and-microsoft/) "Q: How will Google differentiate against AWS and Microsoft? A: Only 5 percent of workloads are in the public cloud. Effectively you're riding another company's innovation curve for free. We've open-sourced a lot of technologies like Kubernetes and TensorFlow. As we add more features, we'll be able to share a lot more strengths with applications." - can OSS be used to attack on-premises cloud? Not in my tater salad (https://twitter.com/Oak2278/status/537436262097907713)! BONUS LINKS! Apprenda buys Kismatic "Apprenda will also take the lead in building out Windows support for Kubernetes, which has been Linux focused," said Sinclair Schuller (http://fortune.com/2016/05/19/apprenda-buys-kismatic/), chief executive of Apprenda. Do you even pop-up, bro? (https://apprenda.com/blog/apprenda-acquires-kismatic/) Apprenda pivoted towards Kubernetes recently, Kismatic was building "Enterprise friendly" Kubernetes "Per Incident" pricing (https://apprenda.com/kubernetes-support/) is really hard to scale. Perhaps Brandon has comments on open source business models. "[I]t is what most would call a dynamic market." (http://fortune.com/2016/05/19/apprenda-buys-kismatic/) Digging into Microsoft's Cloud Numbers Charts! (https://mattermark.com/taking-stock-cloud-wars/) Microsoft has something like $102.6bn cash on-hand (http://www.geekwire.com/2016/apple-microsoft-google-hold-nearly-quarter-u-s-corporate-cash/). Smoke 'em if you got 'em! Internet Giants Resume Data Center Spending "Alphabet, Microsoft, Amazon and Facebook spent a combined $23 billion in 2015 on capital projects. During an investment flurry from 2011 to last year, the companies' combined capex nearly tripled." (http://www.datacenterknowledge.com/archives/2016/05/09/break-internet-giants-resume-data-center-spending-gadfly/) "Parsimony at Alphabet is all relative. The company's $9.9 billion in capital expenditures for 2015 was nearly more than the combined capex spending of Microsoft and Amazon." Facebook Sponsors the Republican National Convention The social network says its participation (http://recode.net/2016/05/05/facebook-republican-national-convention-sponsor/) — which will include a lounge — should not be interpreted as an endorsement of any candidate, issue or political party. It plans to do the same at the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia. Tell me more about this lounge… So, who's going to sponsor the RNC JumboTron for SDT? Nazis on Reddit! Never read the comments (http://www.theverge.com/2016/5/5/11595472/reddit-hitler-nazi-comments-godwins-law) Recommendations Brandon: Y20U noise canceling headphones - cheap! (http://thewirecutter.com/reviews/best-headphones-under-40/) and the full Area X triology on audible, for just one credit! (http://amzn.to/1sPZ04A) Matt: Doing the Lord's work (https://twitter.com/DungeonsDonald); super heros jumping (https://twitter.com/hownottodraw/status/729797659431686144) Coté: Lomo al Trapo, aka, "towel meat." (http://www.seriouseats.com/recipes/2015/08/lomo-al-trapo-colombian-cloth-wrapped-salt-crusted-beef-tenderloin-recipe.html). Also fast.com (https://fast.com/). Also The Botanist gin (https://www.thebotanist.com/).

This is session 15 of Technology-enabled Blitzscaling, a Stanford University class taught by Reid Hoffman, John Lilly, Allen Blue, and Chris Yeh. This class features Jerry Chen of Greylock Partners interviewing Diane Greene, the Founder and former CEO of VMware and now SVP of Google’s cloud businesses.

Diane Greene -- who is on the boards of Google and Intuit -- has some golden rules when it comes to serving on boards. No 1: “You don't want to tell them how to do strategy, whether it's a big company or a small company,” she says. “That's not your job. Your job as a director is to ask questions.” Lots of questions. In this segment of the a16z Podcast, a16z's Marc Andreessen and VMware co-founder and former CEO Diane Greene have a candid conversation about their experiences on boards from the perspective of both company founders and board directors. “I've almost never seen a problem that couldn't be solved by better communication and consistency,” Greene says. That's rule No. 2. [This talk took place as part of a training program in corporate governance that a16z organized with the Director's College at Stanford on March 5, 2015.]

Audio File:  Download MP3Transcript: An Interview with Diane Greene Founder, VMware Date: January 31, 2011 Interview with Diane Greene [introduction music] Lucy Sanders: Hi, this is Lucy Sanders the CEO of the National Center for Women in Information Technology or NCWIT. With me is Leigh Kennedy, one of our fine board members as well as a serial entrepreneur herself. Hi Leigh. Leigh Kennedy: Hi Lucy, thanks for having me today. Lucy: Also Larry Nelson from W3W3. Hi Larry. Larry Nelson. I'm so happy to be here. This is a wonderful series and what we really like about it, it really helps other people. Lucy: Absolutely, we have great interviews in this series with wonderful entrepreneurs. We are now over 50 interviews in our series and I felt very excited about that. Leigh: Wow. Lucy: Today we are interviewing a person who I consider to be one of the top entrepreneurs I know, co-founder and founding CEO of VMWare, Diane Greene. VMWare is one of those companies I know many of our listeners have heard about because it introduced something really, really innovative, which was a virtualization layer between hardware and software that allows different operating systems to run on the same machine. That was pretty cool and that was one of VMWare's really innovative leads into the market, truly revolutionary. When the company went public in 2007, it was Silicon Valley's biggest IPO since Google, no small accomplishment. So we can't wait to talk to Diane. She left VMWare in 2008, but she continues to invest in companies and to advise entrepreneurs and she serves on very impressive boards, such as Intuit, MIT Corporation and more. Diane, welcome. Diane Greene: Well, thanks very much. It's always good to participate in the entrepreneurial community in any way I can. Lucy: So let's get right to the questions, Diane. We're really interested in understanding how you first got into technology. As you look at the technologies out there today, which ones do you think are especially cool? Diane: Well I've always had an orientation around science and engineering. In high school I built a model bridge with movable trusses and instrumented one of them with a strange gauge. That really launched me into what I found out was called engineering. I was also really active racing sailboats, which meant maintaining them and tuning them which was a lot of technology to keep the boat going fast in addition to racing it. So I would say I started doing things in technology in high school. Nothing like what the kids are doing today with their computers, but certainly technology. In terms of what is out there today that's really exciting, like everybody else, it's mobile connectivity, the social networking, the sensors, particularly around imaging. All these things contributing to our ability to have a digitally enhanced world is tremendously exciting. Larry: Boy, I'll say. I have a feeling that if I was going to try to recruit a relationship with you that if my company started with the letter V, like in Vermont, I would get a little bit further. Lucy: [laughs] Leigh: I didn't understand it, either. Lucy: I didn't understand it, either, that's OK. Diane: It's possible, because I'm puzzled about what you're talking about. Larry: I was just looking at VMWare, VXtreme. Diane: Oh, V, I thought you said Z. That's right, VMWare, VXtreme, completely coincidental. VMware, we were looking for a name and at the time, during the dot com bubble, every URL was taken. So we said "Let's do a placeholder." I thought "Let's just do something really descriptive as a placeholder, virtual machine software, call it VMware." So the name stuck. Lucy: Well, that's an interesting story. Larry: Yeah. Leigh: Yeah it is. Lucy: Diane, I'm going to jump into the next question. Diane: Our PR person didn't want to talk to us because they thought "What a boring name." [Leigh and Larry laugh] Leigh: I think it's a good name. Larry: Yeah, I like it. Lucy: So Diane, I'll jump in to the next question. We're always curious how people that are really into technology and science and they make the leap to be an entrepreneur, which is not always second nature to a lot of technologists. So tell us about how that happened and what it is about entrepreneurship that you love. Diane: Well I've always also been an organizer. I always have started new things. Very early on when I was actually still in high school back in 1971 I got into windsurfing. I was the only windsurfer on the East coast. I started an ice hockey team in college. So I've always, in addition to having an affinity for technology I also like to organize. I like to do things with other people. I think I'm not particularly good at working for other people if our visions aren't aligned. That kind of pushes me towards leading people and being in charge. I think it's a desire to do new things, organize new things and make new things happen. The technology background is just helpful and is why my entrepreneurship is around technology, I guess. Larry: You've done so many different things. I know you're going to have a great career ahead of you, it's just the beginning. In your career path, who was either a mentor or someone who was a role model that really influenced your future? Diane: Well I have to say my family had an enormous influence on me for better or for worse. Then I had an absolutely amazing band teacher in high school that set up a system for measuring how we were doing which made it extremely clear how to get ahead and how to become first chair and then had us all working together amazingly well as a band and as an orchestra to where our little motley crew would go on and win state championships. I had her as my band and orchestra teacher for three years, and I think she had an enormous influence on me. She could have managed a huge [laughs] corporation. She had all those fundamental principles and skills down. Then as I've gone through my career in Silicon Valley in the tech industry, I would have to say I had a mentor at Tandem Computers named Franco Putzolo, who really taught me how to take a measured approach to whatever it was I was doing and helped develop my ability to try and really take the time to always do things well. Lucy: Well, you know when we started the interview we said we get a lot of interesting answers to these questions, and that's the first time we've heard a band teacher. Diane: [laughter] I've only said this one other time, when I was being interviewed at VMware, and the absolutely amazing thing is I got emails from someone else that had been in her band and orchestra and said, "Yes, she was my mentor, too." Lucy: Well, I think that's fascinating and perfectly understandable when you think about a lot of great technologists are great musicians... Leigh: Exactly, yup. Lucy: ...and I can see where a band and orchestra, lots of life skills there. So fascinating answer. Diane, what is the toughest thing you've ever had to do in your career? Diane: Working for other people that I wasn't able to convince them of my vision. Lucy: That's hard. Diane: That really was [laughs] the most difficult thing. Leigh: Yeah, that's always tough, and I think one of the reasons a lot of entrepreneurs are entrepreneurs is they don't like working for other people, so... [laughs] [laughter] Leigh: ...that makes perfect sense. [laughs] Diane: We can have the same vision, but that's not the norm. I mean normally it's the leader that sets the vision and doesn't necessarily take the vision of...it's also formative because when you are the leader you're very sensitive to the fact that you need to [laughs] incorporate everybody else's vision or they're going to feel frustrated. Also, it's good for the company because you don't always have the right vision yourself. At least I don't. But yeah. I do think it drives a lot of entrepreneurship, is this need to work on a vision that you're really passionate about. So you're left with no [laughs] choice but to do it yourself. Leigh: Well, that brings us to our next question. We have a lot of young people and people wanting to become entrepreneurs that listen to our interviews. So if you were sitting here with a young person looking to become an entrepreneur, what advice would you give to them? Diane: If they have a vision of something, there are infinite ways to improve the world. If you really see something that really excites you, then set about doing it and do it right. Don't cut any corners. Go about it with absolute quality in every way you approach it and think it through and execute on it. Larry: Well, I'm tying right in with that. What are your personal characteristics, do you think, that have given you the advantage of being an entrepreneur? Diane: I don't start something unless I can really see for myself how it can be done, how it's possible. Then once I see that, I don't think of failure as an option. There's always a way to make it successful, and I'm pretty relentless about that. I think also I really love and get energized from working with other people [laughs] when they're smarter than me, and that's not always hard. So I think those two things, that relentless "There is a way," and then just enjoying finding that way with other people really has helped me have a lot of successes as an entrepreneur. Lucy: Relentless is a word we hear a lot. Leigh: And failure not being an option. Lucy: And failure not being an option. I think that those are great personal characteristics to have. Diane, we ask one other question around how entrepreneurs...it's not so much bringing balance into your personal and professional lives, but how do you integrate them? Diane: Well, I see it as my life. I do what I care about and what I want to do, and so part of that is my family and raising my family, and part of that is going on outdoor adventures, which I don't do nearly as much as I would like to. Building things I think has been a large part of...it's of course been building companies in the tech industry. But there are fundamental principles about how I go about things that are utterly consistent across everything I do, so that integrates them pretty naturally. Leigh: Diane, you've done some just really, really interesting things that were like leading edge in many areas--sports, technology. Tell us about what you're passionate about now or what's next for you? Diane: I'm really not sure what's next. I'm working on it, and I definitely want a big project in my life. Leigh: Well, that's a great answer, too. [laughs] We don't always know, and it's good to know that you're in that spot. Lucy: Well, when you're in that spot, you can pay attention and actually look for the next big project. Larry: There you go. Lucy: Yeah, absolutely. Well, Diane, thanks very much for talking to us. We really appreciate it. I wanted to remind listeners where they can hear this interview, at W3W3.com and also NCWIT.org. Diane: Yeah, and let me just send a word of encouragement to people. I think when you want to do something, you can always do it and make a success of it. Good luck. Larry: Well, thank you for that. Lucy: Thank you, Diane. Leigh: Thanks, Diane. Series: Entrepreneurial HeroesInterviewee: Diane GreeneInterview Summary: VMware introduced a totally innovative idea: a virtualization layer between hardware and software that allowed different operating systems to run on the same machine. When the company went public in 2007, it was Silicon Valley's biggest IPO since Google. Says founder Diane Greene, "When you need to work on a passion and vision you are sometimes left with no option but to do it yourself. If you see something that really excites you, then set about doing it and doing it right." Release Date: January 31, 2011Interview Subject: Dianne GreeneInterviewer(s): Lucy Sanders, Larry Nelson, Lee KennedyDuration: 12:35

Chris Schroeder is a global angel investor & advisor to tech startups with a keen interest in emerging markets. Chris is the co-founder of Next Billion Ventures, a venture capital fund focused on the next billion digital consumers across global emerging markets, he is a Network Partner for Village Global, an early venture capital fund backed by Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, Diane Greene, Sara Blakely, Jeff Bezos, Reid Hoffman and many more exceptional entrepreneurs. He sits on the investment committees of Wamda Capital & Saudi Telecom Ventures and he is on the board of several private and NGO boards. And that's just the tip of the iceberg. Chris started out in politics with the George W Bush (Senior) presidential campaign before becoming the CEO of the Washington Post/ Newsweek interactive. In 2005 he co-founded Health Central, a platform that helps people find and share real-life experiences related to their health needs. Health Central was backed by the likes of Sequoia, Polaris Ventures and the Carlyle Group to name a few and was acquired by Remedy Health in 2012. In 2013, Chris published the first book on the Middle East & North Africa's entrepreneurship scene called: Startup Rising — The Entrepreneurial Revolution Remaking the Middle East — with a forward by renowned investor Marc Andreessen. I've known Chris for nearly a decade and am delighted he let me ask the questions this time as he is the one who is always curious and eager to be of service. We talked about Chris's transition into entrepreneurship from politics and corporate life, his fascination with entrepreneurship in the Middle East and emerging markets, the sectors he's currently considering for investment and we touch on our need to step up and take control of our lives and also our biases. For those interested in learning more about fundraising for startups and venture capital, check out these 2 books: [Venture deals](https://www.venturedeals.com) by Brad Feld and (Secrets of Sand Hill Road](Secrets of Sand Hill Road) by Scott Kupor. Thanks to [Joi Gifts](http://joigifts.com) for their support on this episode. Joi Gifts is the largest gifting marketplace in the Middle East, operating in 7 countries and covering 22 major cities. Use the code loulou15 to get a 15% discount on everything. Enjoy!