Podcasts about Microsoft Access

Three Buddy Problem - Episode 38: On the show this week, we look at a hefty batch of Microsoft zero-days exploited in the wild, iOS 18.3.2 fixing an exploited WebKit bug, a mysterious Unpatched.ai being credited with Microsoft Access RCE flaws, and OpenAI lobbying for the US to ban China's DeepSeek. Plus, discussion on a Binarly technical paper with new approach to finding UEFI bootkits, Mandiant flagging custom backdoors on Juniper routers, and MEV 'sandwich attacks' front-running cryptocurrency transactions. Cast: Juan Andres Guerrero-Saade (https://twitter.com/juanandres_gs), Costin Raiu (https://twitter.com/craiu) and Ryan Naraine (https://twitter.com/ryanaraine).

A ride through technology, leadership and philanthropy  In part one of this engaging Beyond the Blue Badge episode with David Risher, CEO of Lyft, talks with host Rich Kaplan about his journey from launching Microsoft Access early in his career, to shaping Amazon's retail success, to his current mission at Lyft to “get people out of their houses and bring them together.”

Episode: 231 Released on September 16, 2024 Description: NIRO Knowledge and NIRO Crime Analysis creator, Nicholas (Nick) Roy, joins us this week to discuss his unique journey into the analytical and teaching world. From playing around with computers in the 80s, Nick had always had a knack for technology and quick learning. He started his law enforcement career as a police dispatcher where he stayed for 12+ years, and during that same time, worked as a records manager for 10+ years at a neighboring police department. As Nick worked for a smaller agency, he had the opportunity to double-up as their crime analyst, leveraging programs such as Microsoft Access, Excel, and PowerBI to his agency's advantage. Nick credits his success in the law enforcement analysis profession to those within Massachusetts Association of Crime Analysts (MACA) and the further connections he made through the International Association of Crime Analysts (IACA). Nick is currently an IT consultant for Umbral Technologies, and continues to give back to the community through a myriad of training he offers through NIRO Crime Analysis and other establishments.   This episode contains the fan-favorite segment, Don't Be That Analyst. Rachael Songalewski (https://www.leapodcasts.com/e/atwje-rachael-songalewski-leading-with-intention/) Karie Nordland (https://www.leapodcasts.com/e/atwje-karie-nordland-the-record-setter/) Johnathan Sofley (https://www.leapodcasts.com/e/atwje-jonathan-sofley-just-say-no/) Michael Raney (https://www.leapodcasts.com/e/atwje-michael-raney-think-outside-the-rms/) Patrick Servey (https://www.leapodcasts.com/e/atwje-patrick-servey-analyst-as-a-resource/)  CHALLENGE: There are Easter eggs in one of the tables of the Excel chapter that Jason wrote for the IACA textbook. First-person to email us at leapodcasts@gmail.com about what the Easter eggs are will receive a $75 gift card from us. Happy hunting! *** Episode 6 of Cocktails & Crime Analysis - IACA Conference Preview - Presenters Edition https://youtu.be/FS6qqCQfcJI  *** Name Drops: Carol Fitzgerald (00:04:55), Christopher Bruce (00:14:02), Dr. Laura Huey (00:26:05), Carolyn Cassidy (00:28:19) Public Service Announcements: Python (To purchase “Data Science for Crime Analysis with Python,” go to https://crimede-coder.com/store. Use promo code LEAP for $10 off either the ebook or paperback copy.) Kyle Stoker (https://www.leapodcasts.com/e/kyle-stoker-the-training-connoisseur/) Related Links: https://www.niroca.com/ https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/niro-knowledge/id1494063151 (Or wherever you get your podcast) Rindge NH police http://bit.ly/RPDPublicData Association(s) Mentioned: MACA, IACA Vendor(s) Mentioned:  Contact: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nicholas-roy-29025685/  Transcript: https://mcdn.podbean.com/mf/web/ib4zc2j73semmrbb/TranscriptNickRoy.pdf  Podcast Writer:  Mindy Duong Podcast Researcher:  Theme Song: Written and Recorded by The Rough & Tumble. Find more of their music at www.theroughandtumble.com. Logo: Designed by Kyle McMullen. Please visit www.moderntype.com for any printable business forms and planners.  Podcast Email: leapodcasts@gmail.com   Podcast Webpage: www.leapodcasts.com   Podcast Twitter: @leapodcasts 00:00:17 – Introducing Nick 00:08:44 – Records Manager 00:16:42 – ABS:  Dashboard  00:23:10 – NIRO Knowledge Podcast  00:33:36 – Break:  Python & IACA Vote 00:34:40 – IT Consultant 00:53:18 – Advice 00:57:25 – Don't Be That Analyst 01:07:36 – Words to the World

Episode 2. In this episode, the guys recap IALEIA and discuss the 4th amendment is not for sale act. Christopher Bruce stops by to discuss Microsoft Access- is it a zombie database software that simply won't die or the one crime analysis tool to rule them all? Also, what is the greatest Sci-Fi Movie? 4th Amendment is not for Sale Act https://fop.net/2024/04/fop-urges-senate-to-reject-the-fourth-amendment-is-not-for-sale-act/  Microsoft Access https://yc.prosetech.com/microsoft-access-the-zombie-database-software-that-wont-die-5b09e389c166  This is the audio version of the show.  If you want to view video version, please go to https://youtu.be/aKNOC_wj4nA  Website: https://www.bdeanalyticsllc.com/cocktailsandcrimeanalysis  Podcast version can be found at www.leapodcasts.com  

In our latest episode, Randie Ward had the privilege of interviewing Giacomo Apadula, an authority in government contract and grant administration. Giacomo's extensive expertise lies in cost accounting, regulatory compliance, and business process improvement/system design. Throughout the episode, Giacomo shared his wealth of knowledge, drawing on his experience serving clients in the government contracting and grantee sectors, spanning both profit and non-profit organizations. His clientele includes large defense contractors, biotechs, and not-for-profits, encompassing complex Federally Funded Research and Development Centers (FFRDCs) and international relief organizations. Giacomo specializes in guiding these entities on mitigating compliance risks and implementing robust internal controls. One of Giacomo's key areas of focus is helping organizations establish the internal control framework necessary to obtain government-approved business systems, such as accounting/billing, estimating, and purchasing.  During the conversation, Giacomo highlighted his proficiency in Federal Acquisition Regulations (FAR), Cost Accounting Standards (CAS), 2 CFR 200, as well as agency-specific supplements such as NIH/DFARS/AIDAR/HHS. He showcased his analytical skills by emphasizing the use of Microsoft Access and Excel for statistical modeling and analysis. Overall, Randie's discussion with Giacomo delved deep into the intricacies of government contract and grant administration, shedding light on the importance of compliance, cost accounting, and effective business processes. Tune in to this episode to gain valuable insights from a true expert in the field.   Click here to learn more about Giacomo: Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/giacomo-apadula-67411b5/  Company Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/rsm-us-llp/  Website: https://rsmus.com/  Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/rsmusllp/  Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/rsmusllp/  Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/rsmusllp1   

Azure IAM can build high-security data management infrastructure for your cloud network using a range of powerful Microsoft technologies. To read more about their mission, visit https://azureiam.com/ Azure IAM, LLC City: Sterling Address: P. O. Box 650685 Website https://azureiam.com Phone +1-575-312-9326 Email robin@azureiam.com

Employed at Ferrovial, working on the Thames Tideway Tunnel; the largest infrastructure project ever undertaken by the UK water industry. Winner of Ferrovial UK&I VGA Graduate of the Year 2023 award. Professional member: Institution of Civil Engineers (ICE) – GMICE Registered STEM Ambassador with Go Construct actively influencing the community through career fairs, lectures, workshops, and providing mentoring to students who seek involvement within the science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) sector. Also involved in environmental development and restoration projects to improve sustainability and aid in community wellbeing. Strong education professional having completed an accredited Master's (MEng) degree in Civil Engineering at City, University of London. Skilled in Computer-Aided Design (CAD), Autodesk AutoCAD, Primavera P6, SureTrak, Aphex, MATLAB, StaadPro, Databases, Microsoft Access, and a plethora of Engineering and IT-based infrastructures. Experienced Tutor with a demonstrated history of working in the education management industry. In this episode you will discover:  Young gun approved professional practices for high achievement What it means to go above and beyond in a graduate role The correlation between performance and ambition  Principles of young guns success to always stay ahead How to maximise your efforts in community engagement And so much more! Show notes If you enjoyed this episode, and you've learnt something or it inspired you in some way, I'd love to hear about it and know your biggest takeaway. Take a screenshot of you listening on your device, and post it to your Instagram Stories, and tag me, @elinormoshe_ or Elinor Moshe on LinkedIn.   Don't forget you can also join the free facebook community to discuss your journey in the building industry; https://www.facebook.com/groups/constructingyou/   Get a copy of my book: https://amzn.to/31ILAdv

Join us as we welcome Rob Cowell, a renowned DevOps advocate, on a journey through his personal and professional life in the world of programming and Salesforce. Starting with his early experiences tinkering with a Sord M5 computer, Rob shares how he transformed his passion for programming into a fulfilling career. We trace his evolution from working with Microsoft Access to .NET, C Sharp, and ultimately Salesforce and Apex, highlighting the importance of continuous learning and adaptation in the fast-paced tech industry. Transitioning into his current role, Rob pulls back the curtain on what it truly means to be a DevOps advocate. Emphasizing the significance of communication, collaboration, small incremental changes, and automation, he discusses how a commitment to quality is integral to delivering excellent results. The episode also explores the role of a Salesforce DevOps engineer and how to adopt the required skill set. Tune in to glean invaluable insights from Rob's vast experience and deep knowledge of the Salesforce ecosystem. Show Highlights: The role and importance of Salesforce DevOps in delivering quality results efficiently. The key components of Salesforce DevOps include communication, collaboration, small incremental changes, and automation. The transition from traditional development stacks into Salesforce and the unique elements of the platform. The role of a Salesforce DevOps engineer and how to adopt the necessary skill set. The introduction of Rob Cowell's project, 'Shirt Force,' which combines humor and philanthropy by creating Salesforce-themed t-shirts and donating the profits to charity. Insights into continuous improvement and the importance of adapting DevOps to your way of working. Links: Julián on LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/juliandavidduque Rob on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rob-cowell/ Rob's Twitter/X: @RobSalesforce Other resources: Gearset: https://gearset.com/ DevOps Launchpad free training and certs: https://devopslaunchpad.com/ Shirtforce: https://shirtforce.org/ His work on the demoscene: https://demozoo.org/sceners/32053/

In this podcast episode, Taj Carlson, the founder of Inciter Data, shares her incredible journey of working with nonprofits and leveraging data and technology to drive positive change. Taj's superhero origin story began when she collaborated on evaluation projects with nonprofits after her academic career. A turning point occurred when she witnessed an HIV prevention organization struggling with data management on paper forms, inspiring her to dedicate herself to bringing technology to nonprofits for improved data management.Taj emphasizes the critical role of reporting in data management and discusses the common challenges faced by nonprofits in generating useful reports. Many organizations use separate systems for different functions, leading to data silos. Taj advises mapping reports to data sources to identify essential data fields necessary for reporting.Topics We Cover:The journey of Insider Data and Taj Carlson's superhero origin story in nonprofit data management.Challenges faced by nonprofits in generating useful reports and mapping reports to data sources.Approaches to integrating disparate systems like Microsoft Access, Salesforce, and HubSpot.Understanding the differences between data warehouses and data lakes and when to use each.The importance of data governance and its role in improving data reliability and organizational alignment.Practical examples of how data governance reduces stress, frustration, and waste.Specific benefits of implementing good data governance, including risk mitigation, time savings, and improved decision-making.To Learn More and Connect with Taj:Inciter.ioTwitterLinkedIn

Kia ora Mosen At Largers. A reminder that this podcast is indexed by chapter. If you listen with a podcast client that offers chapter support, you can easily skip between segments. We also make transcripts available, thanks to sponsorship by Pneuma Solutions, a global leader in accessible cloud technologies. Visit them on the web at . You can find the transcripts on our website at Here are the topics covered in this episode, and the time in the file for each. Welcome to Minnesota,0:13.518 The New Zealand census and a story of effective advocacy,3:37.782 deteriorating compatibility between JAWS and some Microsoft apps,14:40.854 Depression in the blind community,16:26.469 Tech Roundup,36:11.973 Comments on episode 214,41:37.751 Which Braille display should I buy?,46:40.248 Dictation has gotten really bad on my iPhone,49:47.889 Bad Apple experience inSouthAfrica,55:55.212 Brian Hartgen discusses the Sense Player from Hims,1:05:01.926 Ableist language,1:38:48.175 Looking for an accessible CRM,1:51:30.928 Poor support from Zoom,1:55:55.845 Following up on the Microsoft Access inquiry,1:57:51.192 Closing and contact info,1:58:42.382 Share your thoughts on these topics or any others. Drop me an email in writing or with an audio attachment, Jonathan at MushroomFm.com, or phone the listener line in the United States, +1864-60Mosen, that's +18646066736. Keep up with Mosen At Large between episodes. Follow Mosen at Large on Mastodon where you'll get audio extras, links to interesting news stories, sneak peeks about what's coming up and more. If you'd like to subscribe to our announcements only email list, please send email to And if you like the show, we'd love a positive review and for you to spread the word. Thank you.

Kia ora Mosen At Largers. A reminder that this podcast is indexed by chapter. If you listen with a podcast client that offers chapter support, you can easily skip between segments. We also make transcripts available, thanks to sponsorship by Pneuma Solutions, a global leader in accessible cloud technologies. Visit them on the web at . You can find the transcripts on our website at Here are the topics covered in this episode, and the time in the file for each. Welcome Illinois,0:00.000 Looking for a good ad-blocker for my iPhone,1:53.594 Looking for some advice on Microsoft Access,5:33.270 More discrimination stories,7:45.173 I want to permanently disable YouTube Shorts,12:04.729 Task management apps,13:57.731 Tech Roundup,19:41.834 Keeping your iPhone unlocked,25:34.998 A serious problem with Apple's subscriptions page,26:32.599 Looping audio on the iPhone,31:28.185 Blind subculture,33:23.477 Microsoft Remote Desktop for iOS,36:04.488 The Victor Reader Stream,37:35.992 We're eager to cover the Sense Player from hims on this podcast,40:14.971 Why I use a Victor Reader Stream,43:30.625 Comments on Eleven Labs and the future of audiobook narrators,47:47.193 The new Microsoft Bing powered by Chat GPT,1:01:11.353 Anyone got scanner printer combo recommendations?,1:30:39.720 Editing video in Windows,1:31:53.128 My thoughts on the Brainport,1:33:38.857 The Bonnie Bulletin talks Google Docs and learning new things,1:40:47.341 Bonnie and the gremlins,1:48:33.987 Bonnie and the engineers,1:52:53.788 Bonnie and the granddaughter,1:55:57.697 Closing announcement and contact info,2:00:09.199 Share your thoughts on these topics or any others. Drop me an email in writing or with an audio attachment, Jonathan at MushroomFm.com, or phone the listener line in the United States, +1864-60Mosen, that's +18646066736. Keep up with Mosen At Large between episodes. Follow Mosen at Large on Mastodon where you'll get audio extras, links to interesting news stories, sneak peeks about what's coming up and more. If you'd like to subscribe to our announcements only email list, please send email to And if you like the show, we'd love a positive review and for you to spread the word. Thank you.

It's season premiere time at ASCII Anything as we welcome Moser's very own Tony Wilhelm to talk with us about the Assessments piece of our Data Management Process.Tony has been with Moser since 2020 and brings with him a wide range of experience in Microsoft's Data Platform, including Microsoft Access and SQL Server 7.0. His primary focus is High Availability/Disaster Recovery with performance a very close second. And when he's not behind the keyboard, you can usually find him tinkering in the garage or out on the water. 

Uppvärmning/uppföljning Fredrik sabbar sladd Elspartips AirFryer-hörnan: köttbullar och majskolv Bilhandlardrama Jocke blockar fler och fler tld:er i sin mailserver. Datormagazin Retro #6: 100%+ bokat! (1136 beställningar och 42 av dem köpte 1337-paketet) Archörnan - synkar inte fastnålade flikar ordentligt? Ämnen IOS 16: Sena intryck Fredrik vet nu när man får ha djupeffekten på hemskärmen Nya omslagsvisningen på låsskärmen är finfin Fokus blir mer användbart Hem-appen Batterisymbolen Dexcom Follow för Apple Watch i Europa. Halvhjärtat. Dela dokument och filer inom förening Den sista disketten är ännu inte såld Retrospel: Huntdown och Return to monkey island Film & TV SkyShowtime ersätter Paramount+. Secrets of Sulphur Springs. För barn/ungdomar på Disney+. The Grand Tour: A Scandi Flick. 3,5/5 BMÅ (J) Blade Runner 2099 Länkar Affärsdrivande statliga verk Jockes blocklista för Postfix Filmlistan Peter Esses film - lönar sig rörligt elpris? Arc Köp Datormagazin retro #6 Clear Viticcis IOS-recension Passkeys Mullvad bygger hårdvara Copland Opencore legacy patcher Installera macOS på äldre Mac Kaby lake Dexcom follow Sugarmate Access Den siste försäljaren av disketter Zencastr Return to monkey island Thimbleweed park Steams Monkey Island-erbjudande Huntdown Skyshowtime Pinocchio (2022) Secrets of Sulphur springs The Grand Tour: A Scandi Flick Blade Runner 2099 RSS 2.0 fyller 20 år Fullständig avsnittsinformation finns här: https://www.bjoremanmelin.se/podcast/avsnitt-326-peakar-pa-1700.watt.html

Do you want to be interviewed for your business?  Schedule time with us, and we'll create a podcast like this for your business:  https://www.WriteForMe.io/-----Join our resident Business Ninja Kelsey with guest speaker Sasha Froyland of Help4Access, the only Microsoft Gold Cloud Partner in the world, whose mission is to make your data accessible from any device or machine utilizing the world's fastest rapid application development platform, Microsoft Access. They continuously improve their frameworks and software tools to solve complex Access applications. Find out more at https://help4access.com/.-----https://www.facebook.com/writeforme.iohttps://www.instagram.com/writeforme.io/https://twitter.com/writeformeiohttps://www.linkedin.com/company/writeforme/https://www.pinterest.com/andysteuer/

We’ve been told Network for Good can be an expensive, but amazingly comprehensive donor management system. So, I reached out to one of our nonprofit friends who uses it to find out if it’s worth the cost. Spoiler Alert - for Columbia Center for Urban Agriculture, it totally is. From ticket sales to donor data management to text reminders, Network for Good helps them market with purpose. Billy Polansky and his team at the Columbia Center for Urban Agriculture had been using a cobbled together system revolving around Microsoft Access which was better than nothing but not what they needed. After reviewing 3 or 4 systems they decided on Network for Good. Hear how they use it and why they love it as I interview Billy in this episode! Highlights Introduction to Columbia Center for Urban Agriculture - 1:49Why invest in a donor management system? - 4:25What does Network for Good do? - 6:40How does Network for Good integrate ticket sales and giving? - 10:53How easy is it to import existing data? - 15:08How easy is it to learn and use Network for Good? - 17:17How often does Columbia Center for Urban Agriculture use the communication features? - 22:00What customization options are available? - 25:20What is customer support like? - 27:04Is Network for Good a good value for the cost? - 28:37Where to learn more about Columbia Center for Urban Agriculture - 36:40 For a fully-formatted article version of this podcast, head over to our website: https://mayecreate.com/blog/network-for-good-from-a-users-perspective-with-guest-billy-polansky/

FULL SHOW NOTES https://podcast.nz365guy.com/390 A brief introduction about Nathan Helgren's life and what he does when he's not working with MicrosoftUnpacking Nathan's career journey to where he is right now at MicrosoftNathan shares how he got involved with Microsoft Visio AppsNathan talks about Microsoft AccessWhat was Microsoft's motivation that made them think they need an easy migration path from access to Dataverse? Find out more about having a license cost for the connector and if it is part of the connector suite? Have you got any use cases of particular industries or organizations that can solve some problems for their customers?An introduction to MigrationDiscussion about an individual or organization having a database in access that can migrate it to DataverseRESOURCES MENTIONEDMicrosoft Azure - https://www.youtube.com/c/MicrosoftAzure AgileXRM AgileXRm - The integrated BPM for Microsoft Power PlatformSupport the show

Derek Baylor graduated with Web Development Cohort E16. I've always enjoyed working with computers. My journey into tech started when I learned how to build a Microsoft Access application to help the company I was working for at the time track the costs of repairs I was performing on their equipment. Soon after I started looking into ways to get into the tech industry but it wasn't until NSS that I felt comfortable taking that leap and I have loved every minute of it.

Taylor Otwell, is the founder of Laravel, a programming framework for PHP. But he's also one of the most successful indie SaaS operators I know. In this episode we discuss: 0:30 – Taylor is changing how he hires and manages people at Laravel 6:01 – How Taylor is finding new employees to work on Forge, Vapor, and his other products 7:34 – The Laravel ecosystem has incubated incredible talent: Miguel Piedrafita, Caleb Porzio, Adam Wathan, Aaron Francis, Jack Ellis... 10:03 – More and more indie SaaS apps are being built in Laravel 10:48 – When is the next Laracon conference? 13:11 – Taylor Otwell has the classic bootstrap success story 14:28 – Laravel has been running too lean 17:00 – What's it like to work as a developer at Laravel? (pair programming) 18:33 – How Taylor does product development 22:08 – "I haven't told anyone this yet, but I actually considered selling Laravel this past year." Here's why Taylor decided not to sell. 26:30 – How do you deal with internet fame, and being a "known person?"  28:59 – Dealing with haters on Twitter 31:50 – What is the future of web development, and the full-stack developer? What is the future of Ruby on Rails and Laravel? 35:53 – Building excitement around PHP and Laravel with young people. 42:13 – What inspires kids to get into programming? When it's fun, easy, accessible. This is why so many people started with Hypercard, Microsoft Access, PHP, Adobe Flash... What should we talk about next? Twitter: @buildyoursaas, @mijustin, @jonbuda, @jsonpearl, and @helenryles Leave a review/comment on Podchaser; it's like Reddit, but for podcasts. Email us: support@transistor.fm Thanks to our monthly supporters: Mitchell Davis from RecruitKit.com.au Marcel Fahle, ​​wearebold.af Alex Payne Bill Condo Anton Zorin from ProdCamp.com Mitch Harris Kenny, Intro CRM podcast Oleg Kulyk Ethan Gunderson Chris Willow Ward Sandler, Memberspace Russell Brown, Photivo.com Noah Prail Colin Gray Austin Loveless Michael Sitver Paul Jarvis and Jack Ellis, Fathom Dan Buda Darby Frey Brad from Canada Adam DuVander Dave Giunta (JOOnta) Kyle Fox GetRewardful.com Want to start a podcast on Transistor? Justin has a special coupon for you: get 15% off your first year of hosting: transistor.fm/justin★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★

Juxtaposed against some software of the 90s like Microsoft Access, Lotus Notes, and Visual Basic, there is a distinct contrast in our current world. Malcolm argues that with today's fixation on Continuous Deployment, software has become static, brittle, and inflexible. In this episode, we talk about how users have consequently become disempowered. Why have we have created a culture so dependent on developers? What is the hidden cost of this incrementalism? And, how can we redistribute agency to users again?

00:36 - Panelist Consulting Experience and Backgrounds * Debugging Your Brain by Casey Watts (https://www.debuggingyourbrain.com/) * Happy and Effective (https://www.happyandeffective.com/) 10:00 - Marketing, Charging, and Setting Prices * Patreon (https://www.patreon.com/) * Chelsea's Blog (https://chelseatroy.com/) * Self-Worth by Salary 28:34 - GeePawHill Twitter Thread (https://twitter.com/GeePawHill/status/1478950180904972293) - Impact Consulting * Casey's Spreadsheet - “Matrix-Based Prioritization For Choosing a Job” (https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1qVrWOKPe3ElXJhOBS8egGIyGqpm6Fk9kjrFWvB92Fpk/edit#gid=1724142346) * Interdependence (https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/interdependence) 38:43 - Management & Mentorship * Detangling the Manager: Supervisor, Team Lead, Mentor (https://dev.to/endangeredmassa/detangling-the-manager-supervisor-team-lead-mentor-gha) * Adrienne Maree Brown (https://adriennemareebrown.net/) 52:15 - Explaining Value and Offerings * The Pumpkin Plan: A Simple Strategy to Grow a Remarkable Business in Any Field by Mike Michalowicz (https://www.amazon.com/Pumpkin-Plan-Strategy-Remarkable-Business/dp/1591844886) * User Research * SPIN Selling: Situation Problem Implication Need-payoff by Neil Rackham (https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/833015.SPIN_Selling) 55:08 - Ideal Clients Reflections: Mae: The phrase “indie”. Casey: Having a Patreon to help inspire yourself. Chelsea: Tallying up all of the different things that a given position contributes to in terms of a person's needs. This episode was brought to you by @therubyrep (https://twitter.com/therubyrep) of DevReps, LLC (http://www.devreps.com/). To pledge your support and to join our awesome Slack community, visit patreon.com/greaterthancode (https://www.patreon.com/greaterthancode) To make a one-time donation so that we can continue to bring you more content and transcripts like this, please do so at paypal.me/devreps (https://www.paypal.me/devreps). You will also get an invitation to our Slack community this way as well. Transcript: CHELSEA: Welcome to Greater Than Code, Episode 267. I'm Chelsea Troy, and I'm here with my co-host, Mae. MAE: And also with us is Casey. CASEY: Hi, I'm Casey. And today's episode, we are our own guests. We're going to be talking to you about our experiences in consulting. To get this one started, how about we share what got us into consulting and what we like, don't like about it, just high-level? Chelsea, would you mind going first? CHELSEA: Sure. So I started in consulting, really in a full-time job. So for early in my programming career, I worked for several years for a company called Pivotal Labs and Pivotal Labs is chiefly, or was chiefly at the time, a software engineering consulting organization. My job was to pair program with folks from client teams, various types of clients, a lot of health insurance companies. At the time, there was a restaurant loyalty app that we did some work for. We did some work for General Motors, various clients, a major airline was also a client, and I would switch projects every three to six months. During that time employed by Labs, I would work for this client, pair programming with other pivots, and also with client developers. So that was my introduction to consulting and I think that it made the transition to consulting later, a little bit easier because I already had some consulting experience from under the Labs' umbrella. After I worked for Labs, I moved on to working at a product company for about 2 years and my experience at that product company burned me out on full-time programming for a little while. So in my last couple of months at that job, I realized that I was either going to have to take some time off, or I was going to have to find an arrangement that worked better for me for work, at least for the next little while. And for that next little while, what I decided I wanted to try to do was work part-time because I was uncomfortable with the idea of taking time off from programming completely. I felt that I was too early in my career and the skill loss would be too great if I took time off completely, but I knew I needed some space and so, I quit my full-time job. After I quit the full time—I probably should have done this before I quit the job, but I didn't—I called an organization that I had previously done some volunteer work with, with whom I discussed a job a couple of years prior, but for a couple of different reasons, it didn't work out. I said to them, “I know that you're a grant-funded organization and you rarely have the funding and capacity to bring somebody on, but just so you're aware, I like working with you. I love your product. I love the stuff that you work on. All our time working together, I've really enjoyed. So if you have an opening, I'm going to have some time available.” The director there emailed me that same day and said, “Our mobile developer put in his two weeks' notice this morning. So if you have time this afternoon, I'd really like to talk to you,” [chuckles] and that was my first client and they were a part-time client. I still work with them. I love working with them. I would consider them kind of my flagship client. But then from there, I started to kind of pick up more clients and it took off from there after that summer. I spent that summer generally working 3 days a week for that client and then spending 4 days a week lying face down in a park in the sun. That helped me recover a little bit from burnout. And then after that, I consulted full-time for about 2 years and I still consult on the side of a full-time job. So that's my story. Is anyone feeling a penchant for going next? MAE: I can go. I've been trying to think how am I going to say this succinctly. I've had at least two jobs and several club, or organization memberships, or founding, or positions since I was 16. So wherever I go, I've always been saying, “Well, I've done it these 47 ways already [laughs] even since I was a teenager.” So I've sort of always had a consulting orientation to take a broader view and figure out ways in which we can systematize whatever it is that's happening around me. Specifically for programming, I had been an administrator, like an executive leader, for many years. I just got tired of trying to explain what we as administrators needed and I just wanted to be able to build the things. I was already a really big Microsoft access person and anybody who just got a little [laughs] snarky in there knows I love Microsoft Access. It really allowed me to be able to offer all kinds of things to, for example, I was on the board of directors of my Kiwanis Club and I made a member directory and attendance tracker and all these things. Anyway, when I quit my executive job and went to code school in 2014, I did it because I knew that I could build something a lot better than this crazy Access database [laughs] that I had, this very involved ETL things going on in. I had a nonprofit that I had been involved with for 15 years at that point and I had also taken a database class where I modeled this large database that I was envisioning. So I had a bunch of things in order. I quit my full-time job and went to an income of $6,500 my first year and I hung with that flagship customer for a while and tailored my software. So I sort of have this straddling of a SaaS situation and a consulting situation. I embed into whoever I'm working with and help them in many ways. Often, people need lots of different levels of coaching, training, and skills development mixed with just a place to put things that makes sense to them. I think that's the brief version [laughs] that I can come up with and that is how I got where I am and I've gone in and out of also having a full-time job. Before I quit that I referenced the first year I worked a full-time job plus at least 40 to a 100 hours on my software to get it ready for prime time. So a lot of, a lot of work. CASEY: Good story. I don't think I ever heard these fuller stories from either of you, even though I know roughly the shape of your past. It's so cool to hear it. Thanks for sharing them. All right, I'll share about me now. So I've been a developer, a PM, and I've done a lot of design work. I've done all the roles over my time in tech. I started doing programming 10, 15 years ago, and I'm always getting burnt out everywhere I go because I care so much and we get asked to do things that seem dumb. I'm sure anyone listening can relate to this in some organization and when I say dumb, I don't use that word myself directly. I'm quoting a lot of people who would use that word, but I say either we're being asked to do things that don't make sense, aren't good ideas, or there are things that are we're being asked to do that would make sense if we knew why and it's not being communicated really well. It's poor communication. Either one, the other, or both. So after a lot of jobs, I end up taking a 3-month sabbatical and I'm like, “Whatever, I got to go. I can't deal with caring so much anymore, and I'm not willing to care less either.” So most recently, I took a sabbatical and I finished my book, Debugging Your Brain, which takes together psychology ideas, like cognitive behavioral therapy and programming ideas and that, I'm so proud of. If you haven't read it yet, please check it out. Then I went back to my job and I gave them another month where I was like, “All right, look, these are things need to change for me to be happy to work here.” Nothing changed, then I left. Maybe it's changing very slowly, but too slowly for me to be happy there, or most of these past companies. [laughs] After I left, this last sabbatical, I spent three to six months working on a board game version of my book. That's a lot of fun. And then I decided I needed more income, I needed to pay the bills, and I can totally be a tech consultant if I just deal with learning marketing and sales. That's been my… probably six months now, I've been working on the marketing in sales part, thinking a lot about it. I have a lot of support from a lot of friends. Now I consult on ways to make teams happier and more effective and that's my company name, Happy and Effective. I found it really easy to sell workshops, like diversity, equity, and inclusion workshops to HR departments. They're pretty hungry for those kinds of workshops and it's hard to find good, effective facilitators. It's a little bit harder to get companies to pay for coaching for their employees, even though a new EM would love coaching and how to be a good leader. Companies don't always have the budget for that set aside and I wish they would. I'm working with a lot of companies. I have a couple, but not as many as I'd like. And then the hardest, my favorite kind of client is when I get to embed with the team and really work on seeing what's going on me on the ground with them, and help understand what's going on to tell the executives what's happening and what needs to change and really make a big change. I've done that once, or twice and I'd love to do that more, but it's the hardest. So I'm thinking about easy, medium, hard difficulty of selling things to clients. I would actually make plenty of money is doing workshops, honestly, but I want the impact of embedding. That's my bigger goal is the impact. MAE: Yeah. I basically have used my software as a Trojan horse for [laughs] offering the consulting and change management services to help them get there because that is something that people already expect to spend some money on. That, though has been a little problematic because a few years in, they start to think that the line item in the budget is only for software and then it looks very expensive to them. Whereas, if they were looking at it as a consultant gig, it's incredibly inexpensive to them. CASEY: Yeah. It's maybe so inexpensive that it must not be a quality product that they're buying. MAE: Yes. CASEY: Put it that way implicitly. MAE: Definitely, there's also that. CASEY: When setting prices, this is a good general rule of thumb. It could be too low it looks like it'll be junk, like a dollar store purchase, or it can be too high and they just can't afford it, and then there's the middle sweet spot where it seems very valuable. They barely can afford it, but they know it'll be worth it, and that's a really good range to be in. MAE: Yeah. Honestly, for the work that I do, it's more of a passion project. I would do it totally for free, but that doesn't work for this reason you're talking about. CASEY: Yeah. MAE: Like, it needs to hurt a little bit because it's definitely going to be lots and lots of my time and it's going to be some of their time and it needs to be an investment that not hurt bad [laughs] but just be noticeable as opposed to here's a Kenny's Candy, or something. CASEY: I found that works on another scale, on another level. I do career coaching for friends, and friends of friends, and I'm willing to career coach my friends anyway. I've always been. For 10 years, I've reviewed hundreds, thousands of resumes. I've done so many interviews. I'm down to be a career coach, but no one was taking me up on it until I started charging and now friends are coming to me to pay me money to coach them. I think on their side, it feels more equitable. They're more willing to do it now that I'm willing to take money in exchange for it. I felt really bad charging friends until I had the sliding skill. So people who make less, I charge less for, for this personal service. It's kind of weird having a personal service like that, but it works out really well. I'm so happy for so many friends that have gotten jobs they're happy with now from the support. So even charging friends, like charging them nothing means they're not going to sign up for it. MAE: Yes, and often, there is a bias of like, “Oh, well, that's my friend.” [laughs] so they must not be a BFD.” CASEY: Yeah. But we are all BFDs. MAE: Exactly! How about you Chelsea? How did you start to get to the do the pricing thing? CHELSEA: Yeah, I think it's interesting to hear y'all's approaches to the marketing and the pricing because mine has been pretty different from that. But before I get off on that, one thing I do want to mention around getting started with offering personal services at price is that if it seems too large a step to offer a personal service to one person for an amount of money, one thing that I have witnessed folks have success with in starting out in this vein is to set up a Patreon and then have office hours for patrons wherein they spend 2 hours on a Sunday afternoon, or something like that and anyone who is a patron is welcome to join. What often ends up happening for folks in that situation is that people who are friends of theirs support their Patreon and then the friends can show up. So effectively, folks are paying a monthly fee for access to this office hours, which they might attend, or they might not attend. But there are two nice things about it. The first thing about it is that you're not – from a psychological perspective, it doesn't feel like charging your friends for your time with them. It feels more indirect than that in a way that can be helpful for folks who are very new to charging for things and uncomfortable with the idea. The second thing is that the friends are often much more willing to pay than somebody who's new to charging is willing to charge. So the friends are putting this money into this Patreon, usually not because they're trying to get access to your office hours, but because they want to support you and one of the nice things about Patreon is that it is a monthly amount. So having a monthly email from Patreon that's like, “Hey, you we're sending you—” it doesn't even have to be a lot. “We're sending you 40 bucks this month.” It is a helpful conditioning exercise for folks who are not used to charging because they are getting this regular monthly income and the amount is not as important as receiving the regular income, which is helpful psychological preparation for charging for things on your own, I think. That's not the way that I did it, but I have seen people be effective that way. So there's that. For me, marketing was something that I was very worried about having to do when I started my business. In fact, it was one of those things where my conviction, when I started my consulting business, was I do not want to have to sell my services. I will coast on what clients I can find and when it is no longer easy, I will just get a full-time job because selling traditionally conceptualized is not something that I enjoyed. I had a head start on the marketing element of things, that is sort of the brand awareness element of things, my reputation and the reason for that is that first of all, I had consulted at Labs for several years, which meant that every client team that I had ever worked with there, the director remembered me, the product owner remember me. So a lot of people who had been clients of Labs – I didn't actually get anybody to be a client of mine who was a client of Labs, but the individuals I had worked with on those projects who had then changed jobs to go to different companies, reached out to me on some occasions. So that was one place that I got clients from. The other place that I gotten clients from has been my blog. Before I started my business, I had already been writing a tech blog for like 4, or 5 years and my goal with the tech blog has never actually been to get clientele, or make money. My goals for the blog when I started it were to write down what I was learning so that I would remember it and then after that, it was to figure out how to communicate my ideas so that I would have an easier time communicating them in the workplace. After that, it became an external validation source so that I would no longer depend on my individual manager's opinion of me to decide how good I was at programming. Only very recently has it changed to something like, okay, now I'm good enough at communicating and good enough at tech that I actually have something to teach anybody else. So honestly, for many years, I would see the viewership on my blog and I would be like, “Who are all these people? Why are they in my house?” Like, this is weird, but I would get some credibility from that. CASEY: They don't expect any tea from me. CHELSEA: Yeah. I really hope. I don't have enough to go around, [laughs] but it did help and that's where a lot of folks have kind of come from. Such that when I posted on my blog a post about how I'm going to be going indie. I've quit my job. I didn't really expect that to go anywhere, but a few people did reach out from that and I've been lucky insofar is that that has helped me sustain a client load in a way that I didn't really expect to. There's also, I would be remiss not to mention that what I do is I sling code for money for the majority of my consulting business, at least historically and especially in the beginning was exclusively that, and there's enough of a demand to have somebody come in and write code that that helped. It also helped that as I was taking on clients, I started to niche down specifically what I wanted to work on to a specific type of client and to a specific type problem. So I quickly got to the point where I had enough of a client load that I was going to have to make a choice about which clients to accept, or I was going to have to work over time. Now, the conventional wisdom in this circumstance is to raise your rates. Vast majority of business development resources will tell you that that's what you're supposed to do in this situation. But part of my goal in creating my consulting business had been to get out of burnout and part of the reason for the burnout was that I did not feel that the work that I was doing was contributing to a cause that made me feel good about what I was doing. It wasn't morally reprehensible, but I just didn't feel like I was contributing to a better future in the way that my self-identity sort of mandated that I did. It was making me irritable and all these kinds of things. MAE: I had the same thing, yeah. CHELSEA: Yeah. So it's interesting to hear that that's a common experience, but if I were to raise my rates, the companies that were still going to be able to afford me were going to be companies whose products were not morally reprehensible, but not things that coincided with what I was trying to get out of my consulting business. So what I did instead was I said, “I'm specifically looking to work with organizations that are contributing to basic scientific research, improving access for underserved communities, and combating the effects of climate change,” and kept my rates effectively the same, but niche down the clientele to that. That ended up being kind of how I did it. I find that rates vary from client to client in part, because of what you were talking about, Casey, wherein you have to hit the right price in order to even get clients board in certain circumstances. CASEY: Right. CHELSEA: I don't know a good way to guess it. My technique for this, which I don't know if this is kosher to say, but my technique for this has been whoever reached out to me, interested in bringing me on as a consultant for that organization, I ask that person to do some research and figure out what rate I'm supposed to pitch. That has helped a lot because a lot of times my expectations have been wildly off in those circumstances. One time I had somebody say to me, this was for a custom workshop they wanted. I was like, “What should I charge?” And they were like, “I don't know, a few thousand.” I was like, “Is that $1,200? Is that $9,000? I don't know how much money that is,” and so they went back and then they came back and they were able to tell me more specifically a band. There was absolutely no way I would've hit that number accurately without that information. CASEY: Yeah, and different clients have different numbers. You setting your price standard flat across all customers is not a good strategy either. That's why prices aren't on websites so often. CHELSEA: Yeah. I find that it does depend a lot. There's similarly, like I said, a lot of my clients are clients who are contributing to basic scientific research are very often grant funded and grants funding is a very particular kind of funding. It can be intermittent. There has to be a skillset on the team for getting the grant funding. A lot of times, to be frank, it doesn't support the kinds of rates that somebody could charge hourly in a for-profit institution. So for me, it was worth it to make the choice that this is who I want to work with. I know that my rate is effectively capped at this, if I'm going to do that and that was fine by me. Although, I'm lying to say it was completely fine by me. I had to take a long, hard look in the mirror, while I was still in that last full-time job, and realize that I had become a person who gauged her self-worth by the salary that she commanded more than I was comfortable with. More than I wanted to. I had to figure out how to weaken that dependency before I was really able to go off and do my own thing. That was my experience with it. I'm curious whether y'all, well, in particular, Casey, did you find the same thing? CASEY: The self-worth by salary? CHELSEA: Yeah. CASEY: I felt that over time, yeah. Like I went from private sector big tech to government and I got a pay cut and I was like, “Ugh.” It kind of hurt a little and it wasn't even as much as I was promised. Once I got through the hiring process, it was lower than that and now I'm making way less. When I do my favorite impact thing, the board game, like if I made a board game about mental health for middle schoolers, which is something I really want to do, that makes less than anything else I could with my time. I'll be lucky to make money on that at all. So it's actually inverse. My salary is inversely proportional to how much impact I can have if I'm working anyway. So my dream is to have enough corporate clients that I can do half-time, or game impact, whatever other impact things I'm thinking about doing. I think of my impact a lot. Impact is my biggest goal, but the thing is salary hurts. If I don't have the salary and I want to live where I'm living and the lifestyle I have, I don't want to cut back on that and I don't need to, hopefully. CHELSEA: Right. CASEY: I'm hoping eventually, I'll have a steady stream of clients, I don't need to do the marketing and sales outreach as much and all those hours I kind of recoup. I can invest those in the impact things. I've heard people can do that. I think I'll get there. CHELSEA: No, I think you absolutely will. Mae, I'm curious as to your experience, because I know that you have a lot of experience with a similar calculation of determining which things are going to provide more income, which things are probably going to provide less income, and then balancing across a bunch of factors like money, but also impact, time spent, emotional drain, and all that stuff. MAE: Well, Chelsea. [laughter] I am a real merry go round in this arena. So before I became a programmer, I had a state job, I was well paid, and I was pretty set. Then I was a programmer and I took huge pay cut because I quit. I became a programmer when I was 37 years old. So I already had a whole career and to start at the beginning and be parallel with 20-year-old so it's not just like my salary, but also my level and my level of impact on my – and level of the amount of people who wanted to ask me for my advice [laughs] was significantly different. So like the ego's joking stopped and so when you mentioned the thing about identity. Doing any kind of consulting in your own deal is a major identity reorganization and having the money, the title, the clout, and the engagement. Like a couple years, I have spent largely alone and that is very different than working at a place where I have colleagues, or when I live somewhere and have roommates. But I have found signing up for lots and lots of different social justice and passion project things, and supporting nonprofits that I believe in. So from my perspective, I'm really offering a capacity building grant out of my own pocket, my own time, and my own heart and that has been deeply rewarding and maybe not feel much about my identity around salary. Except it does make me question myself as an adult. Like these aren't the best financial decisions to be making, [chuckles] but I get enough out of having made them that it's worth it to me. One of the things probably you were thinking of, Chelsea, we worked together a little bit on this mutual aid project that I took on when the pandemic started and I didn't get paid any dollars for that and I was working 18 hours a day on it, [chuckles] or something. So I like to really jump in a wholeheartedly and then once I really, really do need some dollars, then I figure something else out. That is kind of how I've ebbed and flowed with it. But mostly, I've done it by reducing my personal overhead so that I'm not wigged about the money and lowering whatever my quality-of-life spending goals [chuckles] are. But that also has had to happen because I have not wanted to and I couldn't get myself to get excited about marketing of myself and my whole deal. Like I legit still don't have a website and I've been in operation now since 2014 so that's a while. I meet people and I can demonstrate what it is and I get clients and for me, having only a few clients, there's dozens of people that work for each one. So it's more of an organization client than a bunch of individuals and I can't actually handle a ton. I was in a YCombinator thing that wanted me to really be reporting on income, growth rates, and all of these number of new acquisition things, and it just wasn't for me. Those are not my goals. I want to make sure that this nonprofit can help more people this year and that they can get more grant money because they know how many people they helped and that those people are more efficient at their job every day. So those are harder to measure. It's not quite an answer to your question, [laughs] but I took it and ran a little. CHELSEA: No, I appreciate that. There is a software engineer and a teacher that I follow on Twitter. His name is GeePawHill. Are y'all familiar with GeePawHill? MAE: No. CHELSEA: And he did a thread a couple of days ago that this conversation reminds me of and I found it. Is that all right if I read like a piece of it and paraphrase part of it? MAE: Yes, please. CHELSEA: Okay. So this is what he says. He says, “The weirdest thing about being a teacher for young geek minds: I am teaching them things…that their actual first jobs will most likely forbid them to do. The young'uns I work with are actually nearly all hire-able as is, after 18 months of instruction, without any intervention from me. The problem they're going to face when they get to The Show isn't technical, or intellectual at all. No language, or framework, or OS, or library, or algorithm is going to daunt them, not for long. No, the problem they're going to face is how to sustain their connection to the well of geek joy, in a trade that is systematically bent on simultaneously exploiting that connection while denying it exists and refusing any and all access to it. It is possible, to stick it out, to acquire enough space and power, to re-assert one's path to the well. Many have done it; many are doing it today. But it is very hard. Very hard. Far harder than learning the Visitor pattern, or docker, or, dart, or SQL, or even Haskell. How do you tell people you've watched “become” as they bathed in the cool clear water that, for some long time, 5 years or more, they must…navigate the horrors of extractive capitalist software development? The best answer I have, so far, is to try and teach them how and where to find water outside of work. It is a lousy answer. I feel horrible giving it. But I'd feel even more horrible if I didn't tell them the truth.” CASEY: I just saw this thread and I really liked it, too. I'm glad you found it. MAE: Oh, yeah. I find it honestly pretty inspiring, like people generally who get involved in the kinds of consulting gigs that we three are talking about, which is a little different than just any random consulting, or any random freelancing. CASEY: Like impact consulting, I might call that. MAE: Yeah. It's awesome if the money comes, but it's almost irrelevant [chuckles] provided that basic needs are meant. So that's kind of been my angle. We'll see how – talk to me in 20 more years when I'm [chuckles] trying to retire and made a lot of choices that I was happy with at the time. CASEY: This reminds me of a conversation I had with a friend who's an executive director of an orchestra in the nonprofit space and he was telling me that so many nonprofits shoot themselves in the foot by not doing enough fundraising, by not raising money, and that comes from not wanting to make money in a way because they're a nonprofit, money is not a motive, and everybody's very clear about that. That's noble and all, but it ends up hurting them because they don't have the money to do the impactful things they would as a nonprofit. Money is a necessary evil here and a lot of people are uncomfortable with it. Including me a lot of the time. Honestly, I have to tell myself not to. What would I tell a friend? “No, charge more money.” Okay, I guess I'll tell myself to do that now. I have this conversation with myself a lot. MAE: Yeah. I've been very aware that when I become anti-money, the well dries up. The money well. [laughs] CASEY: Yeah. MAE: And when I am respectful of and appreciative of money in the world, more comes my way. There is an internal dousing, I think that happens that one needs to be very careful about for sure. CASEY: One of the techniques I use with myself and with clients is a matrix where I write out for this approach, this thing that I'm thinking about how much money will it make, how much impact will it have on this goal, and all the different heuristics I would use to make the decision, or columns and all the options arose. I put numbers in it and I might weight my columns because money is less important than impact, but it's still important. It's there. I do all this math. In the end, the summary column with the averages roughly matches what's in my head, which is the things that are similar in my head are similar on paper, but I can see why and that's very clarifying for me. I really like being able to see it in this matrix form and being able to see that you have to focus on the money some amount. If you just did the high impact one, it wouldn't be on the top of the list. It's like, it's hard to think about so many variables at once, but seeing it helps me. CHELSEA: It is. GeePaw speaks to that some later in the thread. He says, “You've got to feed your family. You've got to. That's not negotiable. But you don't got to forget the well. To be any good at all, you have to keep finding the well, keep reaching it, keep noticing it. Doesn't matter whether it's office hours, or after hours. Matters whether you get to it. The thing you've got to watch, when you become a professional geek, isn't the newest tech, and it sure as hell isn't the org's process. You've got to watch whether, or how you're getting to the well. If you're getting to the well, in whatever way, you'll stay alive and change the world.” I think I'm curious as to y'all's thoughts on this, but like I mentioned earlier, I have a full-time job and I also do this consulting on the side. I also teach. I teach at the Master's program in computer science at University of Chicago. I do some mentoring with an organization called Emergent Works, which trains formerly incarcerated technologists. The work situation that I have pieced together for myself, I think manages to get me the income I need and also, the impact that I'm looking for and the ability to work with people and those kinds of things. I think my perspective at this point is that it's probably difficult, if it's realistic at all, to expect any one position to be able to meet all of those needs simultaneously. Maybe they exist, but I suspect that they're relatively few and far between and I think that we probably do ourselves a disservice by propagating this idea that what you need to do is just make yourself so supremely interview-able that everybody wants to hire you and then you get to pick the one position where you get to do that because there's only one in the entirety of tech, it's that rare. Sure, maybe that's an individualist way to look at it. But when we step back and look more closely, or when we step back and look more broadly at that, it's like, all right, so we have to become hypercompetitive in order to be able to get the position where we can make enough while helping people. Like, the means there seem kind of cutthroat for the ends, right? [laughs] CASEY: This reminds me of relationships, too and I think there's a lot of great parallels here. Like you shouldn't expect your partner to meet all of your needs, all of them. MAE: I was thinking the same thing! CASEY: Uh huh. Social, emotional, spiritual, physical, all your needs cannot possibly by one person and that is so much pressure to put on that person, CHELSEA: Right. CASEY: It's like not healthy. CHELSEA: Right. CASEY: You can choose some to prioritize over others for your partner, but you're not going to get a 100% of it and you shouldn't. CHELSEA: Well, and I find that being a conversation fairly regularly in monogamous versus polyamorous circles as well. Like, how much is it appropriate to expect of a partner? But I think it is a valid conversation to have in those circles. But I think that even in the context of a monogamous relationship, a person has other relationships—familial relationships, friend relationships—outside of that single romantic relationship. CASEY: Co-workers, community people, yeah. CHELSEA: Right. But even within that monogamous context, it's most realistic and I would argue, the most healthy to not expect any one person to provide for all of your needs and rather to rely on a community. That's what we're supposed to be able to do. CASEY: Yeah. MAE: Interdependence, not independence. CHELSEA: Right. CASEY: It's more resilient in the face of catastrophe, or change in general, mild, more mild change and you want to be that kind of resilient person for yourself, too. Just like you would do a computer system, or an organization. They should be resilient, too. MAE: Yes. CASEY: Your relationship with your job is another one. MAE: Totally. CHELSEA: Right. And I think that part of the reason the burnout is so quick – like the amount of time, the median amount of time that somebody spends at a company in tech is 2.2 years. MAE: I know, it's so weird. CHELSEA: Very few companies in tech have a large number of lifers, for example, or something like that. There are a number of reasons for that. We don't necessarily have to get into all of them, although, we can if you want. But I think one of them is definitely that we expect to get so much out of a full-time position. Tech is prone. due to circumstances of its origin, to an amount of idealism. We are saving the world. We, as technologists, are saving the world and also, we, as technologists, can expect this salary and we, as technologists, are a family and we play ping pong, and all of these things – [laughter] That contribute to an unrealistic expectation of a work environment, which if that is the only place that we are getting fulfillment as programmers, then people become unsatisfied very quickly because how could an organization that's simultaneously trying to accomplish a goal, meet all of these expect for everybody? I think it's rare at best. CASEY: I want to bring up another example of this kind of thing. Imagine you're an engineer and you have an engineering manager. What's their main job? Is it to get the organization's priorities to be done by the team, like top-down kind of thing? We do need that to happen. Or is it to mentor each individual and coach them and help them grow as an engineer? We need that somewhere, too, yeah. Or is it to make the team – like the team to come together as a team and be very effective together and to represent their needs to the org? That, too, but we don't need one person to do all three of those necessarily. If the person's not technical, you can get someone else in the company to do technical mentorship, like an architect, or just a more senior person on, or off the team somewhere else. But we put a lot of pressure on the engineering managers to do that and this applies to so many roles. That's just one I know that I can define pretty well. There's an article that explains that pretty well. We'll put in the show notes. MAE: Yes! So what I am currently doing is I have a not 40 hours a week job as an engineering manager and especially when I took the gig, I was still doing all of these pandemic charity things and I'm like, “These are more important to me right now and I only have so many hours in the day. So do you need me to code at this place? I can, but do you need me to because all those hours are hours I can go code for all these other things that I'm doing,” and [laughs] it worked. I have been able to do all three of the things that you're talking about, Casey, but certainly able to defer in different places and it's made me – this whole thing of not working full-time makes you optimize in very different ways. So I sprinkle my Slack check-ins all day, but I didn't have to work all day to be present all day. There's a lot that has been awesome. It's not for everyone, but I also have leaned heavily on technical mentorship happening from tech leads as well. CASEY: Sounds good. MAE: But I'm still involved. But this thing about management, especially in tech being whichever programmer seems like the most dominant programmer is probably going to be a good needs to be promoted into management. Just P.S. management is its own discipline, has its own trajectory and when I talk to hiring managers and they only care about my management experience in tech, which is 6 years, right? 8, but I have 25 years of experience in managing. So there's a preciousness of what it is that we are asking for the employees and what the employees are asking of the employer, like you were talking about Chelsea, that is very interesting. It's very privileged, and does lead a lot of people to burnout and disappointment because their ideas got so lofty. I just want to tie this back a little bit too, something you read in that quote about – I forget the last quote, but it was something about having enough to be able to change the world and it reminded me of Adrienne Maree Brown, pleasure activism, emergent strategy, and all of her work, and largely, generations of Black women have been saying, “Yo, you've got to take care [chuckles] of yourself to be able to affect change.” Those people have been the most effective and powerful change makers. So definitely, if you're curious about this topic, I urge you to go listen to some brilliant Black women about it. CASEY: We'll link that in the show notes, too. I think a lot about engineering managers and one way that doesn't come up a lot is you can get training for engineering managers to be stronger managers and for some reason, that is not usually an option people reach for. It could happen through HR, or it could happen if you have a training budget and you're a new EM, you could use your training budget to hire coaching from someone. I'm an example. But there's a ton of people out there that offer this kind of thing. If you don't learn the leadership skills when you switch roles, if you don't take time to learn those skills that are totally learnable, you're not going to have them and it's hard to apply them. There's a lot of pressure to magically know them now that you've switched hats. MAE: And how I don't understand why everyone in life doesn't have a therapist, [laughs] I don't understand why everyone in life doesn't have multiple job coaches at any time. Like why are we not sourcing more ideas and problem-solving strategies, and thinking we need to be the repository of how to handle X, Y, Z situation? CASEY: For some reason, a lot of people I've talked to think their manager is supposed to do that for them. Their manager is supposed to be their everything; their boss. They think the boss that if they're bad, you quit your job. If they're good, you'll stay. That boss ends up being their career coach for people, unless they're a bad career coach and then you're just stuck. Because we expect it so strongly and that is an assumption I want everyone listening to question. Do you need your manager at work to be that person for you? If they are, that's great. You're very fortunate. If not, how can you find someone? Someone in the community, a friend, family member, a professional coach, there's other options, other mentors in the company. You don't have to depend on that manager who doesn't have time for you to give you that kind of support. CHELSEA: So to that end, my thinking around management and mentorship changed about the time I hit – hmm. It was a while ago now, I don't know, maybe 6 years as a programmer, or something like that. Because before that, I was very bought into this idea that your manager is your mentor and all these types of things. There was something that I realized. There were two things that I realized. The first one was that, for me, most of my managers were not well set up to be mentors to me and this is why. Well, the truth is I level up quickly and for many people who are managers in a tech organization, they were technologists for 3 to 5 years before they became managers. They were often early enough in their career that they didn't necessarily know what management entailed, or whether they should say no based on what they were interested in. Many managers in tech figure out what the job is and then try to find as many surreptitious ways as possible to get back into the code. MAE: Yeah. CHELSEA: Additionally, many of those managers feel somewhat insecure about their weakening connection to the code base of the company that they manage. MAE: Yeah. CHELSEA: And so it can be an emotionally fraught experience for them to be mentor to someone whose knowledge of the code base that they are no longer in makes them feel insecure. So I learned that the most effective mentors for me – well, I learned something about the most effective mentors for me and I learned something of the most effective managers for me. I learned that the most effective managers for me either got way out ahead of me experience wise before they became managers, I mean 10 years, 15 years, 20 years, because those are not people who got promoted to management because they didn't know to say no. Those are people who got promoted to management after they got tired of writing code and they no longer staked their self-image on whether they're better coders than the people that they manage. That's very, very important. The other type of person who was a good manager for me was somebody who had never been a software engineer and there are two reasons for that. First of all, they trended higher on raw management experience. Second of all, they were not comparing their technical skillset to my technical skillset in a competitive capacity and that made them better managers for me, honestly. It made things much, much easier. And then in terms of mentors, I found that I had a lot more luck going outside of the organization I was working for mentors and that's again, for two reasons. The first one is that a lot of people, as they gain experience, go indie. Just a lot of people, like all kinds. Some of my sort of most trusted mentors. Avdi Grimm is somebody I've learned a lot from, indie effectively at this point. GeePawHill, like I mentioned, indie effectively at this point. Kenneth Mayer, indie effectively at this point. And these are all people who had decades of experience and the particular style of programming that I was doing very early in my career for many years. So that's the first reason. And then the second reason is that at your job, it is in your interest to succeed at everything you try—at most jobs. And jobs will tell you it's okay to fail. Jobs will tell you it's okay to like whatever, not be good at things and to be learning. But because if I'm drawing a paycheck from an organization, I do not feel comfortable not being good at the thing that I am drawing the paycheck for. MAE: Same. CHELSEA: And honestly, even if they say that that's the case, when the push comes to shove and there's a deadline, they don't actually want you to be bad at things. Come on! That doesn't make any sense. But I've been able to find ambitious projects that I can contribute to not for pay and in those situations, I'm much more comfortable failing because I can be like, “You know what, if they don't like my work, they can have all their money back.” And I work on a couple projects like that right now where I get to work with very experienced programmers on projects that are interesting and challenging, and a lot of times, I just absolutely eat dirt. My first PR doesn't work and I don't know what's wrong and the whole description is like somebody please help and I don't feel comfortable doing that on – if I had to do it at work, I would do it, but I'm not comfortable doing it. I firmly believe that for people to accelerate their learning to their full capacity for accelerating their learning, they must place themselves in situations where they not only might fail, but it's pretty likely. Because that's what's stretching your capacity to the degree that you need to get better and that's just not a comfortable situation for somewhere that you depend on to make a living. And that ended up being, I ended up approaching my management and my mentorship as effectively mutually exclusive things and it ended up working out really well for me. At this particular point in time, I happened to have a manager who happened to get way out ahead of me technically, and is willing to review PRs and so, that's very nice. But it's a nice-to-have. It's not something that I expect of a manager and it's ended up making me much more happy and manage relationships. MAE: I agree with all of that. So well said, Chelsea. CHELSEA: I try, I try. [laughs] Casey, are there things that you look for specifically in a manager? CASEY: Hmm. I guess for that question, I want to take the perspective inward, into myself. What do I need support on and who can I get that from? And this is true as also an independent worker as a consultant freelancer, too. I need support for when things are hard and I can be validated from people who have similar experiences, that kind of like emotional support. I need technical support and skills, like the sales I don't have yet and I have support for that, thank goodness. Individuals, I need ideally communities and individuals, both. They're both really important to me and some of these could be in a manager, but lately, I'm my own manager and I can be none of those things, really. I'm myself. I can't do this external support for myself. Even when I'm typing into a spreadsheet and the computer's trying to be a mirror, it's not as good as talking to another person. Another perspective that I need support on is how do I know what I'm doing is important and so, I do use spreadsheets as a mirror for that a lot of the time for myself. Like this impact is having this kind of magnitude of impact on this many people and then that calculates to this thing, maybe. Does that match my gut? That's literally what I want to know, too. The numbers aren't telling me, but talking to other people about impact on their projects really kind of solidifies that for me. And it's not always the client directly. It could be someone else who sees the impact I'm having on a client. Kind of like the manager, I don't want to expect clients to tell me the impact I'm having. In fact, for business reasons, I should know what the impact is myself, to tell them, to upsell them and continue it going anyway. So it really helps me to have peers to talk through about impact. Like that, too types of support. What other kinds of support do you need as consultants that I didn't just cover? MAE: I still need – and I have [laughs] hired Casey to help me. I still need a way to explain what it is that I am offering and what the value of that really is in a way that is clear and succinct. Every time I've gone to make a website, or a list of what it is that I offer, I end up in the hundreds of bullet points [laughs] and I just don't – [overtalk] CASEY: Yeah, yeah. MAE: Have a way to capture it yet. So often when people go indie, they do have a unique idea, a unique offering so finding a way to summarize what that is can be really challenging. I loved hearing you two when you were talking about knowing what kinds of work you want to do and who your ideal customer is. Those are things I have a clearer sense of, but how to make that connection is still a little bit of a gap for me. But you reminded me in that and I just want to mention here this book, The Pumpkin Plan, like a very bro business book situation, [chuckles] but what is in there is so good. I don't want to give it away and also, open up another topic [laughs] that I'll talk too long about. So I won't go into it right now, but definitely recommend it. One of the things is how to call your client list and figure out what is the most optimal situation that's going to lead toward the most impact for everybody. CASEY: One of the things I think back to a lot is user research and how can we apply that this business discovery process. I basically used the same techniques that were in my human computer interaction class I took 10, or 15 years ago. Like asking open ended questions, trying to get them to say what their problems are, remembering how they said it in their own words and saying it back to them—that's a big, big step. But then there's a whole lot of techniques I didn't learn from human computer interaction, that are sales techniques, and my favorite resource for that so far is called SPIN selling where SPIN is an acronym and it sounds like a wonky technique that wouldn't work because it's just like a random technique to pull out. I don't know, but it's not. This book is based on studies and it shows what you need to do to make big ticket sales go through, which is very different than selling those plastic things with the poppy bubbles in the mall stand in the middle of the hallway. Those low-key things they can manipulate people into buying and people aren't going to return it probably. But big-ticket things need a different approach than traditional sales and marketing knowledge and I really like the ideas in SPIN selling. I don't want to go into them today. We'll talk about it later. But those are two of the perspectives I bring to this kind of problem, user research and the SPIN selling techniques. I want to share what my ideal client would be. I think that's interesting, too. So I really want to help companies be happier and more effective. I want to help the employees be happier and more effective, and that has the impact on the users of the company, or whoever their clients are. It definitely impacts that, which makes it a thing I can sell, thankfully. So an organization usually knows when they're not the most happy, or the most effective. They know it, but my ideal client isn't just one that knows that, but they also have leadership buy-in; they have some leader who really cares and can advocate for making it better and they just don't know how. They don't have enough resources to make it happen in their org. Maybe they have, or don't have experience with it, but they need support. That's where I come in and then my impact really is on the employees. I want to help the employees be happier and more effective. That's the direct impact I want, and then it has the really strong, indirect impact on the business outcomes. So in that vein, I'm willing to help even large tech companies because if I can help their employees be happier, that is a positive impact. Even if I don't care about large tech companies' [chuckles] business outcomes, I'm okay with that because my focus is specifically on the employees. That's different than a lot of people I talk to; they really just want to support like nonprofit type, stronger impact of the mission and that totally makes sense to me, too. MAE: Also, it is possible to have a large and ever growing equitably run company. It is possible. I do want to contribute toward that existing in the world and as much as there's focus on what the ultimate looking out impact is, I care about the experience of employees and individuals on the way to get there. I'm not a utilitarian thinker. CASEY: Yeah, but we can even frame it in a utilitarian way if we need to. If we're like a stakeholder presentation, if someone leaves the company and it takes six months to replace them and their work is in the meantime off board to other people, what's the financial impact of all that. I saw a paper about it. Maybe I can dig it up and I'll link to it. It's like to replace a person in tech it costs a $100K. So if they can hire a consultant for less than a $100K to save one person from leaving, it pays for itself. If that number is right, or whatever. Maybe it was ten employees for that number. The paper will say much better than I will. CHELSEA: I think that in mentioning that Casey, you bring up something that businesses I think sometimes don't think about, which is some of the hidden costs that can easily be difficult to predict, or difficult to measure those kinds of things. One of the hidden costs is the turnover costs is the churn cost because there's how much it takes to hire another person and then there's the amount of ramp time before that person gets to where the person who left was. CASEY: Right, right, right. CHELSEA: And that's also a thing. There's all the time that developers are spending on forensic software analysis in order to find out all of the context that got dropped when a person left. CASEY: Yeah. The one person who knew that part of the code base, the last one is gone, uh oh. CHELSEA: Right. CASEY: It's a huge trust. And then engineering team is often really interested in conveying that risk. But if they're not empowered enough and don't have enough bandwidth time and energy to make the case, the executive team, or whoever will never hear it and they won't be able to safeguard against it. MAE: Or using the right language to communicate it. CASEY: Right, right. And that's its own skill. That's trainable, too thankfully. But we don't usually train engineers in that, traditionally. Engineers don't receive that training unless they go out of their way for it. PMs and designers, too, honestly. Like the stakeholder communication, everybody can work on. MAE: Yeah. CASEY: That's true. MAE: Communication. Everyone can, or not. Yes. [laughs] I learned the phrase indie today. I have never heard it and I really like it! It makes me feel cool inside and so love and – [overtalk] CASEY: Yeah, I have no record label, or I am my own record label, perhaps. MAE: Yo! CASEY: I've got one. I like the idea of having a Patreon, not to make money, but to have to help inspire yourself and I know a lot of friends have had Patreons with low income from it and they were actually upset about it. So I want to go back to those friends and say, “Look, this prove some people find value in what you're doing.” Like the social impact. I might make my own even. Thank you. MAE: I know I might do it too. It's good. That's good. CHELSEA: Absolutely. Highly recommended. One thing that I want to take away is the exercise, Casey, that you were talking about of tallying up all of the different things that a given position contributes in terms of a person's needs. Because I think that an exercise like that would be extremely helpful for, for example, some of my students who are getting their very first tech jobs. Students receive a very one-dimensional message about the way that tech employment goes. It tends to put set of five companies that show remain unnamed front and center, which whatever, but I would like them to be aware of the other options. And there is a very particular way of gauging the value of a tech position that I believe includes fewer dimensions than people should probably consider for the health of their career long-term and not only the health of their career, but also their health in their career. CASEY: One more parting thought I want to share for anyone is you need support for your career growth, for your happiness. If you're going to be a consultant, you need support for that. Find support in individuals and communities, you deserve that support and you can be that support for the people who are supporting you! It can be mutual. They need that, too.

Microsoft Access is, for many database consultants, developers and even small and mid-market businesses, the introduction to databases and database management. Like a lot of legacy software in need of upgrading and migrating, depending on Access for too long can cause problems. In today's episode we dive into why most businesses should migrate from Access to platforms more suitable for innovation, growth, business needs and future potential. Along the way we uncover why our developer-radar goes off when companies approach us with Access databases and a custom solution might be the most cost and time effective way ahead.

Microsoft Ignite - Mesh, Loop, and more! Microsoft to extend its 'enterprise metaverse' strategy with Mesh for Teams Microsoft Ignite: The Fluid Framework Gets Loopy Microsoft Ignite Fall 2021: Innovations coming to Microsoft Teams Microsoft introduces Loop: A new collaboration tool built on Fluid Framework Microsoft Ignite: The Fluid Framework Gets Loopy Microsoft Ignite: More News from the Show Microsoft is adding more AI smarts and other new tools to Office Microsoft's Edge browser for Linux is now available for all users Microsoft to release 'Defender for Business' platform Microsoft Ignite Book of News Windows 11 Windows 11 is Already on 5 Percent of PCs New Windows 11 Build Previews MSA Settings Interface Announcing Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 22494 | Windows Insider Blog Surface Microsoft Surface Pro 8 Review Xbox Microsoft Highlights First Xbox Game Pass Titles for November Microsoft Announces Games with Gold for November Tips and picks Tip of the week: Make a DIY Edgebrook (ChrEdgebook?) App pick of the week: Start11 Enterprise pick of the week: SQL Server 2022, Power Apps Connector for Microsoft Access (preview) Developer pick of the week: VS 2022, .NET 6 launches next week Beer pick of the week: Finback Red Velvet (barrel aged) Hosts: Mary Jo Foley, Paul Thurrott, and Mikah Sargent Download or subscribe to this show at https://twit.tv/shows/windows-weekly Get episodes ad-free with Club TWiT at https://twit.tv/clubtwit Check out Paul's blog at thurrott.com Check out Mary Jo's blog at AllAboutMicrosoft.com The Windows Weekly theme music is courtesy of Carl Franklin. Sponsors: Melissa.com/twit itpro.tv/windows use code WW30 akamai.com/ww

Microsoft Ignite - Mesh, Loop, and more! Microsoft to extend its 'enterprise metaverse' strategy with Mesh for Teams Microsoft Ignite: The Fluid Framework Gets Loopy Microsoft Ignite Fall 2021: Innovations coming to Microsoft Teams Microsoft introduces Loop: A new collaboration tool built on Fluid Framework Microsoft Ignite: The Fluid Framework Gets Loopy Microsoft Ignite: More News from the Show Microsoft is adding more AI smarts and other new tools to Office Microsoft's Edge browser for Linux is now available for all users Microsoft to release 'Defender for Business' platform Microsoft Ignite Book of News Windows 11 Windows 11 is Already on 5 Percent of PCs New Windows 11 Build Previews MSA Settings Interface Announcing Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 22494 | Windows Insider Blog Surface Microsoft Surface Pro 8 Review Xbox Microsoft Highlights First Xbox Game Pass Titles for November Microsoft Announces Games with Gold for November Tips and picks Tip of the week: Make a DIY Edgebrook (ChrEdgebook?) App pick of the week: Start11 Enterprise pick of the week: SQL Server 2022, Power Apps Connector for Microsoft Access (preview) Developer pick of the week: VS 2022, .NET 6 launches next week Beer pick of the week: Finback Red Velvet (barrel aged) Hosts: Mary Jo Foley, Paul Thurrott, and Mikah Sargent Download or subscribe to this show at https://twit.tv/shows/windows-weekly Get episodes ad-free with Club TWiT at https://twit.tv/clubtwit Check out Paul's blog at thurrott.com Check out Mary Jo's blog at AllAboutMicrosoft.com The Windows Weekly theme music is courtesy of Carl Franklin. Sponsors: Melissa.com/twit itpro.tv/windows use code WW30 akamai.com/ww

Microsoft Ignite - Mesh, Loop, and more! Microsoft to extend its 'enterprise metaverse' strategy with Mesh for Teams Microsoft Ignite: The Fluid Framework Gets Loopy Microsoft Ignite Fall 2021: Innovations coming to Microsoft Teams Microsoft introduces Loop: A new collaboration tool built on Fluid Framework Microsoft Ignite: The Fluid Framework Gets Loopy Microsoft Ignite: More News from the Show Microsoft is adding more AI smarts and other new tools to Office Microsoft's Edge browser for Linux is now available for all users Microsoft to release 'Defender for Business' platform Microsoft Ignite Book of News Windows 11 Windows 11 is Already on 5 Percent of PCs New Windows 11 Build Previews MSA Settings Interface Announcing Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 22494 | Windows Insider Blog Surface Microsoft Surface Pro 8 Review Xbox Microsoft Highlights First Xbox Game Pass Titles for November Microsoft Announces Games with Gold for November Tips and picks Tip of the week: Make a DIY Edgebrook (ChrEdgebook?) App pick of the week: Start11 Enterprise pick of the week: SQL Server 2022, Power Apps Connector for Microsoft Access (preview) Developer pick of the week: VS 2022, .NET 6 launches next week Beer pick of the week: Finback Red Velvet (barrel aged) Hosts: Mary Jo Foley, Paul Thurrott, and Mikah Sargent Download or subscribe to this show at https://twit.tv/shows/windows-weekly Get episodes ad-free with Club TWiT at https://twit.tv/clubtwit Check out Paul's blog at thurrott.com Check out Mary Jo's blog at AllAboutMicrosoft.com The Windows Weekly theme music is courtesy of Carl Franklin. Sponsors: Melissa.com/twit itpro.tv/windows use code WW30 akamai.com/ww

Microsoft Ignite - Mesh, Loop, and more! Microsoft to extend its 'enterprise metaverse' strategy with Mesh for Teams Microsoft Ignite: The Fluid Framework Gets Loopy Microsoft Ignite Fall 2021: Innovations coming to Microsoft Teams Microsoft introduces Loop: A new collaboration tool built on Fluid Framework Microsoft Ignite: The Fluid Framework Gets Loopy Microsoft Ignite: More News from the Show Microsoft is adding more AI smarts and other new tools to Office Microsoft's Edge browser for Linux is now available for all users Microsoft to release 'Defender for Business' platform Microsoft Ignite Book of News Windows 11 Windows 11 is Already on 5 Percent of PCs New Windows 11 Build Previews MSA Settings Interface Announcing Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 22494 | Windows Insider Blog Surface Microsoft Surface Pro 8 Review Xbox Microsoft Highlights First Xbox Game Pass Titles for November Microsoft Announces Games with Gold for November Tips and picks Tip of the week: Make a DIY Edgebrook (ChrEdgebook?) App pick of the week: Start11 Enterprise pick of the week: SQL Server 2022, Power Apps Connector for Microsoft Access (preview) Developer pick of the week: VS 2022, .NET 6 launches next week Beer pick of the week: Finback Red Velvet (barrel aged) Hosts: Mary Jo Foley, Paul Thurrott, and Mikah Sargent Download or subscribe to this show at https://twit.tv/shows/windows-weekly Get episodes ad-free with Club TWiT at https://twit.tv/clubtwit Check out Paul's blog at thurrott.com Check out Mary Jo's blog at AllAboutMicrosoft.com The Windows Weekly theme music is courtesy of Carl Franklin. Sponsors: Melissa.com/twit itpro.tv/windows use code WW30 akamai.com/ww

Microsoft Ignite - Mesh, Loop, and more! Microsoft to extend its 'enterprise metaverse' strategy with Mesh for Teams Microsoft Ignite: The Fluid Framework Gets Loopy Microsoft Ignite Fall 2021: Innovations coming to Microsoft Teams Microsoft introduces Loop: A new collaboration tool built on Fluid Framework Microsoft Ignite: The Fluid Framework Gets Loopy Microsoft Ignite: More News from the Show Microsoft is adding more AI smarts and other new tools to Office Microsoft's Edge browser for Linux is now available for all users Microsoft to release 'Defender for Business' platform Microsoft Ignite Book of News Windows 11 Windows 11 is Already on 5 Percent of PCs New Windows 11 Build Previews MSA Settings Interface Announcing Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 22494 | Windows Insider Blog Surface Microsoft Surface Pro 8 Review Xbox Microsoft Highlights First Xbox Game Pass Titles for November Microsoft Announces Games with Gold for November Tips and picks Tip of the week: Make a DIY Edgebrook (ChrEdgebook?) App pick of the week: Start11 Enterprise pick of the week: SQL Server 2022, Power Apps Connector for Microsoft Access (preview) Developer pick of the week: VS 2022, .NET 6 launches next week Beer pick of the week: Finback Red Velvet (barrel aged) Hosts: Mary Jo Foley, Paul Thurrott, and Mikah Sargent Download or subscribe to this show at https://twit.tv/shows/windows-weekly Get episodes ad-free with Club TWiT at https://twit.tv/clubtwit Check out Paul's blog at thurrott.com Check out Mary Jo's blog at AllAboutMicrosoft.com The Windows Weekly theme music is courtesy of Carl Franklin. Sponsors: Melissa.com/twit itpro.tv/windows use code WW30 akamai.com/ww

Kristoffer chats with Harald Achitz about Harald’s path as a developer, test-driven development, seeing the big picture, and more. The first part of the discussion is Harald’s background: Growing up on the far side of Europe, focusing on music, and how he eventually landed in computing. Freelancing as a developer in 1995 - what was that like? How did one find customers? The story then goes into Harald’s way into C and C++. Developing for medical devices and hospitals. Moving toward Linux, making a living as an open source developer, and eventually ending up in Sweden. Then, the conversation moves to Harald’s increasing interest in what happens after you finish writing the code; builds, releases, integrations, package managers, build systems, and so much more. We talk quite a bit about seeing the big picture, and how our code is, at best, a temporary and unimportant part of the greater whole. Are we too focused on the next task, at the expense of thinking about and seeing the whole? Harald explains why he likes to have 100% code coverage, how he goes about setting up his tests, and the challenges of setting up tests when responsibilities strech across teams. Many of the hardest problems are organizational, the code we write is, on the whole, often not very important. Code is temporary. All of which is more motivation for testing more. Thank you Cloudnet for sponsoring our VPS! Comments, questions or tips? We are @kodsnack, @tobiashieta, @oferlund and @bjoreman on Twitter, have a page on Facebook and can be emailed at info@kodsnack.se if you want to write longer. We read everything we receive. If you enjoy Kodsnack we would love a review in iTunes! You can also support the podcast by buying us a coffee (or two!) through Ko-fi. Links Harald Stockholmcpp - C++ meetup which Harald arranges Tron Wargames The Iron curtain Conservatorium Visual basic for applications Novell netware Windows 95 Windows NT 3.51 Office 95 Lotus notes Microsoft press Access AS/400 Stored procedures DCOM MSDN KDE GNOME Red hat Slackware “Linux is cancer” Tobii Conan C and C++ package manager Jenkins Unit testing Test-driven development Boost unit test Github actions Scrum Devops Spock - testing and specification framework for Java, Nimoy - for Python Schrödinger’s cat Titles Austria in the 80s On the side of Europe I started and stopped a lot of things Just jamming around Where you play the songs you hate There were computers in offices I was the young person The internet became a thing Freelancing back in 95 I really loved databases I came back to medical devices Would you like to go to Switzerland? A different spirit in the Linux world I have no problem if things work It’s not just the code I write I love to have everything automated Holistic thinking All the tests are passing, but the thing is not useful Yes, it gives me no guarantee You need to fake it The place where people give up Software is their bread and butter The code I write is most likely not very important Software systems tend to change Code is temporary Throw it away as soon as possible Never enough, but always too much

The following article is adapted from a wonderful newsletter shared recently by Steve O’Keefe, author of Set the Page on Fire: Secrets of Successful Writers. It outlines ten ways you can promote your books on Amazon—as well as ten ways you SHOULD promote your books on Amazon.1. Register, Claim, and Fix Your Amazon Author PageAmazon Author Central (https://author.amazon.com/claim/welcome) enables you to register as a book author and claim your books. You can add a blog feed (from your main author blog), videos, photos, a bio, and more. Steve wrote a detailed article for IBPA on how to claim and complete your author page here: https://www.ibpa-online.org/blogpost/1734581/309773/The-Amazon-Makeover-by-Steve-O-Keefe.An Amazon author page can act as your home page on the internet (if you like to use it for that purpose). From there you can promote yourself as an author, talk show guest, consultant, expert, speaker, and more.Steve O’Keefe’s Amazon author page: https://www.amazon.com/Steve-OKeefe/e/B001HD0BJ4John Kremer’s author page: https://www.amazon.com/John-Kremer/e/B001H6L2T42. Fix Your Amazon Book PagesYou can control the content on the pages for your books. Amazon provides six bins you can fill with content, including Editorial Reviews, Inside Flap Copy, Back Cover Copy, and About the Author. You can put anything you want into those bins, within reason, such as excerpts, reviews, special offers, rights information, tour schedule, etc.But don’t be annoying or too aggressive. And don’t link to any site outside of Amazon (Amazon does not like to send people outside of itself when people are reading about books to buy).3. Add a Media Kit to Your WebsiteA good media kit, the key to promoting your book to a variety of audiences, is foundational content for a book website. Your kit should contain a single-page printable summary with Contact Info, Book Summary, Author Summary, Book Cover, Author Photo, and META data such as dimensions, pages, ISBN, etc.Steve recommends an index to Best Lines, Power Paragraphs, and Best Excerpts, along with Keynames, Keyplaces, and Keywords. You should also include and update Author Endorsements and Book Endorsements. And, of course, you can add all that onto your Amazon Book and Author pages.Check out this wonderfully complete media kit for Words Whispered in Water: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1fgJI0dZvI09JBmJGMsEuSPT2Y8SRVILhHM0OQVeHNR4.4. Review Books on AmazonReview books in your field, books you like, books you’ve just read, books Amazon associates with your book (both in the Amazon ads as well as on your book pages), and books by authors Amazon associates with you. When you do a review, always link your name to your Amazon Author Page and your book title to your Amazon Book Page.You don’t have to write long reviews, but you should show that you read the book (or at least scanned it). A one-sentence review can often get more attention and be more effective. Most important, make sure your review enhances your credibility as well as the credibility for your book.Besides reviewing books on Amazon, you can also post your book reviews to GoodReads, Facebook, Twitter, your website, and more. Again, with links to your Amazon Author Page and Amazon Book Page.Note: If you start doing effective book reviews that help sell books, you can ask for free review copies from the publicity department of book publishers.Here is Steve’s book review page on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/gp/profile/amzn1.account.AFAEINMZMSHSFDABB5CJDQ5NR3OQ.5. Link to Your ReviewsLink to your book reviews on Amazon. Link from Twitter, from Facebook, from Pinterest, from your website, from LinkedIn, etc. Note: Your book reviews on Amazon have a unique URL which you can post to social media or include in your email newsletter, such as Steve’s review of New Orleans: A Literary History: https://www.amazon.com/gp/customer-reviews/R24YF8OE73FXZ9.When your review gets traffic, Amazon notices and elevates the visibility of your review. This creates a positive feedback loop between your reviews and your social media that brings you to the attention of the media, talkshow producers, literary agents, publishers, and rights buyers. — Steve O’Keefe6. Create and Maintain a BlogYou can add an RSS feed from your blog to your Amazon Author Page. You can get a free blog from WordPress.com, Blogger.com, Medium.com, or Substack.com.A blog allows you to push your content to your Amazon Author Page. And with the bonus of featuring links to outside sites on your blog posts within Amazon. You can also get videos onto your Amazon Author Page using this blog backdoor. You don’t have to keep blogging if you don’t want to. However, it’s a great place to post all the book reviews you write and receive.You can follow John’s BookMarketingBestsellers blog on his Amazon Author Page at: https://www.amazon.com/John-Kremer/e/B001H6L2T4.7. Comment on Amazon Book ReviewsYour comments on Amazon book reviews can contain a link to your Amazon Author Page as well as links to one of your Book Pages (or the books of other authors).As you review books on Amazon, you’ll come across other people’s reviews that might be worth commenting on (because their reviews are insightful, because of the traffic they get, or because of the topic itself). All you have to do is write a few words of encouragement and link to your Amazon Author Page.Note: Your comments on reviews are excellent ways to introduce yourself to other authors, editors, and agents.8. Comment on News StoriesAs you peruse news stories on various websites, blogs, or podcasts, you should comment on relevant news stories. As a book author, you are an authority on the subjects you write about. So use your expertise to comment on the news stories where you can add unique perspective, added ideas, or useful tips. Most sites will welcome your authority.Note: When you comment, use a signature that includes the title of your book and a link to your media kit.Steve offers a campaign that turns the drudgery of commenting into something more entertaining and productive (sort of like a treasure hunt). Contact him if you want help with your commenting campaign. Email: steve.okeefe@orobora.com. Phone: 540-324-7023.9. Connect with One Reporter Every WeekReach out at least once a week to a reporter, journalist, editor, producer, or host. Connect with them via a short email offering a free review copy of your book or a reason to interview you. Also connect with them via comments on their social media posts, etc.Keep an email message under 100 words. Don’t include any links or attachments—or your email could end up in their spam folder never to be seen again.If you need help pitching, see Chapter 7 of Steve’s book, Set the Page on Fire: Secrets of Successful Writers, which contains detailed instructions for creating effective short pitches for books and authors. You can also hire Steve to pitch for you; he does that for a few authors every week. See his contact info in Point 8 above.Plus Tip: Check out Help A Reporter Out (HARO) for reporters and others looking for experts: https://www.helpareporter.com.10. Create a Database of ConnectionsMost authors fail to record all the connections they make every week. You should build a database of your own contacts (either as an Access or Excel data file or simply as a Word document. Use what works best for you.Personally, I use Microsoft Access for most of the data files I create, but I’ve also used Excel on occasion to develop media lists and key contact data files.Every week, you should transfer the names of any new contacts from Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter, Pinterest, Email, etc. to your own database. Then you can look them up, fill out their profiles, send a thank you note, invite them to subscribe, share a special offer, etc. Keeping your own list protects you from being cut off from your contacts or charged to communicate with your own fans by these social networks. A well-maintained mailing list can be a valuable asset worth up to $25 per contact when a business is sold!One final note: A great book cover is the most effective piece of content on Amazon for selling your book. This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit bookmarketing.substack.com/subscribe

In this episode of The Outspoken Podcast, host Shana Cosgrove talks to Cathy King, Software Developer and Project Manager at 20/10 Solutions about the power of being a working mother. Shana and Cathy discuss growing up together as next door neighbors, the impact of Nyla's wise words, and the value of geeking out with coworkers. Cathy imparts advice on a wide range of topics from staying relevant in your field to making time for your children as a working parent. QUOTES "I just remember one time - and this stuck in my head - Nyla said, ‘Hey Cathy, you know that you could be a mother, but you can also have a career. You know that don't you?'” - Cathy King [03:53] “I felt, ‘Am I going to be able to do this?' and then it clicked. And that was like, ‘I can do this'. I was probably about your age then. ‘I can learn this,' and I did.” - Cathy King [20:30] “You have to pat yourself on the back because I don't think people get what you do, and it's like that with a lot of things. You know, I don't know how airplanes fly, I just get on it and want it to work. When you put something together, especially if you're doing web programming, there can be no errors.” - Cathy King [22:43] TIMESTAMPS  [00:04] Intro [00:53] Meet Cathy King [02:45] Cathy and Shana's Mother [05:29] When Cathy First Realized that she Excelled at Math [06:47] Interest in Computer Science [08:26] How Cathy put Herself Through School [08:56] Life After Graduation [09:42] McDonnell Douglas [11:00] Talking Salary [11:29] Meeting her Husband [12:39] Leaving Pittsburgh for California [13:28] Life as a Working Mother [16:33] Software Advantage [18:45] Keeping up with Technology [21:20] Cyber-Security Coding [21:37] Geeking out With a Friend [23:04] Working for her Brother [23:59] Careers of Cathy's Children [25:13] Book Recommendation [26:16] Being Strong [26:43] Best Advice Cathy Ever Received [28:08] Tips on Being Working Parents and Marriage [29:54] Love of Sports and Basketball [30:18] Shana on how Cathy Inspired her [31:34] Outro RESOURCES https://pittsburghspeech.pitt.edu/PittsburghSpeech_Dictionary.html#:~:text=Definition%3A%20Nosy%2C%20snoopy%2C%20inquisitive,or%20snout%20of%20an%20animal. (Definition of Nebnose) https://www.amazon.com/Five-People-You-Meet-Heaven/dp/1401308589 (The Five People you Meet in Heaven) by Mitch Albom https://www.sru.edu/ (Slippery Rock University) https://titleix.harvard.edu/what-title-ix (Title IX) https://www.pitt.edu/ (University of Pittsburgh) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McDonnell_Douglas (McDonnel Douglas) https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/access (Microsoft Access) https://www.adobe.com/products/coldfusion-family.html (Cold Fusion) https://dotnet.microsoft.com/apps/aspnet (Asp.net) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Model%E2%80%93view%E2%80%93controller (Model-View-Controller) https://www.visitingangels.com/ (Visiting Angels) https://www.amazon.com/Rainbow-Comes-Goes-Mother-Life/dp/0062454951 (The Rainbow Comes and Goes) by Anderson Cooper and Gloria Vanderbilt RELEVANT LINKS https://2010solutions.com/ (20/10 Solutions) https://www.linkedin.com/in/cathy-king-62727187/ (Cathy Warner on Linkedin) https://nylatechnologysolutions.com/ (Nyla Technology Solutions)   I'd love to hear from you -- your feedback is important to me and I read all of it. If you enjoyed the podcast, I hope you'll give us 5 stars. I'll be sure to thank you via email. If not, let me know what you think we should do differently. Don't forget to hit “subscribe” so you'll receive notifications about guest interviews and other topics that drop every Tuesday. Live well, Shana

Looking to leave Oracle behind? Watch the episode of Data Exposed with Alexandra Ciortea to find out how to ease into the migration journey by automating Oracle migrations to SQL Server or Azure SQL using SQL Server Migration Assistant. Customers looking to migrate from other database systems to Azure experience challenges in schema conversion, data movement. Microsoft SQL Server Migration Assistant (SSMA) is a suite of 5 tools designed to automate heterogeneous database migration to Azure SQL and SQL on-premises from Oracle, DB2, MySQL, Microsoft Access, and SAP ASE. [01:01]​ Challenges[02:16]​ SQL Server Migration Assistant Demo[14:40] Converting Statements Demo Resources:SQL Server Migration AssistantSQL Server Migration Assistant for Oracle (OracleToSQL)Download Microsoft SQL Server Migration Assistant for OracleAzure Database Migration Guides

Looking to leave Oracle behind? Watch the episode of Data Exposed with Alexandra Ciortea to find out how to ease into the migration journey by automating Oracle migrations to SQL Server or Azure SQL using SQL Server Migration Assistant. Customers looking to migrate from other database systems to Azure experience challenges in schema conversion, data movement. Microsoft SQL Server Migration Assistant (SSMA) is a suite of 5 tools designed to automate heterogeneous database migration to Azure SQL and SQL on-premises from Oracle, DB2, MySQL, Microsoft Access, and SAP ASE. [01:01]​ Challenges[02:16]​ SQL Server Migration Assistant Demo[14:40] Converting Statements Demo Resources:SQL Server Migration AssistantSQL Server Migration Assistant for Oracle (OracleToSQL)Download Microsoft SQL Server Migration Assistant for OracleAzure Database Migration Guides

In this episode of The Outspoken Podcast, host Shana Cosgrove talks to Chris Petty, Senior Manager at BLUE ORIGIN. Chris talks about her love for systems engineering and her experiences in the field as a biracial female. She also goes into her working with astronauts, her passion for space systems, and her newfound excitement of managing people.  QUOTES "You know, I’ve just naturally been interested in engineering. I’ve always been kind of an engineering nerd, science and math nerd, STEM." - Chris Petty [12:48] "In this modern day and age, we’re working on incredibly complex systems and trying to deliver them on timelines that are ridiculously short. That’s just the speed of business today. You know, the speed of financing those programs. And so, trust becomes a major factor in how fast you can actually execute." - Chris Petty [42:19] “Look at yourself and are you really listening to people or are you just waiting for the chance so you can talk? You know, you’re never going to have trust with somebody unless they can trust that you’re listening to them.” -Chris Petty [43:58] TIMESTAMPS [00:04] Intro [01:02] Meet Christina  [03:00] Sierra Nevada [04:47] Contracts [06:42] Systems Engineering [08:18] BLUE ORIGIN and Managing [11:21] Growing Up [13:20] Working With Astronauts [14:22] Habits and Moving [16:05] Nyla Technology Solutions [16:40] High School [19:29] Internship at Orbital [21:18] College [26:08] First Job After College [28:26] Northrop Grumman [34:28] Career Experience as a Biracial Female [40:19] Wrap-Up Questions [47:06] Outro RESOURCES https://www.sncorp.com/ (Sierra Nevada Corporation) https://www.sncorp.com/what-we-do/dream-chaser-space-vehicle/ (Dream Chaser®) https://www.nasa.gov/ (NASA) https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/structure/launch/overview.html (NASA’s Commercial Resupply Services) https://www.spacex.com/ (SpaceX) https://www.blueorigin.com/ (BLUE ORIGIN) https://www.blueorigin.com/new-shepard/ (New Shepard) https://www.goarmy.com/ (U.S. Army®) https://www.amazon.com/Atomic-Habits-Proven-Build-Break/dp/0735211299/ref=sr_1_1?crid=3R7MHMGX7T9G5&dchild=1&keywords=atomic+habits&qid=1620228813&sprefix=atom%2Caps%2C180&sr=8-1 (Atomic Habits) by James Clear James Clear’s https://www.amazon.com/Clear-Habit-Journal-Flagship-Size/dp/B07X3XV7J7/ref=sr_1_3?crid=CJP60P9GVTHK&dchild=1&keywords=james+clear+habit+journal&qid=1620228875&sprefix=james+clear+%2Caps%2C165&sr=8-3 (Habit Journal) https://www.misfitsmarket.com/ (Misfits Market) https://tjhsst.fcps.edu/ (Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology) https://gar-fieldhs.pwcs.edu/ (Gar-Field High School) https://collegereadiness.collegeboard.org/sat (The SAT) https://news.northropgrumman.com/news/releases/company-profile-for-orbital-sciences-corporation-6698282 (Orbital Sciences) https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/access (Microsoft Access) https://www.hmc.edu/ (Harvey Mudd College) https://www.mit.edu/ (MIT) https://www.zontec-spc.com/ (Zontec Systems) https://www.northropgrumman.com/ (Northrop Grumman) https://www.xprize.org/ (XPRIZE Foundation) https://www.incose.org/systems-engineering-certification/Certification-Levels (CSEP) https://www.jhu.edu/ (John’s Hopkins) http://www.brookeowensfellowship.org/ (Brooke Owens Fellowship) https://www.amazon.com/Habits-Highly-Effective-People-Powerful/dp/0743269519 (The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People) by Stephen R. Covey https://www.amazon.com/Leading-Change-New-Preface-Author/dp/1422186431/ref=sr_1_3?crid=1D16XKDMQ6LP9&dchild=1&keywords=leading+change&qid=1620232160&s=books&sprefix=leading+chan%2Cstripbooks%2C155&sr=1-3 (Leading Change) by John P. Kotter RELEVANT LINKS https://nylatechnologysolutions.com/ (Nyla Technology Solutions) https://www.linkedin.com/in/chris-petty-39b73b2/ (Chris Petty on LinkedIn)

https://youtu.be/EaV4ggsKalw Jon Arancio is the co-founder and Vice-President of Wintec Group, a CRM software reseller and application support specialty firm. We discuss the value of capturing and tracking customer data, how CRMs drive business growth, and the little-known beneficial features of CRM tools.    --- Put in Your CRM Reps with Jon Arancio Our guest is Jon Arancio, of the Wintec Group, a value-added reseller of the Maximizer CRM solution. And Jon has been, John is an owner of this company for a long time, so he's an expert in CRMs, and I'm going to pick his brains. He studied, he got a Bachelor of Science in Engineering and Chemistry and Biochemistry from Stony Brook University. So welcome to the show, Jon. Thank you so much. Appreciate your time. Great to have you here. So tell us a little bit about how did you end up being a CRM entrepreneur, if I can say that. I think you can. And I took a roundabout path, which I don't think is terribly uncommon. You mentioned I left Stony Brook with a science degree and worked for the equipment vendor in the chemistry industry initially, but found my way into sales not long after that. And I worked at an import-export trading company, trading chemicals. And in those days, no email, just about getting faxes, and we did a lot on pen and paper. So in the first half of my tenure there, I was frustrated by managing 40 calls a day on pen and paper. So around about halfway mark, they invested in some computers and I delved into what was then Microsoft Works and then Microsoft Access to create some form of a CRM so I could track who I talked to and what I should do next and contact information, which was valuable but scattered a bunch across books and other resources. And having done that, when I left that firm to start this one, my aim wasn't to sell chemicals, but it was to do selling better and find a way to help people with that. I thought there would be a good business at it, and I think that there is still today. But that's really how I wound up here, was actually doing sales and sitting in the shoes of the people we help every day doing their job and not having a great go of it with the tools that were available. You know, that happens very often with entrepreneurs that they are looking for a solution, it's not available, they create it and then they turn it into a business. They first just use it for their own benefit to make their life better and then they realize that other people would want to take advantage of something like that and then they turn it into a business. So that's kind of classic story. Yeah. So, I personally have dabbled with different CRMs over the years, Salesforce and many others, but I never managed to crack the code on it. And right now I'm using, and I always return to my Excel sheet and I find it to be the simplest and easiest for me to maintain. So help me out here. Why should someone use a CRM? Each company will embrace a CRM for their own reasons, but the basic premise behind it is that you can do what you do better, faster, and less costly. Okay, so those are the things that are gonna drive any business to pick it up, is that, you know, my job is to make calls, can I make more calls, can I get them logged better, can I make more effective calls? You know, the recall was a big deal for me, looking at what I spoke to somebody the last time. And can I handle the time horizons better? Each company will embrace a CRM for their own reasons, but the basic premise behind it is that you can do what you do better, faster, and less costly.Share on X If I talked to you 45 days ago, my chances of remembering or finding that note are low. But looking up in the database saying, oh, this person was interested in quantities of this product, he was complaining about this price, I have a better starting point, I'm going to make more of that phone call. So it's essentially the piece of your business that you're already doing without CRM.

Two years ago, David and Tijn formed Amsterdam Hackers: a group of developers willing to conquer and learn from tech problems they had previously found impossible. In this episode, Esko talks to the two Amsterdam-based engineers about the group’s philosophy, as well as their two largest projects; the gbforth and Delisp.GuestsDavid Vázquez grew up sitting next to his father, watching him code in Clipper. Having coded in Microsoft Access and Visual Basic, he got into Linux and C around 2002. David then learned Emacs and Lisp that introduced him to programming language design and implementations. The rest is history.Tijn Kersjes discovered programming as a kid when he realised you can create games rather than just play them. Eventually, he decided to combine his two passions (drinking coffee and writing code) into a software development career.HostEsko Lahti is an engineer who enjoys team work over solo work of any kind.Episode linksAmsterdam Hackers: https://github.com/ams-hackersDelisp: https://github.com/liphe/delispHindley-Milner type system: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hindley%E2%80%93Milner_type_systemRacket: https://racket-lang.org/gbforth, a Forth-based Game Boy development kit: https://github.com/ams-hackers/gbforthChip-8: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CHIP-8Sokoban Game: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SokobanAbout ReaktorFork Pull Merge Push is a podcast by Reaktor, a strategy, design and technology company changing how the world works. Reaktor has offices in New York, Amsterdam, Stockholm, Tokyo and Helsinki, Turku and Tampere.Reaktor is always on the lookout for bright software developers to work in health, security, emerging technologies, and much more. See www.reaktor.com/careers.@ReaktorNow#FPMPod

MavLABS is a service available to students and faculty that allows remote access to specialized lab computers that offer software like ArcGIS, CAD programs, programming editors, database servers, Microsoft Access, geography labs, and more. Sherwin explains how MavLABS works using remote access technology and how you can securely access this service from your personal device.One important piece of advice that you should follow when using MavLABS is to avoid shutting down the lab computer that you are remotely accessing, as that will require an employee to manually turn the computer back on in the lab on campus. Instead of shutting down, simply just log out of the accessed system after use. Lastly, take note that MavLABS is offline nightly from 12 am to 5 am for maintenance. If you experience issues with MavLABS or have questions, submit a ticket to IT Solutions.In the second half of the podcast, Raj and Sherwin provide insight on the security features of Zoom, one of the most important of which is the ability to password-protect your meetings. They also cover the recent overhaul of documentation and policies that Zoom underwent to mitigate “Zoom-bombing” issues. Raj explains his preference for Zoom over other video calling platforms, stating that he enjoys Zoom's functionality and simplicity.All faculty, staff, and students have access to a premium Zoom account, which offers more features than the free version and is more secure – so be sure to always log in with your StarID using our secure MinnState portal at http://minnstate.zoom.us/

Today we're going to cover the software that would become Microsoft Office.  Microsoft Office was announced at COMDEX in 1988. The Suite contained Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. These are still the core applications included in Microsoft Office. But the history of Office didn't start there.  Many of the innovations we use today began life at Xerox. And Word is no different. Microsoft Word began life as as Multi-Tool Word in 1981, when Charles Simonyi was hired away from Xerox PARC where he had worked on one of the earlier word processors, Bravo.  He brought in Richard Brodie, and by 1983, they would release it for DOS, simplifying the name to just Microsoft Word. They would port it to the Mac in 1985, shortly after the release of the iconic 1984 Macintosh. Being way more feature-rich than MacWrite, it was an instant success. 2.0 would come along in 1987, and they would be up to 5 by 1992. But Word for Windows came along in 1989, when Windows 3.0 dropped. So Word went from DOS to Mac to Windows.  Excel has a similar history. It began life as Multiplan in 1982 though. At the time, it was popular on CP/M and DOS but when Lotus 1-2-3 came along, it knocked everything out of the hearts and minds of users and Microsoft regrouped. Doug Klunder would be the Excel lead developer and Jabe Blumenthal would act as program manager. They would meet with Bill Gates and Simonyi and hammer out the look and feel and released Excel for the Mac in 1985. And Excel came to Windows in 1987. By Excel 5 in 1993, Microsoft would completely taken the spreadsheet market and suddenly Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) would play a huge role in automating tasks. Regrettably, then came macro viruses, but for more on those check out the episode on viruses. In fact, along the way, Microsoft would pick up a ton of talented developers including Bob Frankton a co-creator of the original spreadsheet, VisiCalc. Powerpoint was an acquisition. It began life as Presenter at Forethought, a startup, in 1983. And Robert Gaskins, a former research manager  from Bell Norther Research, would be brought in to get the product running on Windows 1. It would become PowerPoint when it was released for the Mac in 1987 and was wildly successful, selling out all of the copies from the first run.  But then Jeff Raikes from Microsoft started getting ready to build a new presentation tool. Bill Gates had initially thought it was a bad idea but eventually gave Raikes the go-ahead to buy Forethought and Microsoft PowerPoint was born.  And that catches up to that fateful day in 1988 when Bill Gates announced Office at COMDEX in Las Vegas, which at the time was a huge conference. Then came the Internet. Microsoft Mail was released for the Mac in 1988 and bundled with Windows from 1991 and on. Microsoft also released a tool called Inbox. But then came Exchange, expanding beyond mail and into contacts, calendars, and eventually much more. Mail was really basic and for Exchange, Microsoft released Outlook, which was added to Office 97 and an installer was bundled with Windows Exchange Server.  Office Professional in that era included a database utility called Access. We've always had databases. But desktop databases had been dominated by Borland's dBase and FoxPro up until 1992 when Microsoft Access began to chip away at their marketshare. Microsoft had been trying to get into that market since the mid-90s with R:Base and Omega, but when Access 2 dropped in 1994, people started to take notice and by the release of Office 95 Professional it could be purchased as part of a suite and integrated cleanly. I can still remember those mdb files and setting up data access objects and later ActiveX controls! So the core Office components came together in 1988 and by 1995 the Office Suite was the dominant productivity suite on the market. It got better in 97. Except The Office Assistant, designed by Kevan Atteberry and lovingly referred to as Clippy. By 2000 Office became the de facto standard. Everything else had to integrate with Office. That continued in the major 2003 and 2007 releases. And the products just iterated to become better and better software.  And they continue to do that. But another major shift was on the way. A response to Google Apps, which had been released in 2006. The cloud was becoming a thing. And so Office 365 went into beta in 2010 and was launched in 2011. It includes the original suite, OneDrive, SharePoint, Teams for chatting with coworkers, Yammer for social networking, Skype for Business (although video can now be done in Teams), Outlook and Outlook online, and Publisher. As well as Publisher, InfoPath, and Access for Windows.  This Software + Services approach turned out to be a master-stroke. Microsoft was able to finally raise prices and earned well over a 10% boost to the Office segment in just a few years. The pricing for subscriptions over the term of what would have been a perpetual license was often 30% more. Yet, the Office 365 subscriptions kept getting more and more cool stuff. And by 2017 the subscriptions captured more revenue than the perpetual licenses. And a number of other services can be included with Office 365.  Another huge impact is the rapid disappearing act of on premises Exchange servers. Once upon a time small businesses would have an Exchange server and then as they grew, move that to a colocation facility, hire MCSE engineers (like me) to run them, and have an amplified cost increase in dealing with providing groupware. Moving that to Microsoft means that Microsoft can charge more, and the customer can get a net savings, even though the subscriptions cost more - because they don't have to pay people to run those servers. OneDrive moves files off old filers, etc.  And the Office apps provided aren't just for Windows and Mac. Pocket Office would come in 1996, for Windows CE. Microsoft would have Office apps for all of their mobile operating systems. And in 2009 we would get Office for Symbian. And then for iPhone in 2013 and iPad in 2014. Then for Android in 2015.  Today over 1 and a quarter billion people use Microsoft Office. In fact, not a lot of people have *not* used Office. Microsoft has undergone a resurgence in recent years and is more nimble and friendly than ever before. Many of the people that created these tools are still at Microsoft. Simonyi left Microsoft for a time. But they ended up buying his company later. During what we now refer to as the “lost decade” at Microsoft, I would always think of these humans. Microsoft would get dragged through the mud for this or that. But the engineers kept making software. And I'm really glad to see them back making world class APIs that do what we need them to do. And building good software on top of that.  But most importantly, they set the standard for what a word processor, spreadsheet, and presentation tool would look like for a generation. And the ubiquity the software obtained allowed for massive leaps in adoption and innovation. Until it didn't. That's when Google Apps came along, giving Microsoft a kick in the keister to put up or shut up. And boy did Microsoft answer.  So thank you to all of them. I probably never would have written my first book without their contributions to computing. And thank you listener, for tuning in, to this episode of the history of computing podcast. We are so lucky to have you. Have a great day. 

Hello everyone and thank you again for lsitening. If you know someone, including yourself, that would like to share something on the show, please reach out to me ____.Check out past episodes while we wait for this COVID-19 turbulence to clear up and the FREE online Microsoft Access course, Ultimate Access for Law Enforcement (but for anyone in criminal justice that is looking to track data utilizing a data management application). --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/niroknowledge/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/niroknowledge/support

Hello everyone and thank you again for lsitening. If you know someone, including yourself, that would like to share something on the show, please reach out to me ____. Check out past episodes while we wait for this COVID-19 turbulence to clear up and the FREE online Microsoft Access course, Ultimate Access for Law Enforcement … Continue reading NIRO Knowledge – Episode 0.6

A quick thank you to those essential personnel that are the out there on the front lines from police to corrections to grocery store staff and so many more. These trying and turbulent times have forced numerous cancellations of in person training and conferences and I have opened up my online course for free. Jump right to learning Microsoft Access and learn how you can apply it to criminal justice usage whether you are an admin, detective, analyst, student, correctional officer or anyone within the industry.Links:Ultimate Access for Law Enforcement online course --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/niroknowledge/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/niroknowledge/support

In this Episode of CAPTURE CAPITALIST, we go back to visit with Jim ‘Shark Hunter’ Morrison at Hyland Software to dive deep into Hyland Software’s Rapid Application Development platform called, App Builder (formerly known as WorkView) and explore their concept around ACE – Application Creation Excelerator.  Hyland made a brilliant move in the market by leveraging a tool (created by one of their many bright interns!) that nearly every computer user is familiar with – Microsoft Excel. ACE is the launching platform to quickly start your application development.  If you are not familiar with App Builder or WorkView Case Manager from OnBase by Hyland, please watch or listen to episode 5 (video) or 6 (audio only), I highly recommend you spend some time their first before jumping into the ACE podcast.What you will learn from this Podcast episode?If you have legacy Microsoft Access applications or are tracking critical business activities using Microsoft Excel spreadsheets, this episode is a much watch.  You will learn how to jump-start your first App Builder experience using a pre-configured framework originating in Microsoft Excel that you can easily customize to meet your particular application needs. There is a much better way to manage your processes and cases than using spreadsheets and Microsoft Access apps.   Jim uses a Probate Case Settlement and a FMLA (Family Medical Leave Act) application to illustrate the RAD process in a live, demonstration setting.  You’ll see how easily the Excel worksheets have been assembled using a "predefined template" supplied by Hyland, how App Builder ingests the resulting ACE file, and quickly (measured in minutes) OnBase automatically builds out the application framework – database tables, their relationships, field lengths, data types, filters, views, etc.  What is the end result from customer's experience by using an ACE approach on the front end of their design process? Hyland customers are seeing a 5x to 10x time savings for App Builder rollout.  Now that is rather impressive! For approximately the first 22 minutes Jim and I examine the background of what prompted the creation of ACE, we talk about a growing number of pre-built ACE starter pack files that are available today to address a variety of different application needs across many different markets. We even discuss how you can get directly engaged with an ACE design session at no cost.  The remainder of the session is spent demonstrating and examining the ACE file contents – its layout, design and importing process into Application Builder.Good materials all the way around and there are plenty of takeaways that you can put immediately to work for you.  Stay safe during these challenging times and as always, thanks for watching/listening and please, leave your constructive comments in the feedback and comment section!All the best, CAPTURE CAPITALIST Additional Resources:www.capsystech.comwww.idt-inc.comwww.idtconsulting.comwww.hrecmsolutions.comwww.governmentecmsolutions.comwww.ecmconversionservices.comhttp://webdocumentcapture.blogspot.com/www.convertingoracleipm.comwww.aerospacedefenseecmsolutions.com/

In this Episode of CAPTURE CAPITALIST, we go back to visit with Jim ‘Shark Hunter’ Morrison at Hyland Software to dive deep into Hyland Software’s Rapid Application Development platform called, App Builder (formerly known as WorkView) and explore their concept around ACE – Application Creation Excelerator.  Hyland made a brilliant move in the market by leveraging a tool (created by one of their many bright interns!) that nearly every computer user is familiar with – Microsoft Excel. ACE is the launching platform to quickly start your application development.  If you are not familiar with App Builder or WorkView Case Manager from OnBase by Hyland, please watch or listen to episode 5 (video) or 6 (audio only), I highly recommend you spend some time their first before jumping into the ACE podcast.What you will learn from this Podcast episode?If you have legacy Microsoft Access applications or are tracking critical business activities using Microsoft Excel spreadsheets, this episode is a much watch.  You will learn how to jump-start your first App Builder experience using a pre-configured framework originating in Microsoft Excel that you can easily customize to meet your particular application needs. There is a much better way to manage your processes and cases than using spreadsheets and Microsoft Access apps.   Jim uses a Probate Case Settlement and a FMLA (Family Medical Leave Act) application to illustrate the RAD process in a live, demonstration setting.  You’ll see how easily the Excel worksheets have been assembled using a "predefined template" supplied by Hyland, how App Builder ingests the resulting ACE file, and quickly (measured in minutes) OnBase automatically builds out the application framework – database tables, their relationships, field lengths, data types, filters, views, etc.  What is the end result from customer's experience by using an ACE approach on the front end of their design process? Hyland customers are seeing a 5x to 10x time savings for App Builder rollout.  Now that is rather impressive! For approximately the first 22 minutes Jim and I examine the background of what prompted the creation of ACE, we talk about a growing number of pre-built ACE starter pack files that are available today to address a variety of different application needs across many different markets. We even discuss how you can get directly engaged with an ACE design session at no cost.  The remainder of the session is spent demonstrating and examining the ACE file contents – its layout, design and importing process into Application Builder.Good materials all the way around and there are plenty of takeaways that you can put immediately to work for you.  Stay safe during these challenging times and as always, thanks for watching/listening and please, leave your constructive comments in the feedback and comment section!All the best, CAPTURE CAPITALIST Additional Resources:www.capsystech.comwww.idt-inc.comwww.idtconsulting.comwww.hrecmsolutions.comwww.governmentecmsolutions.comwww.ecmconversionservices.comhttp://webdocumentcapture.blogspot.com/www.convertingoracleipm.comwww.aerospacedefenseecmsolutions.com/

I talk about my upcoming guest Dawn Reeby, Twitter live streaming, my online Microsoft Access course version 2.0, the MACA conference and my presentation of Gephi and how my make-up artist did not show up on time this morning. Link to the Twitter video where this audio came from below.Links:Twitter VideoMy Online Microsoft Access CourseMACA (Massachusetts Association of Crime Analysts) OrganizationMicrosoft Access problems form --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/niroknowledge/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/niroknowledge/support

Today we're going to look at an operating system from the 80s and 90s called OS/2. OS/2 was a bright shining light for a bit. IBM had a task force that wanted to build a personal computer. They'd been watching the hobbyists for some time and felt they could take off the shelf parts and build a PC. So they did.. But they needed an operating system. They reached out to Microsoft in 1980, who'd been successful with the Altair and so seemed a safe choice. By then, IBM had the IBM Entry Systems Division based out of their Boca Raton, Florida offices. The open architecture allowed them to ship fast. And it afforded them the chance to ship a computer with, check this out, options for an operating system. Wild idea, right? The options initially provided were CP/M and PC DOS, which was MS-DOS ported to the IBM open architecture. CP/M sold for $240 and PC DOS sold for $40. PC DOS had come from Microsoft's acquisition of 86-DOS from Seattle Computer Products. The PC shipped in 1981, lightning fast for an IBM product. At the time Apple, Atari, Commodore, and were in control of the personal computer market. IBM had dominated the mainframe market for decades and once the personal computer market reached $100 million dollars in sales, it was time to go get some of that. And so the IBM PC would come to be an astounding success and make it not uncommon to see PCs on people's desks at work or even at home. And being that most people didn't know a difference, PC DOS would ship on most. By 1985 it was clear that Microsoft had entered and subsequently dominated the PC market. And it was clear that due to the open architecture that other vendors were starting to compete. And after 5 years of working together on PC DOS and 3 versions later, Microsoft and IBM signed a Joint Development Agreement and got to work on the next operating system. One they thought would change everything and set IBM PCs up to dominate the market for decades to come. Over that time, they'd noticed some gaps in DOS. One of the most substantial is that after the projects and files got too big, they became unwieldy. They wanted an object oriented operating system. Another is protected mode. The 286 chips from Intel had protected mode dating back to 1982 and IBM engineers felt they needed to harness that in order to get multi-tasking safely and harness virtual memory to provide better support for all these crazy new windowing things they'd learned with their GUI overlay to DOS called TOPview. So after the Joint Development agreement was signed , IBM let Ed Iacobucci lead the charge on their side and Microsoft had learned a lot from their attempts at a windowing operating system. The two organizations borrowed ideas from all the literature and Unix and of course the Mac. And really built a much better operating system than anything available at the time. Microsoft had been releasing Windows the whole time. Windows 1 came in 1985 and Windows 2 came in 1987, the same year OS/2 1.0 was released. In fact, one of the most dominant PC models to ever ship, the PS/2 computer, would ship that year as well. The initial release didn't have a GUI. That wouldn't come until version 1.1 nearly a year later in 1988. SNA shipped to interface with IBM mainframes in that release as well. And TCP/IP and Ethernet would come in version 1.2 in 1989. During this time, Microsoft steadily introduced new options in Windows and claimed both publicly and privately in meetings with IBM that OS/2 was the OS of the future and Windows would some day go away. They would release an extended edition that included a built-in database. Based on protected mode developers didn't have to call the BIOS any more and could just use provided APIs. You could switch the foreground application using control-escape. In Windows that would become Alt-Tab. 1.2 brought the hpfs file system, bringing longer file names, a journaled file system to protect against data loss during crashes, and extended attributes, similar to how those worked on the Mac. But many of the features would ship in a version of Windows that would be released just a few months before. Like that GUI. Microsoft's presentation manager came in Windows 2.1 just a few months before OS/2 1.1. Microsoft had an independent sales team. Every manufacturer that bundled Windows meant there were more drivers for Windows so a wider variety of hardware could be used. Microsoft realized that DOS was old and building on top of DOS was going to some day be a big, big problem. They started something similar to what we'd call a fork today of OS/2. And in 1988 they lured Dave Cutler from Digital who had been the architect of the VMS operating system. And that moment began the march towards a new operating system called NT, which borrowed much of the best from VMS, Microsoft Windows, and OS/2 - and had little baggage. Microsoft was supposed to make version 3 of OS/2 but NT OS/2 3.0 would become just Windows NT when Microsoft stopped developing on OS/2. It took 12 years, because um, they had a loooooot of customers after the wild success of first Windows 3 and then Windows 95, but eventually Cutler's NT would replace all other operating systems in the family with the release of Windows 2000. But by 1990 when Microsoft released Windows 3 they sold millions of copies. Due to great OEM agreements they were on a lot of computers that people bought. The Joint Development Agreement would finally end. IBM had enough of what they assumed meant getting snowed by Microsoft. It took a couple of years for Microsoft to recover. In 1992, the war was on. Microsoft released Windows 3.1 and it was clear that they were moving ideas and people between the OS/2 and Windows teams. I mean, the operating systems actually looked a lot alike. TCP/IP finally shipped in Windows in 1992, 3 years after the companies had co-developed the feature for OS/2. But both would go 32 bit in 1992. OS /2 version 2.0 would also ship, bringing a lot of features. And both took off the blinders thinking about what the future would hold. Microsoft with Windows 95 and NT on parallel development tracks and IBM launched multiple projects to find a replacement operating system. They tried an internal project, Workstation OS, which fizzled. IBM did the unthinkable for Workplace OS. They entered into an alliance with Apple, taking on a number of Apple developers who formed what would be known as the Pink team. The Pinks moved into separate quarters and formed a new company called Taligent with Apple and IBM backing. Taligent planned to bring a new operating system to market in the mid-1990s. They would laser focus on PowerPC chips thus abandoning what was fast becoming the WinTel world. They did show Workspace OS at Comdex one year, but by then Bill Gates was all to swing by the booth knowing he'd won the battle. But they never shipped. By the mid-90s, Taligent would be rolled into IBM and focus on Java projects. Raw research that came out of the project is pretty pervasive today though. Those was an example of a forward looking project, though - and OS/2 continued to be developed with OS/2 Warp (or 3) getting released in 1994. It included IBM Works, which came with a word processor that wasn't Microsoft Word, a spreadsheet that wasn't Microsoft Excel, and a database that wasn't Microsoft Access. Works wouldn't last past 1996. After all, Microsoft had Charles Simony by then. He'd invented the GUI word processor at Xerox PARC and was light years ahead of the Warp options. And the Office Suite in general was gaining adoption fast. Warp was faster than previous releases, had way more options, and even browser support for early Internet adopters. But by then Windows 95 had taken the market by storm and OS/2 would see a rapidly declining customer base. After spending nearly a billion dollars a year on OS development, IBM would begin downsizing once the battle with Microsoft was lost. Over 1,300 people. And as the number of people dropped, defects with the code grew and the adoption dropped even faster. OS/2 would end in 2001. By then it was clear that IBM had lost the exploding PC market and that Windows was the dominant operating system in use. IBM's control of the PC had slowly eroded and while they eeked out a little more profit from the PC, they would ultimately sell the division that built and marketed computers to Lenovo in 2005. Lenovo would then enjoy the number one spot in the market for a long time. The blue ocean had resulted in lower margins though, and IBM had taken a different, more services-oriented direction. OS/2 would live on. IBM discontinued support in 2006. It should have probably gone fully open source in 2005. It had already been renamed and rebranded as eComStation first by an IBM Business Partner called Serenity. It would go opensource(ish) and openoffice.org would be included in version two in 2010. Betas of 2.2 have been floating around since 2013 but as with many other open source compilations of projects, it seems to have mostly fizzled out. Ed Iacobucci would go on to found or co-found other companies, including Citrix, which flourishes to this day. So what really happened here. It would be easy, but an over-simplification to say that Microsoft just kinda' took the operating system. IBM had a vision of an operating system that, similar to the Mac OS, would work with a given set of hardware. Microsoft, being an independent software developer with no hardware, would obviously have a different vision, wanting an operating system that could work with any hardware - you know, the original open architecture that allowed early IBM PCs to flourish. IBM had a big business suit and tie corporate culture. Microsoft did not. IBM employed a lot of computer scientists. Microsoft employed a lot of hackers. IBM had a large bureaucracy, Microsoft could build an operating system like NT mostly based on hiring a single brilliant person and rapidly building an elite team around them. IBM was a matrixed organization. I've been told you aren't an enterprise unless you're fully matrixed. Microsoft didn't care about all that. They just wanted the marketshare. When Microsoft abandoned OS/2, IBM could have taken the entire PC market from them. But I think Microsoft knew that the IBM bureaucracy couldn't react quickly enough at an extremely pivotal time. Things were moving so fast. And some of the first real buying tornados just had to be reacted to at lightning speeds. These days we have literature and those going through such things can bring in advisors or board members to help them. Like the roles Marc Andreeson plays with Airbnb and others. But this was uncharted territory and due to some good, shrewd and maybe sometimes downright bastardly decisions, Microsoft ended up leap-frogging everyone by moving fast, sometimes incurring technical debt that would take years to pay down, and grabbing the market at just the right time. I've heard this story oversimplified in one word: subterfuge. But that's not entirely fair. When he was hired in 1993, Louis Gerstner pivoted IBM from a hardware and software giant into a leaner services organization. One that still thrives today. A lot of PC companies came and went. And the PC business infused IBM with the capital to allow the company to shoot from $29 billion in revenues to $168 billion just 9 years later. From the top down, IBM was ready to leave red oceans and focus on markets with fewer competitors. Microsoft was hiring the talent. Picking up many of the top engineers from the advent of interactive computing. And they learned from the failures of the Xeroxes and Digital Equipments and IBMs of the world and decided to do things a little differently. When I think of a few Microsoft engineers that just wanted to build a better DOS sitting in front of a 60 page refinement of how a feature should look, I think maybe I'd have a hard time trying to play that game as well. I'm all for relentless prioritization. And user testing features and being deliberate about what you build. But when you see a limited window, I'm OK acting as well. That's the real lesson here. When the day needs seizing, good leaders will find a way to blow up the establishment and release the team to go out and build something special. And so yah, Microsoft took the operating system market once dominated by CP/M and with IBM's help, established themselves as the dominant player. And then took it from IBM. But maybe they did what they had to do… Just like IBM did what they had to do, which was move on to more fertile hunting grounds for their best in the world sales teams. So tomorrow, think of bureaucracies you've created or had created to constrain you. And think of where they are making the world better vs where they are just giving some controlling jackrabbit a feeling of power. And then go change the world. Because that is what you were put on this planet to do. Thank you so much for listening in to this episode of the history of computing podcast. We are so lucky to have you.

In this episode, I speak about using Twitter as my main source of social media to get out quick messages, interact with the audience and my use of polls. I speak to the difference in using Microsoft Access and Excel and my online course for Access. There is a short Google form for anyone who wishes to fill it out and speak to any issue that they may have with Microsoft Access. These will be addressed and added into my updated online course that will release a little later this year.I also pay tribute to a great man who we lost recently, Daniel Bibel. I read his biography on his show that was sent out over our MACA listserv. It was an honor to know him and he will be missed.Links:TwitterUALE – Ultimate Access for Law Enforcement online course– Version 2.0 COMING SOON!MACAMicrosoft Access Problems/Issues Form --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/niroknowledge/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/niroknowledge/support

Joe and Jason Grieves, Product Manager Low Vision Windows Accessibility, sure find interesting places to conduct interviews. A coffee shop with a Bose nova soundtrack was the setting for their NFB 2019 chat. This year the pair sat out by the pool with wind, light rain and bad cover songs in the background. Regardless of the auditory conditions, Jason and Joe talk about what's recently come to Windows Magnifier and Narrator in the latest Windows 10 updates. And Jason provides some idea of what is in store with the next update arriving later this year such as Magnifier Reader. To stay up to date with everything going on with access at Microsoft, and to attend their new webinar series, follow Microsoft Access on Twitter ATIA 2020 coverage is Brought to you by AFB AccessWorld. For the latest news and accessibility information on mainstream and access technology, Apple, Google, Microsoft, and Amazon offerings, access technology book reviews, and mobile apps, and how they can enhance entertainment, education and employment, log on to AccessWorld, the American Foundation for the Blind's free, monthly, online technology magazine. Visit www.afb.org/aw.

Hello Knowledge fans! It is me, Nick, today speaking with you about the first 4 episodes of the podcast. I recap where we've been and I talk about where we are going. I thank my previous guests: Dr Laura Huey, Lt Glen Mills, Special Constable John Ng and Dr John Shjarback. I give a quick sneak peek, but no names, on two of the upcoming interviews I will be doing and let you in on my online course for Microsoft Access and that it will be revamped and for sale once again in a few months.Links:Dr Laura HueyGlen Mills' Open Source Policing free resources websiteJohn NgDr John Shjarback‘s websiteUltimate Access for Law Enforcement – online Microsoft Access course --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/niroknowledge/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/niroknowledge/support

Today’s episode of the Dev Ed podcast is joined by Tyler Legget, a structural engineering major working in the construction field primarily, and also on a number of side projects including property development, designing and building homes, co-founder of a company that made software for cycling race management. He also worked as a Product Manager on a platform that managed complex inventory of wood products. He then got involved in ng-conf, which spawned into an event management company called Zero Slope Events which he manages currently. Zero Slope Events provides event planning for conferences such as ng-conf, React conf and so on. After listening to Tyler’s diverse background where coding had been only a partial activity, Joe asks what made him not go into full-fledged software development. Tyler answers that while he enjoyed different aspects and the variety of it, he never felt like making a career out of it. To determine if software development may not be a good career, it needs to be tried first, one has to see if it fits their skillset and work ethic. The panelists also share that it is very important to enjoy the task at hand, be able to fully immerse into the work and not keep waiting for the day to get over. Even though the public notion is that developers get paid really well, salary should not be the only criteria for a career switch, it is basically like setting yourself up for a lifelong disappointment or even failure. The good news, however, is that you can always go back to what you were doing if you do not enjoy it. Job shadowing is a good idea to closely see the day-to-day workings of the job and make an informed decision. They then discuss if there are any situations where programming languages have proved to be extremely beneficial to the job. They give examples of Microsoft Excel, Microsoft Access where they were able to do awesome things and automate stuff, which piqued their interest in programming in general, and was also helpful to other team members as well, which can eventually foray into development. Teaching can also lead up to becoming a developer, through situations such as involving the search for good materials. Problem-solving is a great way to get into it as well, as are hobbies involving building or customizing things. The panelists discuss tools that help in programming, automate or organizing things while working. They recommend some great ones like the Office suite, Glitch, CMS systems, Webflow, If This Then That (IFTTT), Zapier, StackBlitz, Google docs, YouTube, Airtable and Stack Overflow. They then move onto talking about techniques to help out developers when they get stuck on something on the job and there is no one to turn to, during which they suggest a basic google search, YouTube videos, Stack Overflow, and Twitter channels. When trying to get better at programming, not just for fun but in a task-focused manner, some effective resources can be reading books including but not limited to the Dummies series, YouTube tutorials and Meetup groups. Speaking on finding platforms to work with custom applications, Shopify, WordPress, Google pages, can be of great help if working on your own. As the applications get more complex, it can be advantageous to hire a professional. Finally, in terms of hiring expenses, do not compromise on quality, make sure the requirements are clear and really know what the person can offer. Panel Joe Eames Brooke Avery Jesse Sanders Preston Lamb Luis Hernandez Joined by special guest: Tyler Leggett Sponsors Thinkster.io Adventures in .NET - Devchat.tv Adventures in Angular - Devchat.tv CacheFly Links Zero Slope Events Glitch Webflow IFTTT Zapier StackBlitz Airtable Stack Overflow Picks Jesse Sanders: Nebo Preston Lamb: Our Fake History podcast Luis Hernandez: unDraw Brooke Avery: Webflow Star Wars: Galaxy Edge - Disney Parks Tyler Leggett: Reply All

Welcome to the History of Computing Podcast, where we explore the history of information technology. Because understanding the past prepares us for the innovations of the future! Today we're going to cover the first real object-oriented programming language, Smalltalk. Many people outside of the IT industry would probably know the terms Java, Ruby, or Swift. But I don't think I've encountered anyone outside of IT that has heard of Smalltalk in a long time. And yet… Smalltalk influenced most languages in use today and even a lot of the base technologies people would readily identify with. As with PASCAL from Episode 3 of the podcast, Smalltalk was designed and created in part for educational use, but more so for constructionist learning for kids. Smalltalk was first designed at the Learning Research Group (LRG) of Xerox PARC by Alan Kay, Dan Ingalls, Adele Goldberg, Ted Kaehler, Scott Wallace, and others during the 1970s. Alan Kay had coined the term object-oriented programming was coined by Alan Kay in the late 60s. Kay took the lead on a project which developed an early mobile device called the Dynabook at Xerox PARC, as well as the Smalltalk object-oriented programming language. The first release was called Smalltalk-72 and was really the first real implementation of this weird new programming philosophy Kay had called object-oriented programming. Although… Smalltalk was inspired by Simula 67, from Norwegian developers Kirsten Nygaard and Ole-johan Dahl. Even before that Stewart Nelson and others from MIT had been using a somewhat object oriented model when working on Lisp and other programs. Kay had heard of Simula and how it handled passing messages and wrote the initial Smalltalk in a few mornings. He'd go on work with Dan Ingalls to help with implementation and Adele Goldberg to write documentation. This was Smalltalk 71. Object oriented program is a programming language model where programs are organized around data, also called objects. This is a contrast to programs being structured around functions and logic. Those objects could be data fields, attributes, behaviors, etc. For example, a product you're selling can have a sku, a price, dimensions, quantities, etc. This means you figure out what objects need to be manipulated and how those objects interact with one another. Objects are generalized as a class of objects. These classes define the kind of data and the logic used when manipulating data. Within those classes, there are methods, which define the logic and interfaces for object communication, known as messages. As programs grow and people collaborate on them together, an object-oriented approach allows projects to more easily be divided up into various team members to work on different parts. Parts of the code are more reusable. The way programs are played out is more efficient. And in turn, the code is more scalable. Object-oriented programming is based on a few basic principals. These days those are interpreted as encapsulation, abstraction, inheritance, and polymorphism. Although to Kay encapsulation and messaging are the most important aspects and all the classing and subclassing isn't nearly as necessary. Most modern languages that matter are based on these same philosophies, such as java, javascript, Python, C++, .Net, Ruby. Go, Swift, etc. Although Go is arguably not really object-oriented because there's no type hierarchy and some other differences, but when I look at the code it looks object-oriented! So there was this new programming paradigm emerging and Alan Kay really let it shine in Smalltalk. At the time, Xerox PARC was in the midst of revolutionizing technology. The MIT hacker ethic had seeped out to the west coast with Marvin Minsky's AI lab SAIL at Stanford and got all mixed into the fabric of chip makers in the area, such as Fairchild. That Stanford connection is important. The Augmentation Research Center is where Engelbart introduced the NLS computer and invented the Mouse there. And that work resulted in advances like hypertext links. In the 60s. Many of those Stanford Research Institute people left for Xerox PARC. Ivan Sutherland's work on Sketchpad was known to the group, as was the mouse from NLS, and because the computing community that was into research was still somewhat small, most were also aware of the graphic input language, or GRAIL, that had come out of Rand. Sketchpad's had handled each drawing elements as an object, making it a predecessor to object-oriented programming. GRAIL ran on the Rand Tablet and could recognize letters, boxes, and lines as objects. Smalltalk was meant to show a dynamic book. Kinda' like the epub format that iBooks uses today. The use of similar objects to those used in Sketchpad and GRAIL just made sense. One evolution led to another and another, from Lisp and the batch methods that came before it through to modern models. But the Smalltalk stop on that model railroad was important. Kay and the team gave us some critical ideas. Things like overlapping windows. These were made possibly by the inheritance model of executions, a standard class library, and a code browser and editor. This was one of the first development environments that looked like a modern version of something we might use today, like an IntelliJ or an Eclipse for Java developers. Smalltalk was the first implementation of the Model View Controller in 1979, a pattern that is now standard for designing graphical software interfaces. MVC divides program logic into the Model, the View, and the Controller in order to separate internal how data is represented from how it is presented as decouples the model from the view and the controller allow for much better reuse of libraries of code as well as much more collaborative development. Another important thing happened at Xerox in 1979, as they were preparing to give Smalltalk to the masses. There are a number of different interpretations to stories about Steve Jobs and Xerox PARC. But in 1979, Jobs was looking at how Apple would evolve. Andy Hertzfeld and the original Mac team were mostly there at Apple already but Jobs wanted fresh ideas and traded a million bucks in Apple stock options to Xerox for a tour of PARC. The Lisa team came with him and got to see the Alto. The Alto prototype was part of the inspiration for a GUI-based Lisa and Mac, which of course inspired Windows and many advances since. Smalltalk was finally released to other vendors and institutions in 1980, including DEC, HP, Apple, and Berkely. From there a lot of variants have shown up. Instantiations partnered with IBM and in 1984 had the first commercial version at Tektronix. A few companies tried to take SmallTalk to the masses but by the late 80s SQL connectivity was starting to add SQL support. The Smalltalk companies often had names with object or visual in the name. This is a great leading indicator of what Smalltalk is all about. It's visual and it's object oriented. Those companies slowly merged into one another and went out of business through the 90s. Instantiations was acquired by Digitalk. ParcPlace owed it's name to where the language was created. The biggest survivor was ObjectShare, who was traded on NASDAQ, peaking at $24 a share until 1999. In a LA Times article: “ObjectShare Inc. said its stock has been delisted from the Nasdaq national market for failing to meet listing requirements. In a press release Thursday, the company said it is appealing the decision.” And while the language is still maintained by companies like Instantiations, in the heyday, there was even a version from IBM called IBM VisualAge Smalltalk. And of course there were combo-language abominations, like a smalltalk java add on. Just trying to breathe some life in. This was the era where Filemaker, Foxpro, and Microsoft Access were giving developers the ability to quickly build graphical tools for managing data that were the next generation past what Smalltalk provided. And on the larger side products like JDS, Oracle, Peoplesoft, really jumped to prominence. And on the education side, the industry segmented into learning management systems and various application vendors. Until iOS and Google when apps for those platforms became all the rage. Smalltalk does live on in other forms though. As with many dying technologies, an open source version of Smalltalk came along in 1996. Squeak was written by Alan Kay, Dan Ingalls, Ted Kaehler, Scott Wallace, John Maloney, Andreas Raab, Mike Rueger and continues today. I've tinkerated with Squeak here and there and I have to say that my favorite part is just getting to see how people who actually truly care about teaching languages to kids. And how some have been doing that for 40 years. A great quote from Alan Kay, discussing a parallel between Vannevar Bush's “As We May Think” and the advances they made to build the Dynabook: If somebody just sat down and implemented what Bush had wanted in 1945, and didn't try and add any extra features, we would like it today. I think the same thing is true about what we wanted for the Dynabook. There's a direct path with some of the developers of Smalltalk to deploying MacBooks and Chromebooks in classrooms. And the influences these more mass marketed devices have will be felt for generations to come. Even as we devolve to new models from object-oriented programming, and new languages. The research that went into these early advances and the continued adoption and research have created a new world of teaching. At first we just wanted to teach logic and fundamental building blocks. Now kids are writing code. This might be writing java programs in robotics classes, html in Google Classrooms, or beginning iOS apps in Swift Playgrounds. So until the next episode, think about this: Vannevar Bush pushed for computers to help us think, and we have all of the worlds data at our fingertips. With all of the people coming out of school that know how to write code today, with the accelerometers, with the robotics skills, what is the next stage of synthesizing all human knowledge and truly making computers help with As we may think. So thank you so very much for tuning into another episode of the History of Computing Podcast. We're lucky to have you. Have a great day!

#20 - Google and Facebook will reportedly file court motions supporting Apple in fight with FBI   #19 - How Amazon Fulfillment Works   #18 - Shopping   #17 - MRW the interviewer sits me at a computer and tells me to create a relationship between 2 tables after I lied about having Microsoft Access experience   #16 - TIL that after its tourism sector boomed, Kazakhstan's foreign minister thanked Sacha Baron Cohen in 2012 for the release of Borat after the country saw a 10x increase in issued visas.   #15 - I survived...   #14 - My teacher friend thought a student was checking the time too often during a test...   #13 - Driving on Hard Mode   #12 - The original Russian trailer mount   #11 - TIL that convicted murderer Philip Workman declined a last meal, instead requesting that a large vegetarian pizza be given to a homeless person in Nashville. His request was refused, but in response, people all over the state donated pizzas to homeless shelters.   #10 - TIL Apples originated in Kazakhstan and wild apples can taste like roses, strawberries, popcorn, anise, and many other flavors. 90% of modern apples can be traced back to 2 trees.   #9 - Swimming with a Mola Mola   #8 - Columbia University professor explains gravitational waves to Stephen Colbert   #7 - Brian Greene goes on Colbert's 'Late Show' to explain the recent gravity wave discovery.   #6 - Free running fail   #5 - Screen printing   #4 - The European Parliament called on the European Union to impose an arms embargo against Saudi Arabia   #3 - Opened my work van after working on a farm yesterday...   #2 - Vermont Senate approves marijuana legalization 16-13   #1 - Apple CEO: We Will Take This iPhone Case to the Supreme Court     Thanks Show contact E-mail: feedback.ireadit@gmail.com Twitter: @ireaditcast Phone: (508)-738-2278   Michael Schwahn: @schwahnmichael Nathan Wood: @bimmenstein "Music" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

This episode was recorded 16 May 2013 live and in person at Omni's lovely offices overlooking Lake Union in Seattle. You can download the m4a file or subscribe in iTunes. (Or subscribe to the podcast feed.) Nat Irons has worked at Apple Developer Relations, as a WebObjects consultant, and as IT director at The Stranger. He's now QA Manager at Black Pixel. He once delivered pizza to The Far Side author Gary Larson. This episode is sponsored by Igloo. Igloo is an intranet you'll actually like, with shared calendars, microblogs, file-sharing, social networking, and more. It's free for up 10 users — give it a try for your company or your team today. This episode is also sponsored by Microsoft Azure Mobile Services. Mobile Services is a great way to provide backend services — syncing and other things — for your iPhone, iPad, and Mac apps. It's high level — you can get more done with less work. Things we mention, in-order-of-appearance-ish: Lode Runner Dark Castle Windows Boston San Francisco Berkeley, CA Bay Area High school Seattle Tim Eyman Sit & Spin Blogger Meetup Natty Bumppo bumppo.net James Fenimore Cooper Leatherstocking Tales Michael Mann Daniel Day Lewis Last of the Mohicans movie AOL chatrooms Berkeley Macintosh User Group (BMUG) BBS First Class BBS Tim Holmes Purple Harley BMUG Newsletter Modems Heidi Roizen Bleeding in six colors Twitter Bolo Spectre Stuart Cheshire Virtual Reality Bonjour ZeroConf Cheshire Cat Stuart Little Alice PERL Excel Mac OS 9 iMac Floppy drive ADB USB NeXT Rhapsody UNIX Terminal.app BBEdit SE/30 Apple in middle of menubar MPW MacPerl Latent Semantic Mapping (LSM) Regular expressions WWDC Homer Simpson in The Land of Chocoloate Schadenfreude MacInTouch NPR Microsoft Microsoft invests in Apple and pledges to keep developing Office for Mac Powerbook G3 Filemaker Pro Claris Microsoft Access Bento Apple events Farallon Chuck Shotton WebSTAR MacHTTP StarNine Quarterdeck Apache Open Transport Xcode WebObjects Java Bill Bumgarner Objective-C categories SSH tunnels 1999 Redmond 2000 Maria Cantwell King County Pierce County Eastern Washington secession Shoreline Queen Anne Ballard Magnolia Discovery Park Capitol Hill Pagliacci Pizza 2003 Sand Point Gary Larson Dumbledore The Far Side San Francisco Academy of Sciences Workmen's Compensation Virgina Mason 2001 2002 Upcoming.org Seattle Weekly Dan Savage The Rocket Lynda Barry Life in Hell Matt Groening Evergreen State College University Village Apple Store Seattle Xcoders Dave Winer Daniel Pasco C4 Paul Goracke Black Pixel job listings