Podcasts about solutions engineer

According to the State of Sales Enablement Report 2024, 31% of organizations are preparing to launch a new product or service as a key go-to-market initiative. So, how can you prepare your sellers to be ready for a successful product or service launch that drives business results? Riley Rogers: Hi, and welcome to the Win Win podcast. I’m your host, Riley Rogers. Join us as we dive into changing trends in the workplace and how to navigate them successfully. Here to discuss this topic is Kate Stringfield, senior manager of revenue enablement at Dialpad. Thank you so much for joining us, Kate. Before we get started, I’d love to learn a little bit more about yourself, your role, and your background. Kate Stringfield: Yeah, so I’m Kate Stringfield, as you called out. Was in sales prior to being in enablement, and I was in sales for about seven years, both in hospitality as well as SaaS. And then I made the jump into enablement around six years ago, and now I’m over at Dialpad. RR: Amazing. Thank you for sharing that. I feel like it’s always so helpful to get insight from people who make that transition and have experience on both sides of the playing field.We’re so excited to have you on the podcast for that reason. You have such extensive experience as both a sales and sales enablement leader. So can you maybe walk us through your journey into enablement, how you made that shift, and then maybe a little bit about how that sales background helps influence your enablement strategy? KS: Yeah, so I was in hotels, like I mentioned, for a number of years, and I found my passion helping other people as they started out in their new roles and getting them up to speed. And so when I made the move into SaaS, I learned about this cool role called enablement, and I was like, oh my gosh, I gotta—I gotta learn more and get into that.So since helping others be successful was a—or still is—a passion of mine, I made that jump. And once I landed in an enablement position, I was like, man, I found my place.So I spent a number of years doing enablement for the sellers that I was once a seller for—like, I was doing that role. And then I did another two and a half years in enablement at an enablement company, where I focused on role-specific enablement, as well as launching a sales methodology, three sales motion changes, and various other initiatives that I supported along the way.And then I moved over into Dialpad, where I’m now leading a team of six incredibly gifted, talented revenue enablers across sales, success, and partner enablement. RR: Wonderful. Thank you for walking us through that. It seems like it’s been quite the journey to get where you are today. I’m curious then—we’ve talked about how it informs your strategy—but maybe how does it inform action?So I kind of want to shift gears a little bit and maybe talk about a recent initiative that I know Dialpad has been running, which is that you rolled out a new SKU after an acquisition, and product launch has become a priority for you this year. So can you maybe talk to us a little bit about that initiative? KS: Yeah, absolutely. So making sure that our product is up to speed and ahead of the market is imperative. And so, gosh, around eight months ago, back in October, we acquired a WFM company—so workforce management—which is part of a solution of ours that we did not currently have. So we acquired a company in order to offer that as a complementary solution with what we already had.This was a completely new product line, and we had to figure out, okay, how could we enable our reps to be able to go ahead and sell this? And it’s a slightly different selling motion, so we had to talk through what is it, why does it matter, as well as how do they then position the value of it. And so in true SaaS fashion, we were also, in addition to launching this new SKU, we also had other product enhancements that we were sharing along the same time, as well as a rebranding and new marketing strategy and a new pitch deck.So there was a lot going on. So we had to make sure that we also landed this and landed it well. And so we did some pre-launch awareness where we equipped our sellers with content in the form of kits as well as micro-learnings and giving them the foundation to get them ready for that launch moment so they could start having introductory conversations with customers.So how do you first scope that? Then we did our launch moment and made our just-in-time much more robust and turned them into true sales plays where they learned how to really position this product in the right way and along the whole sales process. And with that, we also did additional learning moments, such as full-blown e-learnings and certifications for how to sell this.Then we really wanted to focus on reinforcement that stuck, and so we looked at, okay, how can we get our managers speaking about this product in team meetings? What kind of activities could we give to managers to run in team meetings, such as trainings in a box? And how can we continue to evolve the conversation and get our reps learning more?And so we focused on PEC talk as well as more thorough, in-depth enablement from a product standpoint, and then that later along the line sales motion and how to sell that. And overall, we saw around $500,000 of closed-won sales initially, and we built around $3 million in pipeline. And through that, we also looked at data with the kit and with the play that—you know, the kit that shifted into the play—and a lot of our reps were using it. There was high adoption of it. They were going back to it multiple times and spending about four minutes consuming the content.And so we were able to track, alright, they did the enablement, they were using the content and sharing it with customers, and then that translated to those closed-won numbers and that pipeline build that I discussed. RR: That sounds like such a thoughtful approach and also like quite a lot of work. I’m sure that was quite difficult to execute, but I love that you’re already seeing the results that you’re looking for. I’d like to maybe dig a little bit more into kind of the initial concept phases where you’re staring down the barrel of this initiative.What kind of challenges do you see reps tending to face when it comes to things like product launch, and what were your best practices for overcoming them as you were executing over the next few months? KS: Yeah, information overload is a big one. And it’s one that—you know, I mentioned we did this in conjunction with other product enhancements and a marketing branding shift in our messaging, as well as a pitch deck launch.So you know, besides that, reps are always being overloaded with information, and so that’s always something you have to contend with as a challenge. Also, when reps are learning about how to sell a new product, it’s something that’s outside of their existing knowledge and skill set a lot of the time or, you know, is just stretching them in a different way.And so you have to figure out how to use the foundation that they already had and build upon that. And then sometimes there’s additional complexities as well. And so when I think about those challenges and how to solve for them, I think about, you know, making sure that you’re taking a crawl-walk-run approach with those product launch moments and building upon what they already have to get them into that run state, but not expecting them to run right out of the gate—which a lot of times is an expectation that happens.So making sure that we’re setting them up for success in learning and building upon that learning, and then also creating resources that really meet them where they are in their tenure and their journey, and being able to translate complex information into simple information that they can digest, consume, put into practice, and then go and evangelize.And then also weaving in sales subject matter experts that really know how to sell your current product and what talking to your customers is like currently, and using them as subject matter experts to really inform that sales motion of that product launch. RR: Great. I think those are all wonderful strategies. And I know kind of a common one when it comes to product launch that you need to keep in mind is just how crucial cross-functional alignment is for the success of a launch. So can you talk to me a little bit about how you create and maybe maintain alignment as you’re building and executing your launch enablement strategy? KS: Yeah, it is so critical. And communication in general in all relationships is so important. And so this is one that really is the make-or-break fail point in a lot of companies. And so having regular touchpoints with subject matter experts across various teams such as—you know, as I called out, sales and success—but also product marketing and other marketing teams. Operations is another really key one.There are so many different teams, and if you’re lucky, you’ll have a business transformation team or a project management team that’s there to foster all of those cross-functional relationships and create that alignment.We work really closely with our product managers and our product teams. We meet with them regularly within our enablement role. In fact, we have somebody in enablement at Dialpad that’s focused on our product and pricing strategy, and so he has these deep relationships with these different teams and different individuals across the business.Additionally, we have a product launch playbook that we have socialized with these cross-functional partners so they know what that playbook looks like, how it can act modularly, and where they play in the process of the playbook—or where they fit into the process, so to speak.And so that really helps us create that alignment and speak the same language. Lastly, we focus on retrospectives—so making sure that we’re learning from each product launch or product release to the next, and by performing retrospectives and having that discussion over, hey, what worked really well, what maybe didn’t work as well, and what can we make better the next time? RR: I love those strategies. I think the Product Launch Playbook is such a clever idea to kind of get everybody on board and aligned with what you’re expected to accomplish. I also love the idea of coming back and reviewing. Sometimes the business runs so fast that you feel like you can’t, but that moment is just as essential—almost—as that next product launch. So I love to hear that.Thinking then of how you’re launching, I’d also like to know a little bit about once you’ve established alignment, how you’re then developing that launch strategy to start running with. Could you talk me through the components of your launch strategy and then maybe how you’re partnering with an enablement platform to support and scale it? KS: Yeah, so that product launch playbook is key. And making sure that it’s modular and nimble to work with various forms or shapes and sizes in which products or, you know, product launch moments happen.Highspot is truly the home—or I guess any platform that people might use—to host just-in-time resources. For us, it’s Highspot, and it truly is the home and where we expect reps to go to first. And so if we think about it in that way, we need to build around that concept.So having that host pre-launch and post-launch and launch materials, having it give guidelines on how to execute—whether it is, you know, as an SDR, BDR, ADR, picking up the phone, what to say, how sellers should be selling the product, how our Customer Success Managers should be reviewing adoption for the product—all needs to live there.We also focus on asynchronous learning, so making sure that we’re not pulling reps out of prime-time selling and giving them space and time to learn on their own, but also checking their knowledge through knowledge checks and certifications. And then all of this new information happening during a product launch needs to, in some way, shape, or form, be folded into onboarding.So thinking about how that comes back into onboarding so that reps who start tomorrow can benefit from that information and be able to hit the ground running. RR: Yeah, there are a lot of different lenses to look at it and areas in which it needs to be embedded, so that all makes sense. On the note of enablement platforms, I know that Dialpad had previously partnered with another enablement solution, so can you maybe share why Highspot was the better fit for your organization as well as how it supports your enablement strategy today? KS: Yeah, Highspot is integral.It’s integral in that it is where our reps start their day and where they end their day. It hosts all of our content, both internal-facing and external-facing. So Highspot is a game changer for us because within my team it’s easy for us to manage from an admin perspective and to practice governance across the various teams that are content creators or host content and manage it there.Our reps are familiar with using it. That’s another thing—you know, having a solution like Highspot is something that reps come to expect nowadays, and so they’re familiar with it, they know how to use it, and we’re constantly thinking about how they interact with it and how we can train them to interact with it better.Our Highspot team—so the team that helps us at Highspot—is a differentiator. So that is our CSM and our AM. So Jess, Emily, our Technical Account Manager Brian, and Matt Hunin, our Solutions Engineer, all help us be able to learn the latest and greatest, utilize what we already have, and maximize our value.And then potentially look at other things that might help us as we overall, as a company, shift to more of a just-in-time strategy. So moving away from live sessions that people are going to forget most of what you said, moving away from, you know, long e-learnings, and more of, okay, I’m in—you know, I have to prepare for this call in 15 minutes—where am I going to find that information?Surfacing it up in Highspot and making it easy to find has become a game changer in helping them—meeting them where they're at and giving them the information they need to be successful.And then we can use data from Highspot and correlate that to leading indicators on whether reps are doing the kind of behaviors we want to see and how that ties to business outcomes. And are the reps actually closing deals or protecting revenue as a result? RR: Well, that’s all great to hear, and I always love to hear a really positive experience. I’m so glad that your account team is there to support you through all of it.We have heard through the grapevine, actually, that you’re doing some really awesome work with the platform, and one area where you’ve seen a lot of success is actually through Digital Rooms—with over 342 Digital Rooms created in Highspot, as well as a 9% increase in external engagement, which is wonderful just to call that out.So what are some of your best practices for driving that adoption? KS: Yeah, yeah. We moved to Digital Rooms just last year, if you can believe it, from pitch templates. And one of the things we did first off was—there was a Highspot University course around Digital Rooms that we took, and we also used materials that we were able to find from Highspot so we could become proficient ourselves as the people that were enabling the reps.We then built a dedicated Digital Room kit to help reps get familiar with the why and the how of Digital Rooms and provided them with walkthroughs. And then we hosted sessions, we did asynchronous learning, we do one-on-one support for our reps on why it’s important, how to build, how to find engagement and analytics.And we regularly also work with reps to get feedback—so figure out what’s working, how do we build templates that make it really easy for them to add in what they want to add in, what information do they always add in so we can just add it into the template for them.Another thing that we thought about was—we use Consensus for demo videos, and so integrating Consensus into there, and how do we make that easy?We have also thought about Digital Rooms not just for sales. We’ve thought about it for our sales development reps and what are their use cases, and built templates for them, and done specific training for them, and gotten feedback from them.We’ve also thought about the post-sales journey a lot. So how do we get our client sales reps using it to position cross-sell and upsell? And then customer success—where do we feed in content for QBRs or other conversations that they’re having with customers and integrating in their feedback to make their templates better?So we’re always thinking about how to get our reps more and more proficient and making that a focal point month over month. And we’re really excited for some of the enhancements coming to Digital Rooms that we’re going to capitalize on moving forward and making sure our reps know how to use it. RR: Yeah. I love that you led with educating yourself first, because how can you enable on something that you haven’t been in those weeds with as well?Well, that’s one of the biggest things you can give your reps—is to build with them in mind. You know their work, you can build something for them, and then actually they’ll use it. It sounds simple, but it’s really hard to do.So I’d love to hear a little bit of a shift in focus, but I’m curious if you could walk me through how you measure the impact of—and maybe then begin to optimize—some of your enablement efforts? KS: Yeah, I think about measuring impact of enablement in three ways. So you have the first prong, which is your enablement effort in general. So how do you measure enablement through, like, what activities are you doing?So this is—you know, if you think about the Kirkpatrick model—this is Level 1 and Level 2: Was your training effective? Were you able to certify, you know, X number of reps? That sort of thing. Those are examples of that.Then I think about the second prong, which is leading indicators. And this is about behavior. Are the reps able to take what they have learned and apply it to their daily workflow?Maybe it looks like building pipeline, maybe it looks like having certain conversations with customers or sending information to customers. You know, it could be various things that are that kind of Level 3 of Kirkpatrick.And then the third prong is at Level 4—so thinking about those business outcomes that are the goals of why you are doing this whole enablement approach to begin with. What kind of revenue are you trying to impact? Are you trying to impact conversion rates, you know, average deal size? Are you trying to increase revenue? Are you trying to protect revenue—so reduce churn and downsell?Those are all things that, you know, are on my mind. And then the correlation between the three—the correlation between the enablement efforts, the behavior change that you’re seeing through leading indicators, and the business outcomes.And so when it comes to then, okay, we’ve launched something, we’ve measured it, and now we’re trying to optimize it—it is then looking at, alright, what are the different checkpoints along the way in which we can say, did we do our job? Or do we need to go back and do more?And so maybe it looks like, hey, are they actually reviewing the play or the kits? Are they sending the content to customers? If not, why? We can ask those questions, because we can see the data on whether or not they’re doing it. Are they saying it in customer conversations? That looks like utilizing a conversational intelligence tool to see if they’re actually using it in those conversations.We can start to dig into all the different pieces and figure out where we need to refine our enablement approach to fill that gap.And so we can utilize Highspot to do that, our data in Salesforce to do that, conversational intelligence data. There are many different ways, but just having that data to dig into it, and then asking questions to reps is so important. RR: Thanks so much for that really thoughtful step-by-step walkthrough. I think that’s really actionable, and I think our listeners will take a lot away from it. I know that measurement is always going to kind of be difficult for enablement teams, so I love just hearing how folks have developed real actionable strategies for making it happen.But on the subject of measurement, I’d love to know—since implementing Highspot, what business results have you achieved? Any wins that you could share or just anything that you’re proud of that you’ve accomplished over at Dialpad? KS: Yeah, I’m proud of so much. Our team has done a phenomenal job, and as you called out—you know, the successes with Digital Rooms and that new product that we launched, that new SKU—those are really huge.Additionally, we have utilized Highspot to realize over $16 million of influenced revenue in just 2024 alone within our revenue organization. That is such a testament to how much our reps have Highspot integrated into their day-to-day life, and then how they use that information to speak to customers, how they use their messaging, and then how that behavior results in those closed-won opportunities.Additionally, partner is such a huge focus of Dialpad—so our partnerships with our resellers, our partnership with our channel—and we have seen a high increase: 23% of our partner material being used and being viewed and then being leveraged, which is also something I’m very proud of.And then the project that I’m currently working on that I’m proud of—but, you know, time will tell on results—is I’m working on a robust governance strategy so we can really take Highspot to the next level and make our cross-functional partners more of the partners in how the content gets delivered to our reps.And so I’m really looking forward to rolling out our more robust governance strategy this year. RR: We’ll stay tuned on how it goes. I mean, those are already incredible results, so thank you so much for sharing.Just one last question for you before we close out—would love for you to share maybe what the biggest pieces of advice you’d give other enablement leaders to help them drive a successful product launch. KS: I think the modular Product Launch Playbook has been huge—so having a laid-out plan for how you would run a product launch from start to finish in enablement and making sure that it fits all sizes, shapes, and formations of what a product launch might look like.And then the other piece of advice I would give is having regular communication and good working relationships across multiple cross-functional partners so that siloed work becomes less of a thing you have to battle. Because that just means that, you know, working together, we all lift each other up.And so that’s something that then trickles down to our reps, but then also trickles out to our customers and makes them more willing to buy from us. So I think cross-functional relationships are just so key—and so keep on working on those relationships. RR: Those are both fantastic pieces of advice, so thank you for taking the time to come share these insights with us. I think I speak for myself and our listeners when I say that I learned a lot of valuable information and was taking notes for sure.To our audience, thank you so much for listening to this episode of the Win-Win podcast. Be sure to tune in next time for more insights on how you can maximize enablement success with Highspot.

Gideon Singer is a Solutions Engineer at CARTO. He is another guest from Geospatial Risk Summit. Gideon gave a technical presentation on the first day about processing pipelines in CARTO. It was a sign of how far the platform has progressed since I began using it over a decade ago. Back then it was called CartoDB. In this episode he continues the demonstration of analysis, mapping and presentation in CARTO. This time in the context of broadband network access quality for senior citizens. He was also game for a description of spatial indexing which I didn't warn him about! Another aspect of this conversation that I appreciated was being able to talk about my efforts to animate the Vietnam/Laos/Cambodia War bombing sortie dataset, using CartoDB back in the day. Gideon showed us that he and by extension CARTO have an interest in applications of our profession to map and examine injustice.

Jenny welcomes Tara Mikaelian and Hattie Wilkinson from Sprout Social to unpack the powerful role of social media data in higher ed marketing. They dive into why this data matters, how it connects to institutional goals, and how social media managers can use real-time insights to drive strategy, demonstrate ROI, and advocate for their role. With real-world examples and actionable tips, this conversation offers a fresh take on using social data as a strategic tool rather than just a performance report.Guest Names: Hattie Wilkinson, Senior Solutions Engineer, Sprout Social Tara Mikaelian, Sr. Enterprise Account Executive, Sprout Social Guest Socials: Hattie LinkedInTara LinkedInGuest Bios: Hattie Wilkinson is a social media expert with over 10 years of experience across diverse industries. In her current role as a Solutions Engineer at Sprout Social, she collaborates closely with higher education social teams, leveraging Sprout Social's capabilities to streamline workflows and establish the tangible ROI of their social initiatives. Hattie's passion lies in all things social data and helping social teams navigate the ever-evolving social landscape.Tara Mikaelian is a seasoned social media strategist with over six years of experience driving digital engagement across a range of industries. In her current role as a Growth & Strategy Partner at Sprout Social, she works with higher education institutions to optimize their social media efforts—streamlining operations, unifying data, and demonstrating the measurable cross-institutional impact of their work. Guided by a passion for using technology to empower deeper human connection, Tara is dedicated to helping organizations simplify complexity and elevate their impact. - - - -Connect With Our Host:Jenny Li Fowlerhttps://www.linkedin.com/in/jennylifowler/https://twitter.com/TheJennyLiAbout The Enrollify Podcast Network:Confessions of a Higher Ed Social Media Manager is a part of the Enrollify Podcast Network. If you like this podcast, chances are you'll like other Enrollify shows too! Enrollify is made possible by Element451 — the next-generation AI student engagement platform helping institutions create meaningful and personalized interactions with students. Learn more at element451.com.Attend the 2025 Engage Summit! The Engage Summit is the premier conference for forward-thinking leaders and practitioners dedicated to exploring the transformative power of AI in education. Explore the strategies and tools to step into the next generation of student engagement, supercharged by AI. You'll leave ready to deliver the most personalized digital engagement experience every step of the way.Register now to secure your spot in Charlotte, NC, on June 24-25, 2025! Early bird registration ends February 1st -- https://engage.element451.com/register

Join host Joe Kearns as he sits down with Amelia Frasure, Solutions Engineer at Skydio, the leading U.S. drone manufacturer and world leader in autonomous flight. Amelia, formerly the UAS Program Manager for the Greenville Police Department and an instructor at the Public Safety UAS Institute, shares expert insights on building and managing effective drone programs in public safety. In this episode, Frasure discusses program development, team training, and overcoming operational challenges in law enforcement drone operations. The conversation also covers practical strategies for securing funding, ensuring compliance, and maintaining operational excellence. Whether you're launching a new UAS program or optimizing an existing one, this episode offers valuable insights for public safety professionals, drone program managers, and law enforcement leaders looking to maximize the impact of unmanned aircraft technology.

Join us to talk about cutting-edge technology and experiential strategies to engage the next generation of consumers. GoTab and BrewedAt are partnering to inspire breweries, taprooms, and hospitality venues to harness the power of memorable events, Gen Z-specific marketing strategies, and exclusive GoTab features like Secret Menus, shared tabs, and interactive experiences to attract a tech-savvy, experience-driven demographic.This event will empower industry professionals to reimagine how they connect with Gen Z by leveraging technology to enhance convenience and creativity while building loyalty through unforgettable experiences.By combining innovative technology with creative event strategies, this collaboration will spotlight how businesses can drive traffic, increase engagement, and foster loyalty among younger drinkers who demand both convenience and memorable moments.Evan Blum-Evan Blum is an accomplished beverage industry professional, with years of experience at Nestle Waters Supply Chain. While he has enjoyed his work in the industry, Evan's true passion lies in supporting local businesses that strengthen communities.After graduating from Temple University, Evan discovered the world of craft beer and quickly became enamored with its rich flavors and vibrant culture. He is passionate about all aspects of the craft beer experience, from the welcoming atmosphere of taprooms to the excitement of beer festivals. For Evan, craft beer is about more than just the beer itself-it's about the food, the company, and the sense of community that comes with enjoying a great pint.Adam Howe-With over 20 years in the service industry and 12 years in management, Adam Howe brings a wealth of hands-on experience and leadership expertise to his role as Solutions Engineer at GoTab. Adam has successfully opened and managed high-profile venues, including a $12M entertainment complex, an $8M beer garden, and a $1.5M tasting room/pub.Stay up to date with CBP: http://update.craftbeerprofessionals.orgJoin us in-person for CBP ConnectsHalf workshop, half networkingCharlotte, NC | June 9-11, 2025Register now: cbpconnects.com

SD-WAN - Software-Defined Wide-Area Network - is a technology implementation designed to bring better reliability and performance to IP connections over distance. Whether across town, to remote offices, or to remote transmitter sites, SD-WAN technologies are gaining interest among broadcast engineers and IT staff. It turns out there are a lot of features - optional but useful features - that can be deployed alongside basic WAN management and monitoring. Dan Merwin and Reggie Jeffery work in broadcast and other industries to offer appropriate technologies and capabilities, improving our critical IP connections. Show Notes:What is SD-WAN? - a primer from CiscoSD-WAN article from WikipediaIn our SBE meeting earlier today, Reggie mentioned CATO Networks as a source of tech and information. Here’s their primer on SD-WANs. Guests:Dan Merwin – Broadcast Engineer & Telecom/IT Agent at Broadcast TelecomReggie Jeffery – Solutions Engineer at ScanSourceHost:Kirk Harnack, The Telos Alliance, Delta Radio, Star94.3, South Seas Broadcasting, & Akamai BroadcastingFollow TWiRT on Twitter and on Facebook - and see all the videos on YouTube.TWiRT is brought to you by:Broadcasters General Store, with outstanding service, saving, and support. Online at BGS.cc. Broadcast Bionics - making radio smarter with Bionic Studio, visual radio, and social media tools at Bionic.radio.Aiir, providing PlayoutONE radio automation, and other advanced solutions for audience engagement.Angry Audio and the new Rave analog audio mixing console. The new MaxxKonnect Broadcast U.192 MPX USB Soundcard - The first purpose-built broadcast-quality USB sound card with native MPX output. Subscribe to Audio:iTunesRSSStitcherTuneInSubscribe to Video:iTunesRSSYouTube

Industrial Talk is onsite at IoT Solutions World Congress and talking to Emmanuel Penzes, Sr. Solutions Engineer with The Qt Company about "The power behind improving the user interface". Scott MacKenzie hosts Emmanuel Penzes, a solution engineer at the Qt Group, on the Industrial Talk Podcast. Emmanuel discusses the importance of user interfaces (UI) in software development, emphasizing simplicity and functionality. He highlights the role of designers over developers in UI design and the use of analytics to improve user experience. Emmanuel also touches on the need for flexibility in UI design to accommodate updates and hardware capabilities. Looking ahead, he sees potential in autonomous driving and digital twins. Scott stresses the critical role of well-designed UIs in user engagement and encourages listeners to connect with Emmanuel and attend the IoT Solutions World Congress in Barcelona. Action Items [ ] Reach out to Emmanuel Penzes on LinkedIn to continue the discussion on UI design best practices. [ ] Explore the Qt Group's tools and solutions for creating optimized user interfaces, especially for IoT and embedded systems. [ ] Consider incorporating user feedback and analytics into the UI design process to ensure a smooth and intuitive user experience. Outline Introduction and Welcome to the Podcast Scott MacKenzie welcomes listeners to the Industrial Talk Podcast, emphasizing the focus on industry professionals and their innovations. Scott thanks the audience for their continued support and highlights the importance of celebrating industry professionals. The podcast is broadcasting from the IoT Solutions World Congress in Barcelona, Spain, and Scott encourages listeners to attend next year. Scott introduces Emmanuel from the Qt Group, who will discuss user interfaces and their importance. Emmanuel's Background and Role Emmanuel shares his background, mentioning his origins in France and his current residence in Paris. Emmanuel has a decade of experience as a software developer, including a four-year stint in Australia to improve his English. He has been with the Qt Group for the past five years, working as a solution engineer to help customers find the right software solutions. Scott expresses his passion for well-designed user interfaces and asks Emmanuel to explain their importance. Defining a Good User Interface Emmanuel explains that a good user interface is one that is easy and simple to use, minimizing frustration for the user. He emphasizes the need to balance functionality without overcomplicating the interface, as too many features can confuse users. Scott shares his personal frustration with complex user interfaces and pop-ups, highlighting the importance of simplicity. Emmanuel discusses the role of designers in creating user interfaces, separate from developers who focus on coding. Balancing Functionality and User Experience Emmanuel talks about the importance of using dedicated designers for user interfaces and user experience. He mentions the use of tools and analytics to gather customer feedback and improve user interfaces. Scott asks about the process of guiding clients through the design process, emphasizing the need for flexibility and responsiveness. Emmanuel explains the importance of considering hardware limitations and ensuring smooth performance to avoid frustration. Future Trends and Automotive Applications Scott and Emmanuel discuss the

This episode of the “On Location” series, recorded during ThreatLocker Zero Trust World 2025 in Orlando, features an insightful conversation with Amanda Makowsky, Solution Engineer at ThreatLocker. Amanda shares how ThreatLocker maintains a human touch in cybersecurity while delivering robust solutions for organizations of all sizes.The Human Element in TechnologyAmanda explains how ThreatLocker emphasizes human interaction from the first demo through implementation and beyond. When potential customers engage with ThreatLocker, they are assigned a dedicated Solution Engineer as their technical point of contact. Amanda highlights how this relationship extends beyond the sales process, ensuring partners have continuous support as they mature their security environments. Whether working with small businesses or large enterprises, the focus remains on personalized service and hands-on assistance.Support That Stands OutThreatLocker's commitment to human-centric support is evident through its 24/7 live helpdesk, staffed by real people in Orlando, Florida. Amanda notes the goal of responding to chat requests within a minute, providing immediate support without relying on bots or automated responses. This approach fosters trust and ensures that customers, regardless of their organization's size, receive timely and effective help.Customization and Real-World ImpactAmanda shares how every partner's environment is unique, requiring tailored solutions to accommodate different software, hardware, and operational needs. She emphasizes the importance of building specific and intentional roles within ThreatLocker's systems to match the diverse environments of their partners. The impact of this customization is profound, as partners express a sense of security that allows them to “sleep better at night.”Listen to this episode to explore how ThreatLocker combines technology with human connection, offering a refreshing perspective in the cybersecurity industry.Guest

This week, we dive into DeepSeek. SallyAnn DeLucia, Product Manager at Arize, and Nick Luzio, a Solutions Engineer, break down key insights on a model that have dominating headlines for its significant breakthrough in inference speed over other models. What's next for AI (and open source)? From training strategies to real-world performance, here's what you need to know.Read a summary: https://arize.com/blog/how-deepseek-is-pushing-the-boundaries-of-ai-development/Learn more about AI observability and evaluation in our course, join the Arize AI Slack community or get the latest on LinkedIn and X.

In these ‘Moment' episodes, I'll be selecting my favorite moments from previous episodes of Mind Bully Podcast. In this episode my cousin Daniel shares his experience of fitting in as an immigrant, and the challenges of moving abroad. Daniel Odiase, a Solutions Engineer based in Toronto, Ontario._stayhumbleosama⁠ EP137 Navigating Your 20s As a Child of Immigrants https://open.spotify.com/episode/4s2W47Ae8LihP4givtw2Io?si=gvFvW8fkQ8iCwkaFAKS90g SOCIALS ⁠⁠⁠⁠mindbullypodcast⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠kingno_⁠

Episode Notes In this engaging episode of the JUXT Cast, Jeremy Taylor and Malcolm Sparks sit down with Ryan Robitaille, the founder of Rabbit, https://github.com/ryrobes/rvbbit. Ryan shares his unique journey—from working with Oracle systems as a young Solutions Engineer to becoming a creative force in the world of data visualization. Ryan explores his experience building Rabbit, a tool designed to bridge the gap between proprietary BI tools and custom-built engineering solutions. Frustrated by the limitations of traditional tools like Tableau, Ryan envisioned a platform that offers the "best of both worlds": the simplicity of drag-and-drop dashboards with the power and flexibility of live coding and version control. Key Takeaways from the Episode: The Origins of Rabbit: How Ryan's passion for combining artistry and data engineering sparked the creation of a platform that feels like a "game engine for data." Balancing Build vs. Buy: Insights into the perpetual organizational dilemma of purchasing BI tools versus building in-house solutions. Clojure's Role: How Clojure and its philosophy of "code is data" played a pivotal role in Rabbit's architecture and flexibility. The Tableau Experience: Ryan reflects on Tableau's transformative early days and where the tool has hit its limits. Empowering End-Users: Why Ryan believes tools should offer a low bar for entry but a high ceiling for complexity. With fascinating anecdotes and deep technical insights, this episode sheds light on how data platforms can evolve to empower creativity, transparency, and collaboration.

In this episode of Automox Insiders, Maddie Regis speaks with Ryan Jeziorski, a Solutions Engineer at Automox, about the importance of IT adaptability and resilience. Ryan shares his diverse career background, his current role at Automox, and insights on how organizations can maintain uninterrupted services while adapting to changes in technology. He emphasizes the significance of continuous learning and patch management as key strategies for IT professionals. The conversation concludes with a fun game about companies that have successfully adapted their business models over time.

Sonja Schmid ist Senior Solution Engineer bei HubSpot. Bevor sie bei HubSpot angefangen hat, war sie bei Salesforce tätig. Im Interview gibt sie uns spannende Einblicke in die Unterschiede, die sie zwischen den beiden Unternehmen erlebt hat – nicht nur in den Prozessen, sondern auch in der strategischen Ausrichtung. Besonders interessant: Sonja erklärt, wie sie als Solutions Engineer aktiv zum Vertriebserfolg beiträgt, indem sie Prozesse vereinfacht und gleichzeitig strategische Ansätze in ihre Arbeit integriert, insbesondere im Bereich Forecasting und der Zusammenarbeit mit Vertriebsteams. Außerdem verrät sie, warum Coaching und Mentoring für sie eine Herzensangelegenheit sind und wie sie sich darauf vorbereitet, ihre Fähigkeiten weiterzugeben. Wenn ihr erfahren wollt, wie CRM, Vertrieb und persönliche Weiterentwicklung miteinander verknüpft werden können, dann klickt jetzt auf Play! ----------

In the latest episode of The Edge and Beyond podcast, Michelle Dawn Mooney dives into the transformative role of technology in education, highlighting Intel's Connected Education Kits. Developed in partnership with ApplianSys, these kits are designed to bring quality digital learning to underserved and remote communities. The discussion explores how these kits are a game-changer for regions with limited access to IT infrastructure and connectivity, offering a scalable, integrated solution that minimizes costs and maximizes digital learning opportunities.Kayla Balliew, Solutions Engineer at Intel, shares, “The Connected Education Kit brings a full PC experience to students, enabling digital skills development even in challenging environments.” Roger Clark from ApplianSys adds, “Our technology optimizes low-bandwidth connections, ensuring schools can still offer valuable online resources.”The episode sheds light on the collaborative efforts between Intel and ApplianSys and the role of businesses and NGOs in expanding the kit's reach. It also explores the future of digital education in underserved regions, emphasizing AI's role in adaptive learning.For a deeper look at how Intel's Connected Education Kits are making a global impact, listen to the full episode and connect with the guests:Kayla BalliewRoger ClarkSubscribe to the "To the Edge & Beyond" podcast on Apple Podcasts and Spotify to engage with more thought leaders from the Intel and Edge Network group.

In the latest episode of The Edge and Beyond podcast, Michelle Dawn Mooney dives into the transformative role of technology in education, highlighting Intel's Connected Education Kits. Developed in partnership with ApplianSys, these kits are designed to bring quality digital learning to underserved and remote communities. The discussion explores how these kits are a game-changer for regions with limited access to IT infrastructure and connectivity, offering a scalable, integrated solution that minimizes costs and maximizes digital learning opportunities.Kayla Balliew, Solutions Engineer at Intel, shares, “The Connected Education Kit brings a full PC experience to students, enabling digital skills development even in challenging environments.” Roger Clark from ApplianSys adds, “Our technology optimizes low-bandwidth connections, ensuring schools can still offer valuable online resources.”The episode sheds light on the collaborative efforts between Intel and ApplianSys and the role of businesses and NGOs in expanding the kit's reach. It also explores the future of digital education in underserved regions, emphasizing AI's role in adaptive learning.For a deeper look at how Intel's Connected Education Kits are making a global impact, listen to the full episode and connect with the guests:Kayla BalliewRoger ClarkSubscribe to The Edge and Beyond on Apple Podcasts and Spotify to keep up with more insights from thought leaders in technology and education.

When Jose is not filming documentaries, he's a “Solutions Engineer.” If you're in the northeast, Jose can go into a space and audit ASHRAE levels 1, 2 and 3. He can help you comply with local energy saving ordinances by identifying fluorescents or halogens or opportunities for natural light. Then he'll come back with a plan to give you the same level of light, using LED's, controls and fenestration.Jose is a 48 year old New York City Native (Dominican Republic descent) raised in Miami, FL. He is a filmmaker/documentarian by night and a solutions engineer and lighting expert by day. 

In this week's episode we sat down with Danielle Chaffin, Solutions Engineer at Revenova. Danielle shares her journey into logistics and discusses her all-or-nothing approach to social media. She also emphasizes the importance of advocacy for carriers.Thank you to our podcast sponsors:  This episode Is brought to you by Isometric Technologies (ISO) the ultimate freight broker's secret weapon! With ISO, you'll have access to industry-wide service performance benchmarks, dynamic carrier and customer scorecards, and powerful analytics so you can understand your service strengths, address your weaknesses, and differentiate your carrier network from the competition. To learn more and get started, visit www.iso.io today.Interested in sponsoring our podcast? Send us an email at pbj@freightcaviar.com.Support the Show.

Dive into our MAY 2024 Microsoft Teams Show! Host Kieran Devlin teams up with special guest Tom Arbuthnot from Empowering.Cloud to unpack recent updates and announcements. Joined by a panel of seasoned Teams experts, find out what's new in the Teams ecosystem.In this update, we talk through the most popular Teams news headlines with this month's special guests:Graham Walsh, Product Specialist at NeatKevin Kieller, Co-Founder and Lead Analyst, enableUCJosh Blalock, Chief Video Evangelist at JabraRandy Chapman, Solutions Engineer in Video Collaboration, LogitechTeams NewsMicrosoft is reportedly developing its own AI platform to compete with OpenAI's ChatGPT. What does this mean for Microsoft, its AI strategy and its OpenAI partnership?Microsoft Quarterly earnings - 20 million Teams Phone users, an increase on 17 million last JulyOver one million Microsoft Teams Rooms customersTeams Rooms on Windows 5.0 - Lots of new features for Teams Rooms!New Teams update now on Teams RoomsZero Touch Deployment with Windows AutopilotSkype for Business DeprecationMeeting Chat shown by default in Gallery View for Teams Rooms on WindowsMicrosoft Teams Rooms Pro Portal Remote Access - How does it work and could it be a gamechanger for IT admins?Restricted SharePoint search began rolling out in public preview for Copilot for Microsoft 365New Notebook for Copilot (on the web) - What exactly is it and how does it work?Teams Events European Collaboration Summit - May 14-16Microsoft Teams Devices Ask Me Anything - May 21-22Microsoft Build, Seattle and Online - May 21-23UCX Manchester - May 21-22Teams Fireside Chat with Juan Rivera - June 13Commsverse - June 26-27

This weeks guest is my cousin! Daniel Odiase. He is a Solutions Engineer based in Toronto, Ontario. --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/noodiase/message

This week we welcome Danielle Chaffin, Solutions Engineer with Revenova & a 3rd generation supply chain leader. Hot off the heels of the TIA (Transportation Intermediaries Association) in Phoenix, Danielle helps me understand what TIA is all about. But more than that, Danielle shares her experience as a third generation leader in supply chain, from the difficult calls when a parent or loved one is on the road, to solving big problems for brokers & truckers. These are the conversations that we need to have as an industry. Follow Danielle on Twitter / X right here!I love this logistics, & I love my partners at DAT. Today we can offer first time uses 10% off their first 12 months. For Truckers, DAT One Pro gives you access to tri-haul & 15-day rate as opposed to 30-day rate. For Brokers, DAT One Select as it gives brokers access to Market Conditions, Exact Match alarms & more.

The moral of the story Part 1 of this series: https://poojav.substack.com/p/the-parable-of-the-ceo-who-burns Join the Less Stress, More Flow program waitlist: https://forms.gle/mBGNHYkjxAKFWWAt8 Book a free coaching consult today: https://poojavcoaching.com/contact ———  What my clients have to say… “Before I started working with Pooja, I felt like I was getting in my own way a lot.  I would apply stop signs to my life. I felt like I would have the same thoughts and same roadblocks coming up. After a few sessions, I saw that, ‘Wow, I'm not in my own way anymore.'” —Client |  Solutions Engineer at Fintech Company Read client testimonials: https://poojavcoaching.com/testimonials-page ———  Did you know I have a full table of contents, where all my work is categorized by topic, so you can easily find what you need right now?  Check out all my free resources: https://poojav.substack.com/p/welcome-to-your-brains-bff

In this episode of the podcast, we're featuring a webinar from our sister series, Hotel Moment Deep Dive. Alise Deeb, Chief Revenue Officer of Dragonfly Strategists, and Revinators Jim Mangan, Solutions Engineer, and Melissa McMullin, Product Marketing Manager, dive into the latest insights and data for the upcoming season's travel trends. Gain valuable comparisons between last summer's patterns and the anticipated shifts for the upcoming months. Uncover actionable strategies for hoteliers to maximize opportunities and ensure readiness for the summer surge.

In this episode, Richard speaks to Tom Welton, a Solutions Engineer at Pax8. Previously working in their Colorado office, he has been based in the UK since the company opened their first European location. After getting special dispensation from the British government to move over in the middle of the covid pandemic, Tom has since helped Pax8 to establish several offices in the UK and the wider EMEA.Speaking in person at Channel Live 2024 in Birmingham, Tom explains his background and experiences at Pax8 to Richard. He shares how he overcame his imposter syndrome and what a Solutions Engineer does.Richard and Tom also discuss why they enjoy attending in-person channel events, how MSPs are using AI and why it's important to be aware of data protection and security requirements when using publicly-available tools like ChatGPT.Mentioned in This EpisodeIT Industry Association: CompTIAAI tool: ChatGPTAI tool: Microsoft CoPilotCybersecurity accreditation: Cyber Essentials

At the ground level, we all put our heads down and work. We demo, discover, and manage support calls. How we do all that is the tactical work. But what about the strategy? How do we move an entire organization from reactive to proactive? How does the organization incentivize people, or in other words, how do they line up their interests with their employee's interests?   These are some topics I discussed with Fadi Bassil, the VP of Support at Incorta. Fadi is a fellow Lebanese, but that's not what's important. What's important is what he has been able to achieve in such a short period since moving to the UK. Taking a step back, humbled himself, so he could move forward to where had a big impact on his organization and his company. show notes: https://wethesalesengineers.com/show310

Many of us go to university, wondering what we are supposed to study. Those of us who complete it then graduate, wondering what the job would entail. Once we get the job that we may or may not have thought we wanted, we find that we are bored out of our minds.    Some people stick with it and learn to love it, or simply stick with it. Others try to find a solution. That's what today's guest did. Sameer Kausar found himself in a job he was not excited about. So he looked within, and looked around, and identified Sales Engineering as a potential dream job. Since he got the job, he has not looked back since.   show notes: https://wethesalesengineers.com/show309

My guest for today is Chris Beaumont and he is a recruiter. We discuss how people should approach the job hunt, and what they can do to increase their chances to secure a job. We also talk about what employers are doing wrong while they are trying to fill the few recs they have open.  Show notes: https://wethesalesengineers.com/show308

Engineers are not usually known as creative types. This is a strange notion for me as I think engineers are some of the most creative people. We might not be creating art (although some engineers are artists), but we are being creative in solving a set of problems.  The problem is it doesn't show to the outside world.  But there are ways to do so, and Melanie Flores, my guest for this week found out that she can do it through Solution Engineering. It's not just about solving a problem creatively. It's about telling stories and asking questions where creativity can shine while being in an Engineering field.  show notes: https://wethesalesengineers.com/show306

A big piece of Sales Engineering is Sales. Most engineers don't like the sales part of Sales Engineering, but it's what SEs have to excel at to be good at their jobs. Taking it a step further, SEs have to excel at knowing their customers and that will make every aspect of sales easier.    These are all topics of conversation that Alvaro Tuscano and I get deep into, in addition to the challenges of presales in Spain specifically, and how he overcame them to become a great SE and a trainer for other SEs.    show notes: https://wethesalesengineers.com/show305

Today I am speaking with Mujtaba Idrees, Blockchain Solutions Architect at Deutsche Telekom. As you may already know, Deutsche Telekom is a leading global telecommunications giant, connecting millions through mobile, fixed-network, internet, and ICT solutions, known through brands like T-Mobile and T-Systems.Mujtaba is a key member of Deutsche Telekom's blockchain team, which recently ventured into the web3 space and launched an Indexer on The Graph. In this episode, we explore the intriguing journey of a telecommunications giant's interest in web3. Mujtaba shares insights into Deutsche Telekom's vision for web3 and provides valuable perspectives on how the team discovered and took on the role of Indexer within The Graph's ecosystem. During the conversation, we also delve into Mujtaba's educational and professional development, his passion for travel, what sparked his interest in web3, and much more!  Show Notes and TranscriptsThe GRTiQ Podcast takes listeners inside web3 and The Graph (GRT) by interviewing members of the ecosystem.  Please help support this project and build the community by subscribing and leaving a review.Twitter: GRT_iQwww.GRTiQ.com

Today Marion Ellis chats with Alice Graham, Solutions Engineer at Procore Technologies. A Chartered Quantity Surveyor with six years of industry experience, Alice combines industry expertise with a passion for technology to help construction organisations adopt cutting-edge cost management solutions, contributing to the industry's digital transformation. Alice also actively supports early career professionals in their development. In this episode, we discuss the development and integration of new technologies in the Surveying community, and ways in which diversity can help support our own careers and each other. What Is Covered 02:44 - Discovering and entering Quantity Surveying 12:00 - Alice's work with Procore 19.19 - Bridging the Technology Gap 25:30 - Building Diversity in Quantitative Surveying Resources Procore Construction Management Software LinkedIn - Celebrating Black Women in Construction BPIC Network Mentoring Circle Empower Equity

As we approach the end of 2023 it only seemed fitting to dive into reflection and to look at both the scientific and energetic sides of the quantum realm. Two-time international #1 bestselling author, host of the Wisdom Talk Radio podcast, Executive Coach, international trainer and speaker, and Certified Master Trainer, Laurie Seymour, M.A., is the founder and CEO of The Baca Institute, and the creator of the Quantum Connection Process. She has dedicated her life to showing visionaries and conscious entrepreneurs how to reliably connect with their energetic creative intelligence, dissolving old patterns of difficulty, struggle, and self-sabotage, while creating the business and life that they love.Almost twenty-five years ago, Laurie was honored to receive the stewardship of a special energetic technology that activates the process of inner connection and the ability for accelerated creation in individuals and groups.After twice leaving successful careers, first as a psychotherapist and trainer, and then as a Solutions Engineer in the telecom industry, Laurie founded The Baca Institute.Connect with Laurie:The Baca Institute Website Your Quantum Connection Style Quiz  Facebook  LinkedIn  Instagram  YouTube Twitter Let's Connect:@HappenstanceThePodcast@CareerCoachCassieHappenstance the Playlist

In this episode we talk about what Flex is all about.Connect with Brad https://www.linkedin.com/in/bradleyrobins/

In this episode, Sue Quackenbush talks with Suraj Pandey, Principal Solutions Engineer based in Melbourne.Suraj shares how hobbies such as sports enrich different facets of his life, and how everyone can unleash their inner passions. He also talks about the big impact of continuously trying new things, even if they seem a bit unfamiliar at first.Episode links: Sue Quackenbush's LinkedInSuraj Pandey's LinkedInDiscover the possibilities with us and consider exciting career paths at careers.dynatrace.com.Your feedback and thoughts matter to us! Connect directly via employerbrand@dynatrace.com.

Vulnerabilities are the unlocked doors allowing adversaries a foothold into your organization. Left unpatched, they provide an entryway for intruders to break in, move laterally and wreak havoc. This episode shares everything you want to know about vulnerability intelligence: What types of vulnerabilities are most common? How should organizations prioritize patching? What is an n-day flaw? Learn the answers to these questions, and more, from Adam, Cristian, and special guest Nina Padavil, Solutions Engineer and Threat Advisor at CrowdStrike. Learn more about External Attack Surface Management challenges and recommendations: https://www.crowdstrike.com/cybersecurity-101/external-attack-surface-management/ Read CrowdStrike's latest blog covering how External Attack Surface Management enhances Cloud security: https://www.crowdstrike.com/blog/enhance-cloud-security-with-easm/  

In this episode of Degree Free, get ready to be inspired by Matt Walters, a Technology Solutions Engineer who shares his “unconventional” path to success.  Join us as we go over his journey, starting from humble beginnings as a pool technician and HVAC technician, and ultimately becoming a 6-figure engineer.  Throughout our conversation, Matt shares invaluable insights into his career trajectory and the invaluable lessons he learned along the way. Key Discussion Points: - Breaking Through Boundaries: Matt Walters defied societal norms and traditional educational pathways to forge his unique career in technology solutions engineering, no degree needed. - The Evolution of a Career: Learn about the challenges and opportunities Matt encountered during his transition from working on trades, as a hands-on technician to a high-paying engineering role. - Learning and Unlearning: Discover the secrets behind Matt's success, and how he describes how being a good engineer means unlearning how you were taught to learn in school. - Career Growth Strategies: Matt provides valuable tips for anyone aspiring to advance their careers and break into the tech industry without a formal degree. - Overcoming Obstacles: Hear about the obstacles Matt faced and how he turned them into stepping stones towards achieving his professional goals. Listen to Matt's story, a testament to the power of determination and perseverance. Don't miss this engaging conversation with a remarkable individual who proves that anything is possible with the right mindset and the courage to forge your own path. Enjoy the episode! To keep up with everything Degree Free check out our website: degreefree.co Join the Degree Free Network and get the support you need to get hired, get that promotion, and achieve your career goals! You'll get access to our free resources such as the 5 Degree Free Pathways and 7 Day Get Hired Challenge Course: degreefree.co/network Learn job hunting skills and learn how to land your dream job in 7 days: https://degreefree.co/gethired/ Starting your degree free journey but don't know where to start? Check out our free ‘5 Degree Free Pathways' Course:  degreefree.co/pathways Thinking of changing your career path but don't know where to start? Check out our job change accelerator course: degreefree.co/jobchange

"Security is all about the protection of your data. While privacy is determining how your data is being used."On this episode of The Tea on Cybersecurity, join host Jara Rowe as she delves into the world of privacy and security certificates with expert guest @Marie Joseph, Senior Security Solutions Engineer at Trava.Protecting sensitive data has become more important than ever. But with the vast array of privacy and security certifications available, it can be challenging to know where to start.Marie helps us understand the different certifications and their importance. In this episode we discuss the most common privacy and security certifications, such as GDPR, CCPA, and SOC 2. We explore the benefits of obtaining these certifications, the challenges organizations may face during the process, and how to verify if a company has a privacy or security certificate. Discover the differences between various certifications and gain valuable insights on how to navigate the world of cybersecurity certificates. What you'll learn in this episode:Understand the main differences between privacy and security certifications, and the benefits they offerThe challenges that organizations face when implementing cybersecurity and privacy measures and the importance of patience in the process. The potential benefits of partnering with a cybersecurity expert.Things to listen for:[5:54] Various frameworks create cybersecurity best practice lists.[8:12] Focus on one, readiness, audit, and certificate renewal.[9:50] Understanding the costly process.[13:28] Be patient, take simple steps, and ensure feasibility.[16:37] Patience is key. Privacy and security certificates.Connect with the Guest:Marie Joseph's LinkedInConnect with the host:Jara Rowe's LinkedInConnect with Trava:Website www.travasecurity.com Blog www.travasecurity.com/blogLinkedIn @travasecurityYouTube @travasecurityGuest InformationName: Marie Joseph Title: Senior Security Solutions Engineer at TravaBio: Marie Joseph is an Indiana University alumna. While studying law and public policy, she studied abroad in the UK and learned from government agencies about US and National Security—sparking her interest in cybersecurity. Marie then headed back to IU for a master's degree in cybersecurity. Marie now helps Trava customers begin and/or mature their security and compliance programs as a Sr. Security Solutions Engineer.Social: https://www.linkedin.com/in/marie-joseph-a81394143/

Learn how Americaneagle.com transformed Wastebuilt's digital presence utilizing OroCommerce to create a more scalable, efficient, and advanced ecommerce experience for customers. Joining us on this episode is special guests Kevin Creese, Director of Ecommerce at Wastequip, and Derek Cwik, Solutions Engineer at Americaneagle.com. As a result of their new digital presence, Wastebuilt's new website sets a solid foundation for future growth and success while also delivering exceptional user experiences. Listen in to hear how they made it happen! This podcast is brought to you by Americaneagle.com Studios. Connect with: Modern Marketing Messages: Website // Twitter // Instagram // Facebook // YouTube Taylor Karg: LinkedIn Derek Cwik: LinkedIn Kevin Creese: LinkedIn Resources: Wastebuilt Website // OroCommerce Development Services

Throughout her career, Jamie Hansen would often find herself at a juncture where a leap was necessary. She first needed to navigate a start in the start-up world on the wrong coast and then got to the Bay Area just before the dotcom bust. She then needed to navigate her way from web development roles to solutions engineering to find more stability. But the stability afforded by a big company didn't fit with her personality and so she took another leap into food entrepreneurship.Along the way, where some people would see high risk, she just saw something to navigate through. Eventually, that outlook prepared her for what she'd face in her personal life, too.In this episode, find out how from Jamie how defining risk is all in the eye of the beholder…on today's Roads Taken, with me, Leslie Jennings Rowley. About This Episode's GuestJamie Hansenan experienced solutions leader currently working to help a startup in the procurement space, Zip, move to the next level. She has worked at companies companies large—including Salesforce—and small—including her own wholesale bakery business. She lives in the San Diego area with her twin girls, living it up by the water and basking in the sunshine. For another story about leaping across careers with baked goods and family in the middle, listen to our episode with Chesley Homan Flotten.Find more episodes at https://roadstakenshow.com Executive Producer/Host: Leslie Jennings RowleyMusic: Brian BurrowsEmail the show at RoadsTakenShow@gmail.com

“Compliance isn't something that happens overnight.”If the phrase ‘compliance frameworks' makes you want to run for the hills, hang in there – we've got you covered. In this conversation, Marie Joseph, Senior Security Solutions Engineer at Trava, unpacks the different compliance frameworks and explains which certifications you need to meet your business goals. While compliance frameworks aren't as scary as they may sound, they do take significant time and effort to put into practice. Marie shares what to expect as you start down this path and gives advice for prioritizing the frameworks that provide the most benefit to your organization. What you'll learn in this episode:Compliance frameworks are like grocery lists from regulatory agencies – you should follow a checklist and mark items off as you complete them.There are several categories of compliance frameworks, including government and privacy.You can lean on GRC tools for help as you implement compliance frameworks in your organization.Things to listen for:[02:00] What compliance frameworks are and why they're important[07:00] Common challenges companies face when implementing compliance frameworks[11:00] How to get started with compliance frameworks[12:00] Why compliance frameworks matter to your customersResources:Season 1 SOC 2 episode with Marie: Explain SOC2 to Me Like I'm a ChildSOC 2 Compliance ChecklistTrava Blog: What is the NIST Framework?Trava Blog: How to Ensure a Successful Start to Your Cybersecurity ProgramConnect with the Guest:Marie Joseph's LinkedInConnect with the host:Jara Rowe's LinkedInConnect with Trava:Website www.travasecurity.com Blog www.travasecurity.com/blogLinkedIn @travasecurityYouTube @travasecurity

InterWorks' Content Manager, Garrett Sauls, sits down with ThoughtSpot Solutions Engineer Hadley Vaca to chat about all things data, her time at InterWorks as an intern and her new role at ThoughtSpot.

This episode is sponsored by Brave. We're coming to you from the Brave Podcast Studio at Consensus 2023. Brave is the privacy browser used by almost 60 million people worldwide. It has everything you need to stay safe online. Check them out at brave.com.'Consensus Conversations' host Michele Musso talks with Kristen Potocki, Solutions Engineer at Arculus, and Cider Lyons, Director of Brand also at Arculus, to describe the growth of women in the industry and how they have been able to create security, convenience, and comfort at Arculus.Links: https://www.getarculus.com/ IntroductionArculus the hardware wallet that stores private keys.Arculus's current products. (4:01)Tap-to-authorize. (7:33)Looking for true partners. (9:51)Advice for women in the space.The History of ArculusGetting more women involved in the space. (17:07)The importance of women in business. (18:37)How to get people to use Arculus. (22:03)From our sponsor:Brave is the privacy browser used by almost 60 million people worldwide. The built-in Brave Wallet is your secure passport to Web3. It supports over 100 chains, fiat purchases, swaps, NFTs, and even connects with other wallets and DApps. All right in your browser. No risky extensions, no spoofing. Learn more at brave.com/wallet.This Episode of Consensus Conversations has been produced by senior producer Michele Musso, edited by Ryan Huntington and our executive producer is Jared Schwartz. Music is Get Down” by Elision and Image credit: Kevin Ross.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Elise Miller, Manager of Solutions Engineering at KaiNexus, has a chat with Mark Graban about why she joined the company in 2020, why the culture appeals to her, and how her role has evolved from Solutions Engineer to the Manager of that now-larger and growing team. Learn more about KaiNexus: http://kainexus.com/

Nicki Cole is a top-notch executive who has a reputation for solving the most taxing tech challenges, and she does it with an energy that makes innovation look easy. She is the Vice President of Technology at H&R Block and lynchpin of its most critical initiatives in recent history. As a professional solutions engineer, leading her team through complex situations is all in a day's work. But it's a role made easier when empowerment and attitude unite, maximizing gains for everyone. Extra innings with Nicki Cole: https://youtu.be/Z27FqXbsmU4Website: https://www.hrblock.com/

In this episode, Trevor Spires talks about what are the pros and cons of working in a larger, more traditional company vs. working in a startup.   https://wethesalesengineers.com/show257

In this podcast, I talk to Cody Hosterman, Technical Director for VMware & Cloud Solutions at Pure Storage, about his career path. In his current role, Cody's team focuses on the VMware ecosystem and cloud-based offering integration with the Pure Storage FlashArray and Cloud Block Store. He has a deep background in virtualization and storage technologies, including experience as a Solutions Engineer and Principal Virtualization Technologist. In his current position, he is responsible for VMware & Cloud integration strategy, best practices, and developing new integrations and documentation. Cody has spoken internationally on the topics of virtualization and storage at numerous conferences and events such as VMworld and various virtualization-related user groups and trade shows. He is the author of several technical whitepapers and guides related to virtualization, storage, and data center infrastructure. He is the co-author or contributor to multiple technical reference books and his frequently-updated personal blog contains his latest work and contributions. Prior to working for Pure, Cody worked at EMC and Penn State, where he graduated with a degree in Information Sciences and Technology. I have known Cody for a while now. He is the husband of the sister (Janice) of my daughter-in-law (Nicole). My son Anthony got to know Cody when he and Janice started dating him. Cody helped Anthony to find a job at Pure Storage. I got to know Cody through Anthony. Wow, that was hard to explain. Since getting to know Cody, we have spent a good amount of time together. We had Cody and Janice over to a VMware get-together during VMworld Barcelona - where he had a great time connecting with VMware folks that only knew Cody through his blog. We have gone snowshoeing. Attended Cody and Janice's wedding. And have attended numerous family gatherings. Cody has been an early listener of my podcasts. He gave me feedback and now that he has become a manager, is perfect to have on the show! I hope you enjoy!

In this podcast, I interview Cody Hosterman, Technical Director for VMware & Cloud Solutions at Pure Storage. In his current role, Cody's team focuses on the VMware ecosystem and cloud-based offering integration with the Pure Storage FlashArray and Cloud Block Store. He has a deep background in virtualization and storage technologies, including experience as a Solutions Engineer and Principal Virtualization Technologist. In his current position, he is responsible for VMware & Cloud integration strategy, best practices, and developing new integrations and documentation. Cody has spoken internationally on the topics of virtualization and storage at numerous conferences and events such as VMworld and various virtualization-related user groups and trade shows. He is the author of several technical whitepapers and guides related to virtualization, storage, and data center infrastructure. He is the co-author or contributor to multiple technical reference books and his frequently-updated personal blog contains his latest work and contributions. Prior to working for Pure, Cody worked at EMC and Penn State, where he graduated with a degree in Information Sciences and Technology. I have known Cody for a while now. He is the husband of the sister (Janice) of my daughter-in-law (Nicole). My son Anthony got to know Cody when he and Janice started dating him. Cody helped Anthony to find a job at Pure Storage. I got to know Cody through Anthony. Wow, that was hard to explain. Since getting to know Cody, we have spent a good amount of time together. We had Cody and Janice over to a VMware get-together during VMworld Barcelona - where he had a great time connecting with VMware folks that only knew Cody through his blog. We have gone snowshoeing. Attended Cody and Janice's wedding. And have attended numerous family gatherings. Cody has been an early listener of my podcasts. He gave me feedback and now that he has become a manager, is perfect to have on the show! I hope you enjoy!

About EmilyEmily Ruppe is a Solutions Engineer at Jeli.io whose greatest accomplishment was once being referred to as “the Bob Ross of incident reviews.” Previously Emily has written hundreds of status posts, incident timelines and analyses at SendGrid, and was a founding member of the Incident Command team at Twilio. She's written on human centered incident management and facilitating incident reviews. Emily believes the most important thing in both life and incidents is having enough snacks.Links Referenced: Jeli.io: https://jeli.io Twitter: https://twitter.com/themortalemily Howie Guide: https://www.jeli.io/howie/welcome TranscriptAnnouncer: Hello, and welcome to Screaming in the Cloud with your host, Chief Cloud Economist at The Duckbill Group, Corey Quinn. This weekly show features conversations with people doing interesting work in the world of cloud, thoughtful commentary on the state of the technical world, and ridiculous titles for which Corey refuses to apologize. This is Screaming in the Cloud.Corey: This episode is sponsored by our friends at Logicworks. Getting to the cloud is challenging enough for many places, especially maintaining security, resiliency, cost control, agility, etc, etc, etc. Things break, configurations drift, technology advances, and organizations, frankly, need to evolve. How can you get to the cloud faster and ensure you have the right team in place to maintain success over time? Day 2 matters. Work with a partner who gets it - Logicworks combines the cloud expertise and platform automation to customize solutions to meet your unique requirements. Get started by chatting with a cloud specialist today at snark.cloud/logicworks. That's snark.cloud/logicworksCorey: Cloud native just means you've got more components or microservices than anyone (even a mythical 10x engineer) can keep track of. With OpsLevel, you can build a catalog in minutes and forget needing that mythical 10x engineer. Now, you'll have a 10x service catalog to accompany your 10x service count. Visit OpsLevel.com to learn how easy it is to build and manage your service catalog. Connect to your git provider and you're off to the races with service import, repo ownership, tech docs, and more. Corey: Welcome to Screaming in the Cloud. I'm Corey Quinn. My guest today is Emily Ruppe, who's a solutions engineer over at Jeli.io, but her entire career has generally focused around incident management. So, I sort of view her as being my eternal nemesis, just because I like to cause problems by and large and then I make incidents for other people to wind up solving. Emily, thank you for joining me and agreeing to suffer my slings and arrows here.Emily: Yeah. Hey, I like causing problems too. I am a solutions engineer, but sometimes we like to call ourselves problems engineers. So.Corey: Yeah, I'm a problems architect is generally how I tend to view it. But doing the work, ah, one wonders. So, you are a Jeli, where as of this recording, you've been for a year now. And before that, you spent some time over at Twilio slash SendGrid—spoiler, it's kind of the same company, given the way acquisitions tend to work and all. And—Emily: Now, it is.Corey: Yeah. Oh, yeah. You were there during the acquisition.Emily: Mm-hm. Yes, they acquired me and that's why they bought SendGrid.Corey: Indeed. It's a good reason to acquire a company. That one person I want to bring in. Absolutely. So, you started with email and then effectively continued in that general direction, given the Twilio now has eaten that business whole. And that's where I started my career.The one thing I've learned about email systems is that they love to cause problems because it's either completely invisible and no one knows, or suddenly an email didn't go through and everyone's screaming at you. And there's no upside, only down. So, let me ask the obvious question I suspect I know the answer to here. What made you decide to get into incident management?Emily: [laugh]. Well, I joined SendGrid actually, I've, I love mess. I run towards problems. I'm someone who really enjoys that. My ADHD, I hyperfocus, incidents are like that perfect environment of just, like, all of the problems are laying themselves out right in front of you, the distraction is the focus. It's kind of a wonderful place where I really enjoy the flow of that.But I've started in customer support. I've been in technical support and customer—I used to work at the Apple Store, I worked at the Genius Bar for a long time, moved into technical support over the phone, and whenever things broke really bad, I really enjoyed that process and kind of getting involved in incidents. And I came, I was one of two weekend support people at SendGrid, came in during a time of change and growth. And everyone knows that growth, usually exponential growth, usually happens very smoothly and nothing breaks during that time. So… no, there was a lot of incidents.And because I was on the weekend, one of the only people on the weekend, I kind of had to very quickly find my way and learn when do I escalate this. How do I make the determination that this is something that is an incident? And you know, is this worth paging engineers that are on their weekend? And getting involved in incidents and being kind of a core communication between our customers and engineers.Corey: For those who might not have been involved in sufficiently scaled-out environments, that sounds counterintuitive, but one of the things that you learn—very often the hard way—has been that as you continue down the path of building a site out and scaling it, it stops being an issue relatively quickly of, “Is the site up or down?” And instead becomes a question of, “How up is it?” So, it's it doesn't sound obvious until you've lived it, but declaring what is an incident versus what isn't an incident is incredibly nuanced and it's not the sort of thing that lends itself to casual solutions. Because every time a customer gets an error, we should open an incident on that. Well, I've worked at companies that throw dozens of 500 errors every second at their scale. You will never hire enough people to solve that if you do an incident process on even 10% of them.Emily: Yeah. So, I mean, it actually became something that when you join Twilio, they have you create a project using Twilio's API to earn your track jacket, essentially. It's kind of like an onboarding thing. And as they absorbed SendGrid, we all did that onboarding process. And mine was a number for support people to text and it would ask them six questions and if they answered yes to more than two of them, it would text back, “Okay, maybe you should escalate this.”And the questions were pretty simple of, “Can emails be sent?” [laugh]. Can customers log into their website? Are you able to view this particular part of the website? Because it is—with email in particular, at SendGrid in particular—the bulk of it is the email API. So, like, the site being up or down was the easiest type of incident, the easiest thing to flex on because that's so much easier to see.Being able to determine, like, what percentage or what level, like, how many emails are not processing? Are they getting stuck or is this, like, the correct amount of things that should be bouncing because of IP reput—there's, like, a thousand different things. We had kind of this visualization of this mail pipeline that was just a mess of all of these different pipes kind of connected together. And mail could get stuck in a lot of different places, so it was a lot of spending time trying to find that and segwayed into project management. I was a QA for a little while doing QA work.Became a project manager and learned a lot about imposing process because you're supposed to and that sometimes imposing process on teams that are working well can actually destroy them [laugh]. So, I learned a lot of interesting things about process the hard way. And during all of that time that I was doing project management, I kind of accidentally started owning the incident response process because a lot of people left, I had been a part of the incident analysis group as well, and so I kind of became the sole owner of that. And when Twilio purchase SendGrid, I found out they were creating an incident commander team and I just reached out and said, “Here's all of SendGrids incident response stuff. We just created a new Slackbot, I just retrained the entire team on how to talk to each other and recognize when something might be an incident. Please don't rewrite all of this to be Twillio's response process.”And Terry, the person who was putting together that team said, “Excellent. You're going to be [laugh] welcome to Twilio Incident Command. This is your problem and it's a lot worse than you thought because here's all the rest of it.” So yeah, it was really interesting experience coming into technically the same company, but an entirely different company and finding out—like, really trying to learn and understand all of the differences, and you know, the different problems, the different organizational history, the, like, fascia that has been built up between some of these parts of the organization to understand why things are the way that they are within process. It's very interesting.And I kind of get to do it now as my job. I get to learn about the full organizational subtext of [laugh] all of these different companies to understand how incident response works, how incident analysis works, and maybe some of the whys. Like, what are the places where there was a very bad incident, so we put in very specific, very strange process pieces in order to navigate that, or teams that are difficult to work with, so we've built up interesting process around them. So yeah.Corey: It feels like that can almost become ossified if you're not careful because you wind up with a release process that's two thousand steps long, and each one of them is there to wind up avoiding a specific type of failure that had happened previously. And this gets into a world where, in so many cases, there needs to be a level of dynamism to how you wind up going about your work. It feels almost like companies have this idealized vision of the future where if they can distill every task that happens within the company down to a series of inputs and responses—scripts almost—you can either wind up replacing your staff with a bunch of folks who just work from a runbook and cost way less money or computers in the ultimate sense of things. But that's been teased for generations now and I have a very hard time seeing a path where you're ever going to be able to replace the contextually informed level of human judgment that, honestly, has fixed every incident I've ever seen.Emily: Yeah. The problem comes down to in my opinion, the fact that humans wrote this code, people with specific context and specific understanding of how the thing needs to work in a specific way and the shortcomings and limitations they have for the libraries they're using or the different things are trying to integrate in, a human being is who's writing the code. Code is not being written by computers, it's being written by people who have understanding and subtext. And so, when you have that code written and then maybe that person leaves or that person joins a different team and they focus and priorities on something else, there is still human subtests that exists within the services that have been written. We have it call in this specific way and timeout in this specific amount of time because when we were writing it, there was this ancient service that we had to integrate with.Like, there's always just these little pieces of we had to do things because we were people trying to make connections with lines of code. We're trying to connect a bunch of things to do some sort of task, and we have a human understanding of how to get from A to B, and probably if A computer wrote this code, it would work in an entirely different way, so in order to debug a problem, the humans usually need some sort of context, like, why did we do this the way that we did this? And I think it's a really interesting thing that we're finding that it is very hard to replace humans around computers, even though intellectually we think, like, this is all computers. But it's not. It's people convincing computers to do things that maybe they shouldn't necessarily be doing. Sometimes they're things that computers shouldn't be doing, maybe, but a lot of the times, it's kind of a miracle [laugh] that any of these things continue to work on it on a given basis. And I think that it's very interesting when we, I think, we think that we can take people out of it.Corey: The problem I keep running into though, the more I think about this and the more I see it out there is I don't think that it necessarily did incident management any favors when it was originally cast as the idea of blamelessness and blameless postmortems. Just because it seems an awful lot to me like the people who are the most advocate champions of approaching things from a blameless perspective and having a blameless culture are the people who would otherwise have been blamed themselves. So, it really kind of feels on some broader level, like, “Oh, was this entire movement really just about being self-serving so that people don't themselves get in trouble?” Because if you're not going to blame no one, you're going to blame me instead. I think that, on some level, set up a framing that was not usually helpful for folks with only a limited understanding of what the incident lifecycle looks like.Emily: Mmm. Yeah, I think we've evolved, right? I think, from the blameless, I think there was good intentions there, but I think that we actually missed the really big part of that boat that a lot of folks glossed over because then, as it is now, it's a little bit harder to sell. When we're talking about being blameless, we have to talk about circumventing blame in order to get people to talk candidly about their experiences. And really, it's less about blaming someone and what they've done because we as humans blame—there's a great Brené Brown talk that she gives, I think it's a TED talk about blame and how we as humans cannot physically avoid blaming, placing blame on things.It's about understanding where that's coming from, and working through it that is actually how we grow. And I think that we're starting to kind of shift into this more blame-aware culture. But I think the hard pill to swallow about blamelessness is that we actually need to talk about the way that this stuff makes us feel as people. Like feelings, like emotions [laugh]. Talk about emotions during a technical incident review is not really an easy thing to get some tech executives to swallow.Or even engineers. There's a lot of engineers who are just kind of like, “Why do you care about how I felt about this problem?” But in reality, you can't measure emotions as easily as you can measure Mean Time to Resolution. But Mean Time to Resolution is impacted really heavily by, like, were we freaking out? Did we feel like we had absolutely no idea what we were trying to solve, or did we understand this problem, and we were confident that we could solve it; we just couldn't find the specific place where this bug was happening. All of that is really interesting and important context about how we work together and how our processes work for us, but it's hard because we have to talk about our feelings.Corey: I think that you're onto something here because I look back at the key outages that really define my perspective on things over the course of my career, and most of the early ones were beset by a sense of panic of am I going to get fired for this? Because at the time, I was firmly convinced that well, root cause is me. I am the person that did the thing that blew up production. And while I am certainly not blameless in some of those things, I was never setting out with an intent to wind up tiering things down. So, it was not that I was a bad actor subverting internal controls because, in many companies, you don't need that level of rigor.This was a combination of factors that made it easy or possible to wind up tiering things down when I did not mean to. So, there were absolutely systemic issues there. But I still remember that rising tide of panic. Like, should I be focused on getting the site backup or updating my resume? Which of these is going to be the better longer-term outcome? And now that I've been in this industry long enough and I've seen enough of these, it's, you almost don't feel the blood pressure rise anymore when you wind up having something gets panicky. But it takes time and nuance to get there.Emily: Yeah. Well, and it's also, in order to best understand how you got in that situation, like, were you willing to tell people that you were absolutely panicked? Would you have felt comfortable, like, if someone was saying like, “Okay, so what happened? How did—walk me through what you were experiencing?” Would you have said like, “I was scared out of my goddamn mind?”Were you absolutely panicking or did you feel like you had some, like, grasping at some straws? Like, where were you? Because uncovering that for the person who is experiencing that in the issue, in the incident can help understand, what resources did they feel like they knew where to go to. Or where did they go to? Like, what resource did they decide in the middle of this panicked haze to grasp for? Is that something that we should start using as, “Hey, if it's your first time on call, this is a great thing to pull into,” because that's where instinctively you went?Like, there's so much that we can learn from the people who are experiencing [laugh] this massive amount of panic during the incident. But sometimes we will, if we're being quote-unquote, “Blameless,” gloss over your entire, like, your involvement in that entirely. Because we don't want to blame Corey for this thing happening. Instead, we'll say, “An engineer made a decision and that's fine. We'll move past that.” But there's so much wealth of information there.Corey: Well, I wound up in postmortems later when I ran teams, I said, “Okay, so an engineer made a mistake.” It's like, “Well, hang on. There's always more to it than that”—Emily: Uh-huh.Corey: —“Because we don't hire malicious people and the people we have are competent for their role.” So, that goes a bit beyond that. We will never get into a scenario people do not make mistakes in a variety of different ways. So, that's not a helpful framing, it's a question of what—if they made a mistake, sure, what was it that brought them to that place because that's where it gets really interesting. The problem is when you're trying to figure out in a business context why a customer is super upset—if they're a major partner, for example—and there's a sense of, “All right, we're looking for a sacrificial lamb or someone that we can blame for this because we tend to think in relatively straight lines.”And in those scenarios, often, a nuanced understanding of the systemic failure modes within your organization that might wind up being useful in the mid to long-term are not helpful for the crisis there. So, trying to stuff too much into a given incident response might be a symptom there. I'm thinking of one or two incidents in the course of my later career that really had that stink to them, for lack of a better term. What's your take on the idea?Emily: I've been in a lot of incidents where it's the desire to be able to point and say a person made this mistake is high, it's definitely something that the, “organization”—and I put the organization in quotes there—and say technical leadership, or maybe PR or the comms team said like, “We're going to say, like, a person made this mistake,” when in reality, I mean, nine times out of ten, calling it a mistake is hindsight, right? Usually people—sometimes we know that we make a mistake and it's the recovery from that, that is response. But a lot of times we are making an informed decision, you know? An engineer has the information that they have available to them at the time and they're making an informed decision, and oh, no [laugh], it does not go as we planned, things in the system that we didn't fully understand are coexisting, it's a perfect storm of these events in order to lead to impact to this important customer.For me, I've been customer-facing for a very long time and I feel like from my observation, customers tend to—like if you say, like, “This person did something wrong,” versus, “We learned more about how the system works together and we understand how these kind of different pieces and mechanisms within our system are not necessarily single points of failure, but points at which they interact that we didn't understand could cause impact before, and now we have a better understanding of how our system works and we're making some changes to some pieces,” I feel like personally, as someone who has had to say that kind of stuff to customers a thousand times, saying, “It was a person who did this thing,” it shows so much less understanding of the event and understanding of the system than actually talking through the different components and different kind of contributing factors that were wrong. So, I feel like there's a lot of growth that we as an industry can could go from blaming things on an intern to actually saying, “No, we invested time and understanding how a single person could perform these actions that would lead to this impact, and now we have a deeper understanding of our system,” is in my opinion, builds a little bit more confidence from the customer side.Corey: This episode is sponsored in part by Honeycomb. I'm not going to dance around the problem. Your. Engineers. Are. Burned. Out. They're tired from pagers waking them up at 2 am for something that could have waited until after their morning coffee. They're fed up with relying on two or three different “monitoring tools” that still require them to manually trudge through logs to decipher what might be wrong. Simply put, there's a better way. Observability tools like Honeycomb show you the patterns and outliers of how users experience your code in complex and unpredictable environments so you can spend less time firefighting and more time innovating. It's great for your business, great for your engineers, and, most importantly, great for your customers. Try FREE today at honeycomb.io/screaminginthecloud. That's honeycomb.io/screaminginthecloud.Corey: I think so much of this is—I mean, it gets back to your question to me that I sort of dodged was I willing to talk about how my emotional state in these moments? And yeah, I was visibly sweating and very nervous and I've always been relatively okay with calling out the fact that I'm not in a great place at the moment, and I'm panicking. And it wasn't helped in some cases by, in those early days, the CEO of the company standing over my shoulder, coming down from the upstairs building to know what was going on, and everything had broken. And in that case, I was only coming in to do mop-up I wasn't one of the factors contributing to this, at least not by a primary or secondary degree, and it still was incredibly stress-inducing. So, from that perspective, it feels odd.But you also talk about ‘we,' in the sense of as an industry, as a culture, and the rest. I'm going to push back on that a little bit because there are still companies today in the closing days of 2022 that are extraordinarily far behind where many of us are at the companies we work for. And they're still stuck in the relative Dark Ages technically, were, “Well, are VMs okay, or should we stay on bare metal?” Is still the era that they're in, let alone cloud, let alone containerization, let alone infrastructure as code, et cetera, et cetera. I'm unconvinced that they have meaningfully progressed on the interpersonal aspects of incident management when they've been effectively frozen in amber from a technical basis.Emily: Mmm, I don't think that's fair [laugh].Corey: No. Excellent. Let's talk about that.Emily: [laugh]. I think just because an organization is still, like, maybe in DCs and using hardware and maybe hasn't advanced so thoroughly within the technical aspect of things, that doesn't necessarily mean that they haven't adopted new—Corey: Ah, very fair. Let me add one point of clarification, then, on this because what I'm talking about here is the fact there are companies who are that far behind on a technical basis, they are not necessarily one and the same, too—Emily: Correct.Corey: Because you're using older technology, that means your processes are stuck in the past, too.Emily: Right.Corey: But rather, just as there are companies that are anxious on the technology basis, there are also companies who will be 20 years behind in learnings—Emily: Yes.Corey: —compared to how the more progressive folks have already internalized some of these things ages ago. Blamelessness is still in the future for them. They haven't gotten there yet.Emily: I mean, yeah, there's still places that are doing root cause analysis, that are doing the five whys. And I think that we're doing our best [laugh]. I mean, I think it really takes—that's a cultural change. A lot of the actual change in approach of incident analysis and incident response is a cultural change. And I can speak from firsthand experience that that's really hard to do, especially from the inside it's very hard to do.So luckily, with the role that I'm in now at Jeli.io, I get to kind of support those folks who are trying to champion a change like that internally. And right now, my perspective is just trying to generate as much material for those folks to send internally, to say like, “Hey, there's a better way. Hey, there's a different approach for this that can maybe get us around these things that are difficult.” I do think that there's this tendency—and I've used this analogy before—is for us to think that our junk drawers are better than somebody else's junk drawers.I see an organization as just a junk drawer, a drawer full of weird odds and ends and spilled glue and, like, a broken box of tacks. And when you pull out somebody else's junk drawer, you're like, “This is a mess. This is an absolute mess. How can anyone live like this?” But when you pull out your own junk drawer, like, I know there are 17 rubber bands in this drawer, somehow. I am going to just completely rifle through this drawer until I find those things that I know are in here.Just a difference of knowing where our mess is, knowing where the bodies are buried, or the skeletons are in each closet, whatever analogy works best. But I think that some organizations have this thought process that—by organizations, I mean, executive leadership organizations are not an entity with an opinion, they're made up of a bunch of individuals doing [laugh] the work that they need to do—but they think that their problems are harder or more unique than at other organizations. And so, it's a lot harder to kind of help them see that, yes, there is a very unique situation, the way that your people work together with their technology is unique to every single different organization, but it's not that those problems cannot be solved in new and different ways. Just because we've always done something in this way does not mean that is the way that is serving us the best in this moment. So, we can experiment and we can make some changes.Especially with process, especially with the human aspect of things of how we talk to each other during incidents and how we communicate externally during incidents. Those aren't hard-coded. We don't have to do a bunch of code reviews and make sure it's working with existing integrations to be able to make those changes. We can experiment with that kind of stuff and I really would like to try to encourage folks to do that even though it seems scary because incidents are… [unintelligible 00:24:33] people think they're scary. They're not. They're [unintelligible 00:24:35].Corey: They seem to be. For a lot of folks, they are. Let's not be too dismissive on that.Emily: But we were both talking about panic [laugh] and the panic that we have felt during incidents. And I don't want to dismiss that and say that it's not real. But I also think that we feel that way because we're worried about how we're going to be judged for our involvement in them. We're panicking because, “Oh no, we have contributed to this in some way, and the fact that I don't know what to do, or the fact that I did something is going to reflect poorly on me, or maybe I'm going to get fired.” And I think that the panic associated with incidents also very often has to do with the environment in which you are experiencing that incident and how that is going to be accepted and discussed. Are you going to be blamed regardless of how, quote-unquote, “Blameless,” your organization is?Corey: I wish there was a better awareness of a lot of these things, but I don't think that we are at a point yet where we're there.Emily: No.Corey: How does this map what you do, day-to-day over at Jeli.io?Emily: It is what I do every single day. So, I mean, I do a ton of different things. We're a very small startup, so I'm doing a lot, but the main thing that I'm doing is working with our customers to tackle these hurdles within each of their organizations. Our customers vary from very small organizations to very, very large organizations, and working with them to find how to make movement, how to sell this internally, sell this idea of let's talk about our incidents a little bit differently, let's maybe dial back some of the hard-coded automation that we're doing around response and change that to speaking to each other, as opposed to, we need 11 emails sent automatically upon the creation of an incident that will automatically map to these three PagerDuty schedules, and a lot more of it can be us working through the issue together and then talking about it afterwards, not just in reference to the root cause, but in how we interfaced: how did it go, how did response work, as well as how did we solve the problem of the technical problem that occurred?So, I kind of pinch myself. I feel very lucky that I get to work with a lot of different companies to understand these human aspects and the technical aspects of how to do these experiments and make some change within organizations to help make incidents easier. That's the whole feeling, right? We were talking about the panic. It doesn't need to be as hard as it feels, sometimes. And I think that it can be easier than we let ourselves think.Corey: That's a good way of framing it. It just feels on so many levels like this is one of the hardest areas to build a company in because you're not really talking about fixing technical, broken systems out there. You're talking about solving people problems. And I have some software that solves your people problems, I'm not sure if that's ever been true.Emily: Yeah, it's not the software that's going to solve the people problems. It's building the skills. A lot of what we do is we have software that helps you immensely in the analysis process and build out a story as opposed to just building out a timeline, trying to tell, kind of, the narrative of the incident because that's what works. Like anthropologically, we've been conveying information through folklore, through tales, telling tales of things that happened in order to help teach people lessons is kind of how we've—oral history has worked for [laugh] thousands of years. And we aren't better than that just because we have technology, so it's really about helping people uncover those things by using the technology we have: pulling in Slack transcripts, and PagerDuty alerts, and Zoom transcripts, and all of this different information that we have available to us, and help people tell that story and convey that story to the folks that were involved in it, as well as other peoples in your organization who might have similar things come up in the future.And that's how we learn. That's how we teach. But that's what we learn. I feel like there's a big difference—I'm understanding, there's a big difference between being taught something and learning something because you usually have to earn that knowledge when you learn it. You can be taught something a thousand times and then you've learned that once.And so, we're trying to use those moments that we actually learn it where we earn that hard-earned information through an incident and tell those stories and convey that, and our team—the solutions team—is in there, helping people build these skills, teaching people how to talk to each other [laugh] and really find out this information during incidents, not after them.Corey: I really want to thank you for being as generous with your time as you have been. And if people want to learn more, where's the best place to find you?Emily: Oh. I was going to say Twitter, but… [laugh].Corey: Yeah, that's a big open question these days, isn't it? Assuming it's still there by the time this episode airs, it might be a few days between now and then. Where should they find you on Twitter, with a big asterisk next to it?Emily: It's at @themortalemily. Which, I started this by saying I like mess and I'm someone who loves incidents, so I'll be on Twitter [laugh].Corey: We're there to watch it all burn.Emily: Oh, I feel terrible saying that. Actually, if any Twitter engineers are listening to this, someone is found that the TLS certificate is going to expire at the end of this year. Please check Twitter for where that TLS certificate lives so that you all can renew that. Also, Jeli.io, we have a blog that a lot of us write, our solutions team, we—and honestly a lot of us, we tend to hire folks who have a lot of experience in incident response and analysis.I've never been a solutions engineer before in my life, but I've done a lot of incident response. So, we put up a lot of stuff and our goal is to build resources that are available to folks who are trying to make these changes happen, who are in those organizations where they're still doing five whys, and RCAs, and are trying to convince people to experiment and change. We have our Howie Guide, which is available for free. It's ‘How We Got Here' which is, like, a full, free incident analysis guide and a lot of cool blogs and stuff there. So, if you can't find me on Twitter, we're writing… things… there [laugh].Corey: We will, of course, put links to all of that in the [show notes 00:30:46]. Thank you so much for your time today. It's appreciated.Emily: Thank you, Corey. This was great.Corey: Emily Ruppe, solutions engineer at Jeli.io. I'm Cloud Economist Corey Quinn, and this is Screaming in the Cloud. If you've enjoyed this podcast, please leave a five-star review on your podcast platform of choice, whereas if you've hated this episode, please leave a five-star review on your podcast platform of choice, along with an angry comment talking about how we've gotten it wrong and it is always someone's fault.Corey: If your AWS bill keeps rising and your blood pressure is doing the same, then you need The Duckbill Group. We help companies fix their AWS bill by making it smaller and less horrifying. The Duckbill Group works for you, not AWS. We tailor recommendations to your business and we get to the point. Visit duckbillgroup.com to get started.

Magdalen Vaughn joined KaiNexus in 2021 as a Solutions Engineer. In this episode, we talk about: Why she joined the company What she does as a Solutions Engineer Her passion for acting and theatre From her LinkedIn bio: "I am a professional problem solver and learner at a Continuous Improvement Software company based in beautiful Austin, Tx. I love my company because we help businesses amplify the voices of their front line workers, and to care about one another's quality of life much the same way we care about our coworkers. I am also a professional actor and dialect coach! I write creatively, teach when I can, direct and can be found auditioning for theatre, tv and film during much of my free time. I excel at reading people, thinking outside the box and communicating. I believe in the power of storytelling, representation, equal rights, integrity and systemic solutions."

On the PreSales Podcast, Mattie and Emmanuel Fadajutimi connect on "Lessons From My First Year in PreSales" Emmanuel, Solutions Engineer at Hubspot, talks about the realities of what's like to be an early-career SC, lessons he's learned over the past year, and what it means to have a learner mindset regardless of where you are in your career.

On the PreSales Podcast, Mattie Stremic connects with Allison Macalik and Gizelle Panton to discuss why “Mentorship Matters." Allison Macalik, Lead Solutions Engineer and Team Lead at Salesforce, and Gizelle Panton, Solutions Engineer at LinkedIn, share about their mentorship relationship, how to successfully mentor, and the importance of mentorship in career development. Gizelle and Allison were paired when Gizelle enrolled in the PreSales Foundations enablement course and have stayed connected ever since.  Learn more about how to approach mentorship and why it makes all the difference in your personal and professional growth.