Develomentor

Welcome to another episode of Develomentor. Today's guest is Tracy Lee.

Tracy Lee is the Co-Founder of This Dot Labs, a consultancy focused on helping companies with digital transformations. She is also a Google Developer Expert, RxJS Core Team member, a Women Techmakers Lead, and a frequent keynote speaker at conferences. 

She heads up Community Relations for Node.js at OpenJS Foundation, is the host of the Modern Web podcast, organizer of This.JavaScript, Contributor Days, Google Developer Group Silicon Valley and Triangle, and RxWorkshop. You can find her on Twitter @ladyleet or at http://thisdot.co/labs.

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Episode Summary

"Everybody on the team has kind of rallied around this idea that we're making money, we're helping companies. And we love helping companies. But even better than that, we can take that money and actually invest it back into the community."

—Tracy Lee

In this episode we’ll cover:

1. How Tracy started 3 companies while she was bored at her job
2. Why are there are so few women in tech?
3. How Tracy hires so many moms at ThisDotLabs and why moms have such a killer mindset.
4. Why it's so important to start blogging and producing content about your journey as soon as possible. 

You can find more resources and a full transcript in the show notes

To learn more about our podcast go to https://develomentor.com/

To listen to previous episodes go to https://develomentor.com/blog/

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Welcome to another episode of Develomentor. Today's guest is Daniel Tunkelang. 

Daniel Tunkelang is currently an independent consultant or, in his words, a 'high-class consultant' for technology companies. Previous to this, he was a data science and engineering executive who has built and led some of the strongest teams in the software industry.

Daniel studied computer science and math at MIT and has a PhD in computer science from CMU. He was a founding employee and chief scientist of Endeca, a search pioneer that Oracle acquired for $1.1B. He led a local search team at Google. Prior to this, he was a director of data science and engineering at LinkedIn, and he established their query understanding team.

Daniel is a widely recognized writer and speaker. He is frequently invited to speak at academic and industry conferences, particularly in the areas of information retrieval, web science, and data science. He has written the definitive textbook on faceted search (now a standard for ecommerce sites), established an annual symposium on human-computer interaction and information retrieval, and authored 24 US patents. His social media posts have attracted over a million page views.

Daniel also advises and consults for companies that can benefit strategically from his expertise. His clients range from early-stage startups to "unicorn" technology companies like Etsy and Flipkart. He helps companies make decisions around algorithms, technology, product strategy, hiring, and organizational structure.

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Episode Summary

"Well it started with pretty much the people that reached out to me were trying to persuade me to take full-time jobs and I'd say, Hey, I have a better deal for you. You could just have me one day a week"

—Daniel Tunkelang

In this episode we’ll cover:

1. How Endeca got started? Why did the founders reach out to Daniel?
2. The pros and cons of being an independent contractor versus a full-time employee 
3. What made Daniel interested in search?
4. Why Daniel became lost while working at Google

You can find more resources and a full transcript in the show notes

To learn more about our podcast go to https://develomentor.com/

To listen to previous episodes go to https://develomentor.com/blog/

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Twitter: @dtunkelang
LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/dtunkelang/

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Welcome to another episode of Develomentor. Today's guest is Alice Albrecht. 

Alice is currently an independent consultant. She is also building a brain-computer interface startup. 

Prior to this, she led the strategy and advising portions of Cloudera Fast Forward Labs, where she was also a research engineer.

Before joining Cloudera Fast Forward Labs, Alice worked in both finance and technology companies as a practicing data scientist, data science leader, and - most recently - a data product manager. In addition to teaching machines to do cool things, Alice is passionate about mentoring and helping others grow in their careers.  

Alice holds a PhD from Yale in cognitive neuroscience where she studied how humans summarize sensory information from the world around them and the neural substrates that underlie those summaries.

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Episode Summary

“We’ve had this huge surge in the use of deep learning and neural networks and all of these more complicated and very, very data-hungry techniques and organizations have seen a lot of benefit from those. But I think that in the next couple of years we’re going to see a plateau in the advancement there and we’re going to have to rethink the way that we’re developing these algorithms.”

—Alice Albrecht

In this episode we’ll cover:

1. How Alice started college when she was 15 and was on the fast track to becoming a professor
2. Why Alice left academia to work in the private sector and technology
3. How a neuroscience background gives Alice an advantage when working in data science
4. What Alice looks for when hiring data scientists
5. Why Alice believes deep learning will hit a plateau in the next couple of years

You can find more resources and a full transcript in the show notes

To learn more about our podcast go to https://develomentor.com/

To listen to previous episodes go to https://develomentor.com/blog/

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Welcome to another episode of Develomentor. Today's guest is Rikki Endsley.

Rikki Endsley is currently the Open Source Community Manager at Amazon Web Services (AWS). She was previously the editor of Red Hat Developer and a 2016 recipient of an O’Reilly Open Source Award. In the past, she worked as a community manager and editor for Opensource.com; a community evangelist on the Open Source and Standards team at Red Hat; freelance tech journalist; community manager for the USENIX Association; associate publisher of Linux Pro Magazine, ADMIN, and Ubuntu User; and as the managing editor of Sys Admin magazine and UnixReview.com.

Rikki has an English degree from the University of Texas (Austin) and a Master’s of Science degree in Journalism from the University of Kansas. For her thesis, she researched how to highlight women’s contributions to open source technologies.

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Episode Summary

"I like helping a publication or website or magazine become its own life form, you know, have its own voice and stand out"

—Rikki Endsley

In this episode we’ll cover:

1. Why Rikki took a pay cut to jump-start her career as a tech writer.
2. How technical do you have to be to be a tech writer?
3. When is the right time to jump out of your comfort zone and try something new?
4. Why it's a great idea to write a 'deep dive' article for a niche audience.

You can find more resources and a full transcript in the show notes

To learn more about our podcast go to https://develomentor.com/

To listen to previous episodes go to https://develomentor.com/blog/

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Twitter: @rikkiends
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Welcome to another episode of Develomentor. Today's guest is Caine Tighe.

Caine Tighe is the CTO and first employee of DuckDuckGo, the Internet privacy company that empowers you to seamlessly take control of your personal information online, without any tradeoffs. This private search engine is #4 in the U.S., Germany, Australia and dozens of other countries, answering over 9 billion queries in 2018.

Prior to DuckDuckGo, Caine founded and ran opensesame labs, a startup consultancy focusing on companies with great ideas struggling to execute them.

For other tech roles and descriptions click here.

Episode Summary

"We did 9 billion searches in 2018 with less than 70 people. We're at 40 million searches a day now"

—Caine Tighe

Caine Tighe is the CTO of the upstart web search company DuckDuckGo that is slowly and surely taking a bite out of Google through laser-sharp focus on their one big weakness: privacy.  

Along his journey in tech, he’s transformed from a computer programmer to CTO to a leading thinker on privacy, all while living outside of the usual tech hubs.

In this episode we’ll cover:

1. How Caine met his partner and co-founder of DuckDuckGo, Gabriel Weinberg
2. The culture at DuckDuckGo and the amount of effort Caine puts in to ensure his employees are happy
3. How DuckDuckGo is competing against Google
4. Why understanding how you spend your time is absolutely essential 

You can find more resources and a full transcript in the show notes

To learn more about our podcast go to https://develomentor.com/

To listen to previous episodes go to https://develomentor.com/blog/

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Twitter: @cainetighe
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Welcome to another episode of Develomentor. Today's guest is Beena Ammanath. 

Beena is a managing director with Deloitte Consulting LLP and is an award-winning senior executive with extensive global experience in artificial intelligence and digital transformation. Her knowledge spans across e-commerce, financial, marketing, telecom, retail, software products, services, and industrial domains with companies such as HPE, GE, Thomson Reuters, British Telecom, Bank of America, E*TRADE and a number of Silicon Valley startups. Beena is the founder and CEO of Humans For AI Inc. She has co-authored the book “AI Transforming Business.”

A well-recognized thought leader and keynote speaker in the industry, Beena also serves on the industrial advisory board at Cal Poly College of Engineering, and she has been a board member and advisor to several startups including Flerish, Predii, iguazio, CliniVantage, and ProjectileX.

For other tech roles and descriptions click here.

Episode Summary

“ My bet is that computer programming, the way we know it today is going to fundamentally change."

—Beena Ammanath

In this episode we’ll also cover:

1. Why statistics and Algebra are fundamental math classes for data scientists
2. How Beena got involved in managing people after starting on a very technical path. 
3. What made Beena start a technology nonprofit?

You can find more resources and a full transcript in the show notes

To learn more about our podcast go to https://develomentor.com/

To listen to previous episodes go to https://develomentor.com/blog/

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Welcome to another episode of Develomentor. Today's guest is Cliff Schmidt.

Cliff founded tech nonprofit Amplio (formerly named Literacy Bridge) in 2007 to address global poverty and disease by making practical agriculture and health knowledge accessible to those who need it most. He led the development of an audio-based mobile device called the “Talking Book” for people with minimal literacy skills living in rural areas without electricity or Internet access. Cliff received the Microsoft alumni Integral Fellow Award presented by Bill and Melinda Gates twice (in 2010 and 2014) and was selected as a member of the Clinton Global Initiative by President Bill Clinton. He received the top prize at the Tech Awards in 2012 and Computerworld Honors in 2013 and was featured by the PBS Newshour as one of five Agents for Social Change in 2013.

Prior to starting Amplio, Cliff was a software developer for Microsoft and a nuclear engineering officer for the U.S. Navy Submarine Force. Cliff holds a B.S. in cognitive science from MIT and an M.S. in computer science and engineering from the University of Washington. Cliff loves music and playing tenor saxophone.

For other tech roles and descriptions click here.

Episode Summary

"We're not huge in Seattle. We're only seven people, and in Ghana, we're about 15 or so. But we do reach nearly seven hundred thousand people with these talking books"

---Cliff Schmidt

Cliff Schmidt is a former submarine officer in the Navy with a background in cognitive science as well as computer science. He's now the CEO of the nonprofit, Amplio, focused on transforming lives through knowledge. If that isn't enough, he’s also been a long-time contributor to open source. Cliff has won numerous awards, including two from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation as well as one from the Clinton Global Initiative. 

Cliff started his career as a developer at Microsoft. As much as he loved coding, Cliff started getting pulled into more product and project management roles. Looking back at it, Cliff reflects he got "pulled towards the bigger picture ideas but it doesn't mean it's any less fun to write code."

While traveling, Cliff decided to be a tourist in Atlanta for a day when he came across a statue of Gandhi and the grave of Martin Luther King Jr. Suddenly it became clear to him that he wasn't making the impact he was capable of making. Right there and then, Cliff decided he was going to dedicate his life to "service humanity in some form." This was the beginning of Amplio. 

You can find more resources and a full transcript in the show notes

To learn more about our podcast go to https://develomentor.com/

To listen to previous episodes go to https://develomentor.com/blog/

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Welcome to another episode of Develomentor. Today's guest is Derek Butts.

Derek Butts is currently VP of corporate development at Workday. Prior to this, he was VP of product management and strategy responsible for planning and analytics, also at Workday.

Since joining Workday in 2008, Derek has served in various leadership roles focused on product, strategy, and business development including five years at Intuit.

Derek holds a Master of Business Administration degree from Stanford University and a bachelor’s degree in computer science and psychology from Amherst College.

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Episode Summary

"Even when I took detours into industries that I wasn't necessarily going to be in long-term, they were still the highest integrity people who are awesome. In fact, I still have relationships with people across all of the companies that I've ever worked"

—Derek Butts

In this episode we’ll also cover:

1. Important lessons Derek learned while buying auto mechanic shops
2. What skills are necessary to be a successful product manager 
3. How is product management evolving?
4. What Derek looks for people when hiring and building teams

You can find more resources and a full transcript in the show notes

To learn more about our podcast go to https://develomentor.com/

To listen to previous episodes go to https://develomentor.com/blog/

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Welcome to another episode of Develomentor. Today's guest is Dr. Chris Bouton. Dr Bouton is the CEO of Vyasa Analytics, applying novel deep learning (ie A.I.) approaches for life sciences and healthcare clients.

"Deep learning algorithms are basically the reason that everyone is talking about AI right now."

--Dr. Bouton

As a kid, Chris Bouton loved sharks. Sharks turned into biology and biology turned into molecular biology, which evolved into computational biology. Chris followed his curiosity and received his Ph.D. in Neuroscience from Johns Hopkins University. 

In this episode we’ll also cover:

1. Why did Chris bootstrap instead of raising money when starting Entagen
2. Why AI is just a fancy word for deep learning
3. Important personality traits for any entrepreneur
4. How Chris's Ph.D. in molecular neurobiology makes it extra satisfying to build AI algorithms

You can find more resources and a full transcript in the show notes

To learn more about our podcast go to https://develomentor.com/

To listen to previous episodes go to https://develomentor.com/blog/

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Twitter: @chrisbouton
LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/cbouton/

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Welcome to another episode of Develomentor. Today's episode is unique in that we don't have a guest. Instead, Develomentor founder Grant Ingersoll reflects on our first year of going live. Thanks to all our guests, listeners, and fans!

You can find more resources and a full transcript of this episode in the show notes

To learn more about our podcast go to https://develomentor.com/

To listen to previous episodes go to https://develomentor.com/blog/

Follow Develomentor:
Twitter: @develomentor

Follow Grant Ingersoll
Twitter: @gsingers
LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/grantingersoll

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