Distributed systems can be pretty hard things to understand, so I'm always on the lookout for someone who manages to explain these things well. Neha Narula is one such person, and I was lucky enough to see one of her sessions at Øredev late last year.

After spending several years researching distributed systems at Google, Neha is now working at the MIT Media Lab looking into uses of the blockchain. During our interview, we talk about distributed databases, why distributed transactions can be a pretty good solution sometimes, and how much Postgres rocks!

You can follow Neha on Twitter @neha, and find her blog at http://transientneha.blogspot.com/.

Neha Narula Episode 16 (Proof Of Work Edition)

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So, after far too long a hiatus, we’re back on the Magpie Talkshow for a one-off episode where I interview Kafka creator and Confluent CEO Jay Kreps. 

I’ve been doing a small amount of work with Confluent recently, and through this I got the chance to meet Jay, and I thought he’d make a great guest for the show. So in this episode we’re going to learn about Jay’s own journey in the tech industry, as well as diving into the mindset behind Kafka and where you might want to use it.

There are a couple of firsts in this episode. Firstly, it was recorded remotely via video conferencing - I think the audio quality is pretty good, largely thanks to the use of zencaster. I did however have to do more editing than usual but I’m pretty happy with how it turned out. Secondly We’re also going to be sharing a video of our chat over on confluent's website, and I’ll update this post with a link once it’s available.

I do have to apologise for the sporadic nature of the episodes I’m putting out but as is often the case, life get’s in the way. In between our last episode and this one I setup my own company, and left australia for London, where I am currently based. I still plan to publish the occasional episode from time to time, so please do stay subscribed to the feed. Hopefully if things settle down a bit I may get back to a more regular posting schedule!

Jay and I talked about a number of things on the podcast, but the main one I wanted to highlight is previous guest Ben Stopford’s really interesting posts on using Kafka for sharing data between microservices. There are some fascinating ideas there which I think can solve problems many of us face when creating finer-grained distributed systems. You can find Ben's posts here: https://www.confluent.io/blog/author/ben/.

Anyway, I hope you enjoy the show!

Magpie Talkshow Episode 23 - Jay Kreps

Adrian Cockcroft has been a great supporter of my work around microservices, and I was really grateful he was able to find the time to catch up with me at Yow 2015 late last year.

Few people have done as much to help share the power of the cloud in recent years as Adrian, but he certainly has a career that predates the explosion of Amazon Web Services. In episode 22 of the Magpie Talkshow, he shares is journey so far in the IT industry, from physics to venture capital firm Battery Ventures, with stops at Sun, EBay and Netflix in-between.

We also find time to talk about the future of memory, security & compliance, bad puns and flying spaghetti monster simulators.

As always you can find more information about the episode over at the blog: http://samnewman.io/blog/2016/10/08/magpie-talkshow-episode-22-adrian-cockcroft/

Magpie Talkshow Episode 22 - Adrian Cockcroft (Spaghetti Monster Simulation Edition)

In episode 21 of the Magpie Talkshow, I interview NASA Scientist Dr Kamal Oudrhiri, who led the radio sciences team for the recent Mars Curiosity Lander.

For more information on this episode, along with, links and videos, please check out my blog: http://samnewman.io/blog/2016/09/19/magpie-talkshow-episode-21-kamal-oudrhiri-nasa-special-part-2/

As always, please do subscribe, leave a comment or a review!

Magpie Talkshow Episode 21 - Kamal Oudrhiri (NASA Inspiration Edition)

In episode 20 of the Magpie Talkshow, I interview NASA Scientist Dr Anita Sengupta, who was the Lead Systems Engineer on the parachute system for the recent Mars Curiosity Lander.

For more information, links and videos, please check out my blog: http://samnewman.io/blog/2016/09/08/magpie-talkshow-episode-20-anita-sengputa-nasa-special/

Magpie Talkshow Episode 20 - Anita Sengupta (Martian Parachute Edition)

Welcome back to the Magpie Talkshow Podcast! It's been too long (almost exactly 3 months) since I got the last episode out, and despite having a healthy backlog of interviews recorded I've been unable to find the time to get them out. Since then, a number of things have happened including me moving on from ThoughtWorks, where I have worked for over 12 years. I’ll be sharing more about why I made that decision and what comes next over on my blog at some point soon.

In this, the 19th episode of the podcast, I chat to Aino Corry. Aino, believe it or not, develops developers! We caught up at the Yow conference late last year, just one of a number of conferences in which she plays a key part. We chatted about a number of things including what being a meta-developer means, how to run conferences, diversity in IT, and the importance of retrospectives.

You can follow Aino on twitter @apaipi, and find more details about her work over on Meta Developer at http://metadeveloper.com or via Linked In at https://www.linkedin.com/in/aino-vonge-corry-9a23801.

Neha Narula Episode 16 (Proof Of Work Edition)

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