Underserved

This week's guest Doug Poirier started out programming on a VIC 20 but found during his career that he liked putting tools in users' hands and driving adoption better than slinging code. What good is technology anyway if you can't get people to embrace it? We talk about the ILOVEYOU virus's siren song, the virtualization of databases, and the hidden value of SharePoint in Office 365.

• ILOVEYOU virus: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ILOVEYOU
• Conventional wisdom and database virtualization: https://searchservervirtualization.techtarget.com/feature/Running-databases-on-VMs-The-time-is-now
• Benefits of Office 365: https://www.core.co.uk/blog/blog/the-7-undeniable-benefits-of-using-office-365-for-business
• Single System of Record – SharePoint for records management: https://www.jackfrostdesign.com/blog/2018/8/2/sharepoint-records-management-system
• Term Store – SharePoint Managed Metadata: https://blog.mydock365.com/a-basic-guide-to-term-store-management-in-sharepoint-online

This week's guest Nausheen Moulana grew up fascinated by the potential of the humble electron. Her parents were wary to send her to the US after hearing some scary stories, but Nausheen made it here in time for grad school. As a MATLAB power-user, Nausheen was thrilled to work at The Mathworks for decades. We talk about when it's time to move on, the importance of financial literacy for software professionals, and the delicate balance of "finding your voice" as a female in engineering.

• How I got started in Tech
• • Stealth technology
  • https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radar_cross-section#Reduction
  • B-2 Stealth bomber
• About Hyderabad
• • Biryani + Charminar + Hyderabadi Pearls
• Experience coming to the US
• • https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dotbusters
• Career in High tech
• • CASE
• Career Advice
• • First Break All The Rules
  • StrengthsFinder

Our guest Lisa Maxwell was encouraged to "go into computers" but initially resisted this advice. She enjoyed playing music so much she ended up with a degree in it, but found that it's hard to make a living that way. Lisa's aptitude for math led her to program for a living, as well as qualifying for MENSA. We talk about instrument petting zoos, the tryout similarities between orchestras and sports teams, and what goes on at those MENSA meetings.

• Agile Manifesto: https://agilemanifesto.org/
• Agile Alliance: https://www.agilealliance.org/
• American Mensa: https://www.us.mensa.org/
• BSO Volunteers (BSAV): https://www.bso.org/brands/bso/contribute/volunteer-opportunities.aspx
• Concord Community Music School: https://www.ccmusicschool.org/

JP Beaudry grew up in rural Quebec hacking together cars and studying engineering. After an eye-opening internship in Japan, he came to the US as the DotCom bubble was booming, discovering in the process that timing is everything in careers. We discuss his love/hate relationship with automobiles, changing development velocity, and his experience bringing online learning to the masses at edX.

• https://open.edx.org/
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyundai_Pony#Canadian-spec_(Non-ECC_LHD)
• Sherbrooke Universite
• Eicon
• edX's list of currently available programs and classes

This week's guest Vesa Tormanen grew up in Finland, first amazed by the computers running at the government pension fund where his parents worked. He hit university at the perfect time, as fellow Finn Linus Torvalds was creating Linux, a classmate was inventing ssh, and the web browser came of age. We talk about Nokia's history and Apple's future, as well as how his current company Neurala is using AI to accelerate and improve product and materials inspection.

• Twitter: @vesatormanen
• Neurala https://www.neurala.com/
• Sinclair Spectrum: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ZX_Spectrum
• Rare Games on ZX Spectrum: https://www.denofgeek.com/games/the-15-greatest-zx-spectrum-games-ever-made/
• SSH (Secure Shell): https://www.ssh.com/academy/ssh
• Nokia: https://www.nokia.com/

Matt Phair did not expect to be a data scientist when he was a butcher in his younger days. But after some school and getting some experience he found technology to be a great vehicle for social mobility. Matt talks to us about Peapod Digital Labs using data science to make the shopping experience better. He also shares some suggestions for folks who aspire to become great data scientists or developers. Matt's show notes:

• LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/matt-phair
• Peapod Digital Labs: https://www.peapoddigitallabs.com
• Heroku: https://www.heroku.com/I'm a huge fan of Heroku! It's really fast and easy to host a small web app and database for free but it's also scales really well! I've used this for my own personal projects as well as for production apps. In my opinion it's much easier than AWS or Azure.
• Coursera: https://www.coursera.org
• The best education program I've done was a data science certificate program through John's Hopkins. It took about 11 months to complete cost roughly $1,200. This program contributed more to my career than everything I studied at university. This was 8 years ago. The program appears to have been revamped and broken into multiple sub-specializations on Coursera. Here are the three related specializations:
  • https://www.coursera.org/specializations/data-science-statistics-machine-learning
  • https://www.coursera.org/specializations/data-science-foundations-r
  • https://www.coursera.org/specializations/jhu-data-science
• Recently I completed a few courses in Coursera's "Mathematics for Machine Learning" specialization. These courses connect the dots between math and ML/DL. I really liked them and would also highly recommend: https://www.coursera.org/specializations/mathematics-machine-learning

This week's guest Brian Haugli is a "recovering CISO" - a veteran manager of big-company Information Security who is re-packaging that skillset for the SMB market. Brian is also the host of CISOlife, a YouTube channel about struggles, tools, and solutions for CISOs. We talk about Brian's early days as a physical security tester, realistic vendor assessment, and the origin of his company SideChannel.

• RealCISO.io - https://www.realciso.io).
• SideChannel - https://www.sidechannel.com
• YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/c/sidechannel
• Twitter - @sidechannelsec or @brianhaugli

Season Four kicks off with our guest Jeff Krampf. Jeff started on an Apple II back in the day and worked on CU-SeeMe, the Internet's first video conference software - the great grandfather of Zoom. We talk about commercializing open-source, overcoming acquisition indigestion, and how Bose is adding real-time services to their famous speakers.

• CU-SeeMe: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CU-SeeMe
• IntelliVid: https://www.securitymagazine.com/blogs/14-security-blog/post/79355-tyco-acquisition-of-intellivid-1
• Credorax: https://www.credorax.com/
• Vaultive: https://www.cyberark.com/press/cyberark-acquires-vaultive-advance-privileged-account-security-cloud/
• Bose: https://www.bose.com/en_us/index.html

In our second Bonus Episode of Season 3, we cover toy collecting with Mason Fitch. Mason's collection features over 450 toys, mostly rare die-cast Shogun warriors, and other Japanese classics. We talk about how a single action figure purchase led to trips to both the West Coast and Japan in pursuit of these childhood mementoes. We also talk about how to truly appreciate the Citizen Kane of anime, Akira.

• toyboxdx.com http://toyboxdx.com/datafiles/
• ToyboxDX FB group https://www.facebook.com/groups/toyboxdx
• The Maine Toy Museum https://maineantiquetoymuseum.com/

I was among many folks in Massachusetts who grew up watching Force 5, Star Blazers, and other animated shows from Japan (aka anime). In this bonus episode of Underserved, I talk with Art Sousa, a lifelong friend with a shared nostalgia for these giant fighting robot serials. I then speak with Robert "Swifty" Swift aka Nixon, who takes us much further down the anime rabbit hole to show us how the genre is "as big as all outdoors" and is rapidly going mainstream on Netflix and Hulu.

• Why is Anime like that? (BIG EYES, WEIRD HAIR, NOSE BLEEDS, etc) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eYWM1CmbAd0&list=PLnQjuGx1VLWhl7972EtFTL5uY8scmOoqt
• List of Anime (sub)Genre's - https://reelrundown.com/animation/Anime-Genre-List
• MIT Anime Club https://anime.mit.edu/ and Crunchyroll https://www.crunchyroll.com/
• "Yes, and..." can be the key to improv as well as improved business https://medium.com/improv4/saying-yes-and-a-principle-for-improv-business-life-fd050bccf7e3
• The best pizza IMNSHO: https://zmenu.com/family-pizza-and-grinder-westfield-online-menu/