This episode is extra special, featuring Jessie D’Amato Ford, Topcoder’s own Senior Director of Community. Jessie leads the global community team and manages the annual Topcoder Open design and programming tournament. Jessie shares why she’s so passionate about the future of work, and how on-demand talent is shifting how managers and team leaders handle projects. She also discusses what makes Topcoder different, and how she uses on-demand talent in her own day-to-day work.

We talk about the passion economy as those who self-select into freelance work, and this episode is a special keynote presentation by Topcoder CTO Dave Messenger, recorded in November, 2019 at the Topcoder Open 2019, in Houston, Texas. Dave highlights how the modern SDLC has evolved, and why it is so smart to lace on-demand talent into the SDLC.

Renaissance man Jonathan Lipps joins Uprisor to discuss his predictions for the future of open-source technology, and why he’s made it his personal mission to educate developer communities on best practices that are centered on testing automation and artificial intelligence. Jonathan is the architect and project lead for Appium, a cross-platform language-agnostic mobile app testing framework.

Hugo Finkelstein is the Co-founder and CEO of Rise, a digital freelance marketplace focused on design and content writing, with over 1,000 professionals in their talent network. On this episode, Hugo describes how he’s applied his background in blockchain to his work at Rise, and why cryptocurrencies can be a powerful tool that opens up opportunities for freelancers.

Originally trained as a scientist, Jarah Meador now serves as the Director of Open Innovation Programs for the U.S. General Services Administration (GSA), overseeing Challenge.gov. Jarah and her team use prize competitions and challenges to engage the general public into solving the government’s most pressing problems. In this episode, Jarah shares why the U.S. government is turning to its citizens for cutting edge ideas, and why leaders need to invest in innovation culture within their own organization before seeking solutions from the outside.

Former partner and head of Northern Europe at ISG, Barry Matthews joins Uprisor to share what he’s learned over 20 years of experience in IT consulting. Barry is an expert in change spotting, focusing his energies on future workforce strategies and teaching enterprises how to plan and thrive in this new world.

Mark Searle is a lecturer and industry fellow at UC Berkeley College of Engineering’s Sutardja Center for Entrepreneurship and the managing director of the Innovation Acceleration Group. Clinton and Mark explore Mark’s concept of “intentional serendipity”, the importance of business model innovation, and what a future of flexible work looks like.

Marni Baker Stein is Provost and Chief Academic Officer for Western Governor’s University. She has spent more than 20 years developing, implementing, and evaluating innovation for higher education programs and curricula with a focus on promoting skills-based education and talent acquisition. She joins Uprisor to discuss how a shift to skills-based assessments and hiring can positively impact the talent marketplace.

You know about the war for top tech talent—maybe you feel it at your organization—but what if you didn’t have to? Neutrinos are subatomic particles that essentially ignore other forces that dictate so much of our observable universe, and you can be like one.

Topcoder CTO Dave Messinger joins Uprisor to talk through the recent acquisition of Slack by Salesforce and what it means for the future of work and remote workforce collaboration.