Vancouver Tech Podcast

CEO & Founder at Porter (www.summonporter.ca) Jonathan Natavio, joins host Drew Ogryzek and shares his startup story from student to intern to founding a company.

Porter is a tech enabled consierge platform helping companies and working professionals take care of their day to day tasks. Handling chores such as dog walking, grocery shopping, alcohol delivery, Ikea purchase and assembly, and several others you might expect.

While the ease of use makes Porter a no brainer for the consumer, vendor partners find value in having more volume driven to their businesses, for free* (provided these vendor partners maintain excellent service records with Porter's customers and with their own).

Natavio started out with an idea in 2015, and launched in 2016. Starting with an idea he felt could really dominate the market, Natavio incorporated in February 2016. He admits it took him about three months to hand-craft an MVP (minimum viable product). With a background in digital marketing, Natavio reached for Wordpress, his tool of choice for the task of validating the market.

Check out Porter on Angel.co.

Theme music by A Shell In The Pit from the game Parkitect

The Vancouver Tech Podcast is a weekly show focusing on the growing tech industry in the city of Vancouver. Get caught up on the events and meetups around town, startups, new businesses, developers, designers, community programs, and news. Each episode includes an interview with an outstanding member of our community.

Listen to the show here, email us, or subscribe to the podcast on iTunes.

Host Drew Ogryzek and special guests Scott Bellware and Nathan Ladd of eventide-project.org discuss their backgrounds in computing, differences in the rapid iteration environment of a web startup using an MVC framework like Ruby on Rails, and the term "engineering" with regards to web-development versus embedded software and systems engineering or bridge building, time to feedback, and dive into eventsourcing.

The past decade of web development has, for a large part been dominated by the MVC (model-view-controller) architectural pattern. Bellware and Ladd believe that event-sourced systems architecture is a general architectural design that is applicable for most systems, not only special purpose only for fin-tech, for example. The next decade of software development may see a lot more event-sourcing, as SOA (Service-oriented architecture) becomes more mainstream with current trends towards microservices.

Bellware mentions that a major difference between traditional SOA and microservices is smart pipes, dumb services (SOA) versus dumb pipes, smart services. Eventide-project.org is a microservices stack for Ruby, developed by Bellware and Ladd, who were in Vancouver the last week of April 2017, from Austin, Texas, delivering a well-received workshop covering getting started with the project.

Follow Scott Bellware on Twitter at @sbellware

Theme music by A Shell In The Pit from the game Parkitect

The Vancouver Tech Podcast is a weekly show focusing on the growing tech industry in the city of Vancouver. Get caught up on the events and meetups around town, startups, new businesses, developers, designers, community programs, and news. Each episode includes an interview with an outstanding member of our community.

Listen to the show here, email us, or subscribe to the podcast on iTunes.

Special guests Nikolay Malyarov, COO of PressReader and David Uberti, staff writer for the Columbia Journalism Review join host Drew Ogryzek.

Malyarov, Uberti, and Ogryzek reflect on topics from biases in journalism, the notion of objectivity, the effects of socioeconomic change on journalism media consumption, and more.

In journalism, understanding that we have our biases when we're reporting, then potentially overcompensating by pointing out the other sides that could be there, may create a bias in another direction or a two-sided argument.

Public trust in media is at an all time low, but trust in particular media institutions remains high. While people in the United States distrust "the media," there is an identification with certain outlets.

Newspapers or news programs from 50 years ago had a much more standard who, what, when, where, why approach to news. Now, just given the fact that we can get so much information about breaking news events instantaneously online, journalists have to add value through their analysis. So now if you look at a newspaper, it's not who, what, when, where, why, it's so what? Why should we be caring about this?

For PressReader it's the content that drives the consumption based on the interest of its readers. There is a deliberate and conscious effort to ensure that if there are topics I'm interested in, my feed isn't just full of the particular bias I subscribe to, but the feed will show both sides. It's then up to me, as the reader, to choose what to read.

The revolution we have gone through in the past two decades have allowed us as individuals an unprecedented access to information. Something that we couldn't have fathomed how much of that information exists before, and that's really what's fueling the progress for us as a society. So, there's never going to be enough.

How do you engage with your readers beyond simply providing them an ability to comment; how do you go beyond that? There's some really clever ideas that will be featured on the next issue of The Insider on PressReader.

Follow David Uberti on Twitter at @DavidUberti and on his podcast The Kicker

Special guest Keith Ippel, Co-founder and CEO of Spring Activator speaks with host Drew Ogryzek about the interdisciplinary, inter-school hackathon Startup Hacks; a non-coding hackathon competition where business and tech oriented attendees team up and collaborate together on a mobile app idea that makes a social impact. Then jump into some discussions around Spring Activator.

Spring is a startup school for entrepreneurs who want to change the world, helping people go from an idea on a napkin to about a million dollars a year in revenue. The reason they call themselves a startup school is because they have recognized that the startup world has been attracting people from the mainstream It's no longer about people with just tech backgrounds, but people with diverse range of backgrounds with some amazing ideas and they're trying to catalyze them. Incubation and acceleration is at the code of what Spring does. Headquartered in Vancouver, with city partners in over 30 cities around the world including places like Belgrade, Tokyo, Manilla, Seattle, San Francisco and others.

A large motivation for Ippel, after spending about 10 years in the tech industry was realizing that tech entrepreneurs didn't have a voice nor an impact. He also recognized that people need the tools and training and network on not only startup, but pre-launch, at-launch, post-launch, in the middle of funding, when you're doing a pivot. Creating an environment where people could get that help at any point in time at that early stage of the entrepreneurial journey.

Ippel says some of Vancouver's core characteristics are a rich post-secondary education environment, a strong focus in places like health care, fin-tech, ecommerce and marketplace, and impact business. As well as a pretty rich heritage in hardware, noting companies such as Recon Instruments and D-Wave.

Theme music by A Shell In The Pit from the game Parkitect

The Vancouver Tech Podcast is a weekly show focusing on the growing tech industry in the city of Vancouver. Get caught up on the events and meetups around town, startups, new businesses, developers, designers, community programs, and news. Each episode includes an interview with an outstanding member of our community.

Listen to the show here, email us, or subscribe to the podcast on iTunes.

Scott Bellware presents a Ruby Microservices workshop in Vancouver, April 29th and 30th: Retweet https://goo.gl/dTue29 with @vantechpodcast to be entered into a draw for a free ticket! (Drawing and winner announcement on April 22nd, 2017)

Host Drew Ogryzek and special guest Dorfam Mirgharavi, business development at Aequilibrium.ca discuss Mirgharavi's experience in technology ranging from Future Shop to Tesla to Aequilibrium.

Aequilibrium is a holistic design and development studio focused one web and mobile app development. They like to focus on the financial tech sector, working a lot with retail and payments. They tackle problems such as how to create frictionless consumer experiences when people walk into a retail store or bank.

The team at Aequilibrium is very creative and active in Vancouver's local tech-community and yes they are hiring! Check out available opportunities on their careers page.

Theme music by A Shell In The Pit from the game Parkitect

The Vancouver Tech Podcast is a weekly show focusing on the growing tech industry in the city of Vancouver. Get caught up on the events and meetups around town, startups, new businesses, developers, designers, community programs, and news. Each episode includes an interview with an outstanding member of our community.

Listen to the show here, email us, or subscribe to the podcast on iTunes.

Scott Bellware presents a Ruby Microservices workshop in Vancouver, April 29th and 30th: Retweet https://goo.gl/dTue29 with @vantechpodcast to be entered into a draw for a free ticket! (Drawing and winner announcement on April 22nd, 2017)

Our special guest this week, Mark Mandel tells us about Google Cloud Platform, some ridiculous(ly great) things you can do with cloud computing, such as create a take on rock-paper-scissors, called happy-angry-surprised, using Firebase and Cloud Vision API, where making funny faces into a webcam replaces making shapes with your hands.

Ogryzek and Mandel discuss cross-cloud failovers, and the ability to run sets of containers across clusters of machines at scale with the Kubernetes container orchestration system. And being able to orchestrate using Federation across multiple data centers, regions or even clouds for hybrid-cloud solutions.

Mandel visited Vancouver from San Fransisco and gave a presentation through the Polyglot Vancouver Meetup called Scalable Realtime Microservices with Kubernetes and gRPC. Check out the Polyglot YouTube channel for a video recording of the evening.

If you're interested in building out a cloud-based Simon game using Kubernetes, gRPC, and the Google Cloud Platform, you're in luck; the next scheduled Vancouver Tech meetup will be doing exactly that!

Resources for Google Cloud Platform

Download Episode 70

Drew's Meetup Picks of the Week

Host Drew Ogryzek and special guest Adam Dymitruk, CEO of AdapTech Solutions open the show with a mention of Scott Bellware's Eventide-Project and the upcoming Ruby microservices workshop, April 29th and 30th in Vancouver. For a chance at a free ticket, make sure to retweet the following with @vantechpodcast (Drawing and winner announcement on April 22nd, 2017).

https://www.eventbrite.com/e/ruby-microservices-workshop-vancouver-tickets-32550250676

This week, Ogryzek pick's Dymitruk's brain on topics ranging from Event Sourcing, following particular patterns in software problem solving while remaining tech-agnostic, developing a consulting business in Vancouver's current climate, responsibly onboarding junior software developers while maintaining sane levels of productivity.

Dymitruk gives some good examples of when and why CQRS (Command Query Responsibility Segregation) is a good pattern for software projects ranging from fin-tech to almost anything. Contrary to the notion that there is more overhead in using patterns such as DDD (Domain Driven Design), CQRS, and Event Sourcing, Dymitruk emphasizes that applying these patterns from the beginning of projects ensures a more solid foundation to build on.

Adaptech Solutions has office space in The Tribe. They regularly hold meetups such as the DDD/CQRS/ES Practitioner's meetup where experts and beginners alike are welcome to join in and share knowledge, expertise, and insight into how to use these patterns to build and deliver better software. It's free to join, so if you're interested in finding out more, make sure to check out their meetup every Thursday evening from 5:00 PM to 7:00 PM.

Links

Theme music by A Shell In The Pit from the game Parkitect

The Vancouver Tech Podcast is a weekly show focusing on the growing tech industry in the city of Vancouver. Get caught up on the events and meetups around town, startups, new businesses, developers, designers, community programs, and news. Each episode includes an interview with an outstanding member of our community.

Listen to the show here, email us, or subscribe to the podcast on iTunes.

Host Drew Ogryzek opens the show with more special mentions and giveaways!

Scott Bellware presents a Ruby Microservices workshop in Vancouver, April 29th and 30th: Retweet https://goo.gl/dTue29 with @vantechpodcast to be entered into a draw for a free ticket! (Drawing and winner announcement on April 22nd, 2017)

There's also an Intro to Virtual Reality Workshop brought to us by Design Lab. Tweet your most pressing VR question, along with http://designlablive.com/vr-workshop @vantechpodcast @designlablive for a chance at a free general enrollment seat. (Drawing and winner announcement on March 29th, 2017)

Special guest John Richardson Founder and CEO Ethelo Decisions, a social enterprise dedicated to new ways of doing group decision making, using online technology. Ethelo was born out of trying to find a way of impacting and improving democracy, and answering the question "What is democracy going to look like in 10, 15, or 20 years or even more importantly, what does it need to look like, if we're going to address the major challenges facing society today?"

With a unique technology that enables groups to make complicated decisions, Ethelo is a mix of commercial enterprise, selling that technology to government and large organizations, and a non-profit organization that provides it for free to citizens and organizations that want to engage citizens in doing democratic decision making.

Ethelo can help groups with strategy, high-value decisions like investments, or engaging the public or experts in developing the framework for legislation and regulations. They have several working demos to explore, including using Ethelo for deciding policy around marijuana legislation, international treaties, a neighborhood park, and participatory budget.

For developers interested in democracy as infrastructure, some exciting plans are on the roadmap. Open sourcing the core algorithm behind Ethelo and launching an API are scheduled for as early as sometime this year.

Theme music by A Shell In The Pit from the game Parkitect

The Vancouver Tech Podcast is a weekly show focusing on the growing tech industry in the city of Vancouver. Get caught up on the events and meetups around town, startups, new businesses, developers, designers, community programs, and news. Each episode includes an interview with an outstanding member of our community.

Listen to the show here, email us, or subscribe to the podcast on iTunes.

Host Drew Ogryzek opens the show with some special mentions and giveaways! Scott Bellware presents a Ruby Microservices workshop in Vancouver, April 29th and 30th: Retweet https://goo.gl/dTue29 with @vantechpodcast to be entered into a draw for a free ticket!

There's also an Intro to Virtual Reality Workshop brought to us by Design Lab. Tweet your most pressing VR question, along with http://designlablive.com/vr-workshop @vantechpodcast @deisgnlablive for a chance at a free general enrollment seat.

BC Tech Summit comes to a close, the Vancouver-based fin-tech company Koho launches to public in Canada.

Ogryzek takes an introspective look into cross-team pairing in a technology focused work environment, encouraging developers to pair with other developers and even members of QA or Product Management to ensure a higher quality of code craftsmanship, product understanding, and business value. Further, he suggests technology workers communicate openings available on their teams to peers and former colleagues with whom they have enjoyed collaborating.

Theme music by A Shell In The Pit from the game Parkitect

The Vancouver Tech Podcast is a weekly show focusing on the growing tech industry in the city of Vancouver. Get caught up on the events and meetups around town, startups, new businesses, developers, designers, community programs, and news. Each episode includes an interview with an outstanding member of our community.

Listen to the show here, email us, or subscribe to the podcast on iTunes.