Screaming in the Cloud

Corey Quinn

Screaming in the Cloud with Corey Quinn features conversations with domain experts in the world of Cloud Computing. Topics discussed include AWS, GCP, Azure, Oracle Cloud, and the "why" behind how businesses are coming to think about the Cloud.

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677 episodes
Updated June 25

Episodes677

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Apr 18, 2023 · 27 min
Hacking Old Hardware and Developer Advocate Presentations with Darko Mesaroš
Darko Mesaroš, Senior Developer Advocate at AWS, joins Corey on Screaming in the Cloud to discuss all the weird and wonderful things that can be done with old hardware, as well as the necessary skills for being a successful Developer Advocate. Darko walks through how he managed to deploy Kubernetes on a computer from 1986, as well as the trade-offs we’ve made in computer technology as hardware has progressed. Corey and Darko also explore the forgotten art of optimizing when you’re developing, and how it can help to cut costs. Darko also shares what he feels is the key skill every Developer Advocate needs to have, and walks through how he has structured his presentations to ensure he is captivating and delivering value to his audience. About Darko Darko is a Senior Developer Advocate based in Seattle, WA. His goal is to share his passion and technological know-how with Engineers, Developers, Builders, and tech enthusiasts across the world. If it can be automated, Darko will definitely try to do so. Most of his focus is towards DevOps and Management Tools, where automation, pipelines, and efficient developer tools is the name of the game – click less and code more so you do not repeat yourself ! Darko also collects a lot of old technology and tries to make it do what it should not. Like deploy AWS infrastructure through a Commodore 64. Links Referenced: AWS: https://aws.amazon.com/ Blog post RE deploying Kubernetes on a TRS-80: https://www.buildon.aws/posts/i-deployed-kubernetes-with-a-1986-tandy-102-portable-computer AWS Twitch: https://twitch.tv/aws Twitter: https://twitter.com/darkosubotica Mastodon: https://hachyderm.io/@darkosubotica
Apr 13, 2023 · 32 min
Viewing Security through an Operational Lens with Jess Dodson
Jess Dodson, Senior Cloud Solution Architect at Microsoft, joins Corey on Screaming in the Cloud to discuss all things security. Corey and Jess discuss the phenomenon of companies that only care about security when reacting to a breach, and Jess highlights how important it is to have both a reactive and a proactive approach to security. Jess also shares her thoughts on why it’s valuable to get security and operations working well together, and why getting the basics right in security is still a more pressing priority than solving for level 10 security threats. Jess and Corey also reveal best practices when it comes to monitoring and revoking admin rights and much more. About Jess Chances are if you’ve run into “GirlGerms” online, you’ve spoken to Jess! Based in Brisbane, Jess joined Microsoft in 2019 and is now a Senior Cloud Solution in Cyber Security, after working in a mixture of both government and higher education industries for over 15 years. Jess regards herself as a 'recovering systems administrator' and still wears her operations hat when looking at security - doing REAL SecOps! Outside of work, Jess is mum to a 5 year old daughter, a cat, 4 chickens and a hive of bees. In her downtime, she spends far too many hours building Lego, playing video games or doing random crafty projects. Links Referenced: Twitter: https://twitter.com/girlgerms Mastodon:https://infosec.exchange/@girlgerms DevNxt: https://devnxt.nz/
Apr 11, 2023 · 35 min
Uptycs and Security Awareness with Jack Roehrig
Jack Roehrig, Technology Evangelist at Uptycs, joins Corey on Screaming in the Cloud for a conversation about security awareness, ChatGPT, and more. Jack describes some of the recent developments at Uptycs, which leads to fascinating insights about the paradox of scaling engineering teams large and small. Jack also shares how his prior experience working with AskJeeves.com has informed his perspective on ChatGPT and its potential threat to Google. Jack and Corey also discuss the evolution of Reddit, and the nuances of developing security awareness trainings that are approachable and effective. About Jack Jack has been passionate about (obsessed with) information security and privacy since he was a child. Attending 2600 meetings before reaching his teenage years, and DEF CON conferences shortly after, he quickly turned an obsession into a career. He began his first professional, full-time information-security role at the world's first internet privacy company; focusing on direct-to-consumer privacy. After working the startup scene in the 90's, Jack realized that true growth required a renaissance education. He enrolled in college, completing almost six years of coursework in a two-year period. Studying a variety of disciplines, before focusing on obtaining his two computer science degrees. University taught humility, and empathy. These were key to pursuing and achieving a career as a CSO lasting over ten years. Jack primarily focuses his efforts on mentoring his peers (as well as them mentoring him), advising young companies (especially in the information security and privacy space), and investing in businesses that he believes are both innovative, and ethical. Links Referenced: Uptycs: https://www.uptycs.com/ jack@jackroehrig.com: mailto:jack@jackroehrig.com jroehrig@uptycs.com: mailto:jroehrig@uptycs.com
Apr 6, 2023 · 33 min
Improving the Developer Experience with Aja Hammerly
Aja Hammerly, Developer Relations Manager at Google Cloud, joins Corey on Screaming in the Cloud to discuss her unexpected career journey at Google and what she’s learned about improving the developer experience throughout her career. Aja and Corey discuss the importance of not only creating tools for developers that are intuitive and easy to adopt, but also cater to different learning styles. Aja describes why it’s so important to respond with curiosity when a user does something seemingly random within a piece of software, and also reveals why she feels so strongly about the principle of least surprise when it comes to the developer experience. About Aja Aja lives in Seattle where's she's a Developer Relations Manager at Google. She's currently excited about developer experience, software supply chain security, and becoming a better manager and mentor. In her free time she enjoys skiing, kayaking, cooking, knitting, and spending long hours in the garden. Links Referenced: Google Cloud: http://cloud.google.com/developers Personal Website: https://www.thagomizer.com
Apr 4, 2023 · 32 min
The Rise of Generative AI with Raj Bala
Raj Bala, Founder of Perspect, joins Corey on Screaming in the Cloud to discuss all things generative AI. Perspect is a new generative AI company that is democratizing the e-commerce space, by making it possible to place images of products in places that would previously require expensive photoshoots and editing. Throughout the conversation, Raj shares insights into the legal questions surrounding the rise of generative AI and potential ramifications of its widespread adoption. Raj and Corey also dig into the question, “Why were the big cloud providers beaten to the market by OpenAI?” Raj also shares his thoughts on why company culture has to be organic, and how he’s hoping generative AI will move the needle for mom-and-pop businesses. About Raj Raj Bala, formerly a VP, Analyst at Gartner, led the Magic Quadrant for Cloud Infrastructure and Platform Services since its inception and led the Magic Quadrant for IaaS before that. He is deeply in-tune with market dynamics both in the US and Europe, but also extending to China, Africa and Latin America. Raj is also a software developer and is capable of building and deploying scalable services on the cloud providers to which he wrote about as a Gartner analyst. As such, Raj is now building Perspect, which is a SaaS offering at the intersection of AI and E-commerce. Raj's favorite language is Python and he is obsessed with making pizza and ice cream. Links Referenced: Perspect: https://perspect.com
Mar 30, 2023 · 32 min
The Benefits of Mocking Clouds Locally with Waldemar Hummer
Waldemar Hummer, Co-Founder & CTO of LocalStack, joins Corey on Screaming in the Cloud to discuss how LocalStack changed Corey’s mind on the futility of mocking clouds locally. Waldemar reveals why LocalStack appeals to both enterprise companies and digital nomads, and explains how both see improvements in their cost predictability as a result. Waldemar also discusses how LocalStack is an open-source company first and foremost, and how they’re working with their community to evolve their licensing model. Corey and Waldemar chat about the rising demand for esoteric services, and Waldemar explains how accommodating that has led to an increase of adoption from the big data space. About Waldemar Waldemar is Co-Founder and CTO of LocalStack, where he and his team are building the world-leading platform for local cloud development, based on the hugely popular open source framework with 45k+ stars on Github. Prior to founding LocalStack, Waldemar has held several engineering and management roles at startups as well as large international companies, including Atlassian (Sydney), IBM (New York), and Zurich Insurance. He holds a PhD in Computer Science from TU Vienna. Links Referenced: LocalStack website: https://localstack.cloud/ LocalStack Slack channel: https://slack.localstack.cloud LocalStack Discourse forum: https://discuss.localstack.cloud LocalStack GitHub repository: https://github.com/localstack/localstack
Mar 28, 2023 · 33 min
The Need for Reliability with Lex Neva
Lex Neva, Staff Site Reliability Engineer at Honeycomb and Curator of SRE Weekly, joins Corey on Screaming in the Cloud to discuss reliability and the life of a newsletter curator. Lex shares some interesting insights on how he keeps his hobbies and side projects separate, as well as the intrusion that open-source projects can have on your time. Lex and Corey also discuss the phenomenon of newsletter curators being much more demanding of themselves than their audience typically is. Lex also shares his views on how far reliability has come, as well as how far we have to go, and the critical implications reliability has on our day-to-day lives. About Lex Lex Neva is interested in all things related to running large, massively multiuser online services. He has years of SRE, Systems Engineering, tinkering, and troubleshooting experience and perhaps loves incident response more than he ought to. He’s previously worked for Linden Lab, DeviantArt, Heroku, and Fastly, and currently works as an SRE at Honeycomb while also curating the SRE Weekly newsletter on the side. Lex lives in Massachusetts with his family including 3 adorable children, 3 ridiculous cats, and assorted other awesome humans and animals. In his copious spare time he likes to garden, play tournament poker, tinker with machine embroidery, and mess around with Arduinos. Links Referenced: SRE Weekly: https://sreweekly.com/ Honeycomb: https://www.honeycomb.io/
Mar 28, 2023 · 40 min
Making Open-Source Multi-Cloud Truly Free with AB Periasamy
AB Periasamy, Co-Founder and CEO of MinIO, joins Corey on Screaming in the Cloud to discuss what it means to be truly open source and the current and future state of multi-cloud. AB explains how MinIO was born from the idea that the world was going to produce a massive amount of data, and what it’s been like to see that come true and continue to be the future outlook. AB and Corey explore why some companies are hesitant to move to cloud, and AB describes why he feels the move is inevitable regardless of cost. AB also reveals how he has helped create a truly free open-source software, and how his partnership with Amazon has been beneficial. About AB AB Periasamy is the co-founder and CEO of MinIO, an open source provider of high performance, object storage software. In addition to this role, AB is an active investor and advisor to a wide range of technology companies, from H2O.ai and Manetu where he serves on the board to advisor or investor roles with Humio, Isovalent, Starburst, Yugabyte, Tetrate, Postman, Storj, Procurify, and Helpshift. Successful exits include Gitter.im (Gitlab), Treasure Data (ARM) and Fastor (SMART). AB co-founded Gluster in 2005 to commoditize scalable storage systems. As CTO, he was the primary architect and strategist for the development of the Gluster file system, a pioneer in software defined storage. After the company was acquired by Red Hat in 2011, AB joined Red Hat’s Office of the CTO. Prior to Gluster, AB was CTO of California Digital Corporation, where his work led to scaling of the commodity cluster computing to supercomputing class performance. His work there resulted in the development of Lawrence Livermore Laboratory’s “Thunder” code, which, at the time was the second fastest in the world. AB holds a Computer Science Engineering degree from Annamalai University, Tamil Nadu, India. AB is one of the leading proponents and thinkers on the subject of open source software - articulating the difference between the philosophy and business model. An active contributor to a number of open source projects, he is a board member of India's Free Software Foundation. Links Referenced: MinIO: https://min.io/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/abperiasamy LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/abperiasamy/ Email: mailto:ab@min.io
Mar 21, 2023 · 32 min
Exciting Times in Cloud Security with Chris Farris
Chris Farris, Cloud Security Nerd at Turbot, joins Corey on Screaming in the Cloud to discuss the latest events in cloud security, which leads to an interesting analysis from Chris on how legal departments obscure valuable information that could lead to fewer security failures in the name of protecting company liability, and what the future of accountability for security failures looks like. Chris and Corey also discuss the newest dangers in cloud security and billing practices, and Chris describes his upcoming cloud security conference, fwd:cloudsec. About Chris Chris Farris has been in the IT field since 1994 primarily focused on Linux, networking, and security. For the last 8 years, he has focused on public-cloud and public-cloud security. He has built and evolved multiple cloud security programs for major media companies, focusing on enabling the broader security team’s objectives of secure design, incident response and vulnerability management. He has developed cloud security standards and baselines to provide risk-based guidance to development and operations teams. As a practitioner, he’s architected and implemented multiple serverless and traditional cloud applications focused on deployment, security, operations, and financial modeling. Chris now does cloud security research for Turbot and evangelizes for the open source tool Steampipe. He is one of the organizers of the fwd:cloudsec conference (https://fwdcloudsec.org) and has given multiple presentations at AWS conferences and BSides events. When not building things with AWS’s building blocks, he enjoys building Legos with his kid and figuring out what interesting part of the globe to travel to next. He opines on security and technology on Mastodon, Twitter and his website https://www.chrisfarris.com Links Referenced: Turbot: https://turbot.com/ fwd:cloudsec: https://fwdcloudsec.org/ Mastodon: https://infosec.exchange/@jcfarris Personal website: https://chrisfarris.com
Mar 16, 2023 · 40 min
Combining Community and Company Employees with Matty Stratton
Matty Stratton, Director of Developer Relations at Aiven, joins Corey on Screaming in the Cloud for a friendly debate on whether or not company employees can still be considered community members. Corey says no, but opens up his position to the slings and arrows of Matty in an entertaining change of pace. Matty explains why he feels company employees can still be considered community members, and also explores how that should be done in a way that is transparent and helpful to everyone in the community. Matty and Corey also explore the benefits and drawbacks of talented community members becoming employees. About Matty Matty Stratton is the Director of Developer Relations at Aiven, a well-known member of the DevOps community, founder and co-host of the popular Arrested DevOps podcast, and a global organizer of the DevOpsDays set of conferences. Matty has over 20 years of experience in IT operations and is a sought-after speaker internationally, presenting at Agile, DevOps, and cloud engineering focused events worldwide. Demonstrating his keen insight into the changing landscape of technology, he recently changed his license plate from DEVOPS to KUBECTL. He lives in Chicago and has three awesome kids, whom he loves just a little bit more than he loves Diet Coke. Links Referenced: Aiven: https://aiven.io/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/mattstratton Mastodon: hackyderm.io/@mattstratton LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mattstratton/
Mar 14, 2023 · 30 min
AWS and the Journey to Responsible AI with Diya Wynn
Diya Wynn, Senior Practice Manager in Responsible AI for AWS Machine Learning Solutions Lab, joins Corey on Screaming in the Cloud to discuss her team’s efforts to study and implement responsible practices when developing AI technology. Corey and Diya explore the ethical challenges of AI, and why it’s so important to be looking ahead for potential issues before they arise. Diya explains why socially responsible AI is still a journey, and describes how her and her team at AWS are seeking to forge that path to help their customers implement the technology in a safe and ethical way. Diya also describes her approach to reducing human-caused bias in AI models. About Diya Diya Wynn is the Senior Practice Manager in Responsible AI for AWS Machine Learning Solutions Lab. She leads the team that engages with customers globally to go from theory to practice - operationalizing standards for responsible Artificial Intelligence/Machine Learning and data. Diya leads discussions on taking intentional action to uncover potential unintended impacts, and mitigate risks related to the development, deployment and use of AI/ML systems. She leverages her more than 25 years of experience as a technologist scaling products for acquisition; driving inclusion, diversity & equity initiatives; leading operational transformation across industries and understanding of historical and systemic contexts to guide customers in establishing an AI/ML operating model that enables inclusive and responsible products. Additionally, she serves on non-profit boards including the AWS Health Equity Initiative Review Committee; mentors at Tulane University, Spelman College and GMI; was a mayoral appointee in Environment Affairs for 6 consecutive years and guest lectures regularly on responsible and inclusive technology. Diya studied Computer Science at Spelman College, the Management of Technology at New York University, and AI & Ethics at Harvard University Professional School and MIT Sloan School of Management. Links Referenced: Machine Learning is a Marvelously Executed Scam: https://www.lastweekinaws.com/blog/machine-learning-is-a-marvelously-executed-scam/
Mar 9, 2023 · 31 min
Evolving Alongside Cloud Technology with Jason McKay
Jason McKay, Chief Technology Officer at Logicworks, joins Corey on Screaming in the Cloud to discuss how the cloud landscape has changed and what changes are picking up steam. Jason highlights the benefit of working in a consulting role, which provides a constant flow of interesting problems to solve. Corey and Jason also explore why cloud was positioned well for the current economic changes, and how Kubernetes is slowly but surely becoming more standardized. Jason also reveals some of his predictions for the future of cloud-based development. About Jason Jason is responsible for leading Logicworks’ technical strategy including its software and DevOps product roadmap. In this capacity, he works directly with Logicworks’ senior engineers and developers, technology vendors and partners, and R&D team to ensure that Logicworks service offerings meet and exceed the performance, compliance, automation, and security requirements of our clients. Prior to joining Logicworks in 2005, Jason worked in technology in the Unix support trenches at Panix (Public Access Networks). Jason graduated Bard College with a Bachelor of Arts and holds several AWS and Azure Professional certifications. Links Referenced: Logicworks: https://www.logicworks.com/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jasonhmckay/
Mar 7, 2023 · 36 min
The Realities of Working in Data with Emily Gorcenski
Emily Gorcenski, Data & AI Service Line Lead at Thoughtworks, joins Corey on Screaming in the Cloud to discuss how big data is changing our lives - both for the better, and the challenges that come with it. Emily explains how data is only important if you know what to do with it and have a plan to work with it, and why it’s crucial to understand the use-by date on your data. Corey and Emily also discuss how big data problems aren’t universal problems for the rest of the data community, how to address the ethics around AI, and the barriers to entry when pursuing a career in data. About Emily Emily Gorcenski is a principal data scientist and the Data & AI Service Line Lead of ThoughtWorks Germany. Her background in computational mathematics and control systems engineering has given her the opportunity to work on data analysis and signal processing problems from a variety of complex and data intensive industries. In addition, she is a renowned data activist and has contributed to award-winning journalism through her use of data to combat extremist violence and terrorism. The opinions expressed are solely her own. Links Referenced: ThoughtWorks: https://www.thoughtworks.com/ Personal website: https://emilygorcenski.com Twitter: https://twitter.com/EmilyGorcenski Mastodon: https://mastodon.green/@emilygorcenski@indieweb.social
Mar 2, 2023 · 35 min
The Growing Dominion of Cloud Providers with Raj Bala
Raj Bala, Founder of Perspect, joins Corey on Screaming in the Cloud to chat about his experiences working in the world of cloud and why he made the shift from Gartner Analyst to Founder. Raj asks the question, “Is AWS truly customer-obsessed?” in the face of their business practices, and challenges the common notion that analysts don’t need to have lived experience with a product to criticize it. Raj and Corey also explore the absurdity of Azure naming conventions, how cloud providers are creating roadblocks to multi-cloud, and the response of the greater public as cloud providers become more and more powerful. About Raj Raj Bala, formerly a VP, Analyst at Gartner, led the Magic Quadrant for Cloud Infrastructure and Platform Services since its inception and led the Magic Quadrant for IaaS before that. He is deeply in-tune with market dynamics both in the US and Europe, but also extending to China, Africa and Latin America. Raj is also a software developer and is capable of building and deploying scalable services on the cloud providers to which he wrote about as a Gartner analyst. As such, Raj is now building Perspect, which is a SaaS offering at the intersection of AI and E-commerce. Raj's favorite language is Python and he is obsessed with making pizza and ice cream. Links Referenced: Perspect: https://perspect.com former2.com: https://former2.com Twitter: https://twitter.com/raj
Feb 28, 2023 · 33 min
Data Protection the AWS Way with Wayne Duso and Nancy Wang
Wayne Duso, VP of Storage, Edge and Data Governance Services at AWS and Nancy Wang, GM of AWS Data Protection, both join Corey on Screaming in the Cloud to discuss data protection and analysis at AWS. Wayne and Nancy describe how AWS Backup has scaled to protect over 90% of the data stored on AWS today. Nancy explains how her team specializes in helping AWS customers develop custom solutions for their specific data needs, and the way that AWS has built out new tools and services to accommodate that customization. Wayne also reveals how important data analysis is to the AWS team when it comes to improving services and developing ground-breaking new innovations. About Wayne Professionally, Wayne is a Vice President at Amazon Web Services (AWS) where he leads a set of businesses delivering cloud infrastructure services. In 2013, he founded and continues to lead the AWS Boston regional development center. Wayne is an always-curious entrepreneur who is passionate about building innovative teams and businesses that deliver highly disruptive value to customers. He loves engaging people who build and deliver customer-obsessed solutions, as well as customers wanting to realize value from those solutions. Wayne also holds over 40 patents in distributed and highly-available computer systems, digital video processing, and file systems. Personally, Wayne is a proud dad to great people, and loves to cook and grow things, it relaxes and grounds him, and he cherishes finding adventure in the ordinary as well as the extraordinary. About Nancy Nancy is a product & engineering executive, advisor, and investor with significant experience in cloud computing, cybersecurity, and SaaS. Nancy advises Fortune 10 companies on accelerating revenue growth, and she advises startups on attracting their first 100K enterprise customers. Currently, Nancy is the Director of Product & Engineering and General Manager at Amazon Web Services, where she leads P&L, product, engineering, and design for its data protection and data security businesses. Prior to Amazon, she led SaaS product development at Rubrik, the fastest-growing enterprise software unicorn, and built healthdata.gov for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Passionate about growing early-stage startups, Nancy is a Venture Partner for Felicis Ventures, where she works with early-stage data infra and security companies on their product-market fit, market segmentation, and product scaling. Excited to advance more women into technical roles, Nancy is the founder & board chair of Advancing Women in Tech, a global 501(c)(3) nonprofit that has already informed and educated 30,000 Coursera learners worldwide on how to get their first, or next, tech leadership role. She earned a Bachelors of Applied Science from the University of Pennsylvania, where she serves on the Board of Directors for the UPenn School of Engineering Online. Links Referenced: re:Invent talk with Nancy and Neha: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ELSm3WgR8RE
Feb 23, 2023 · 41 min
Getting the Basics Right in Cloud Security with Fouad Matin
Fouad Matin, Co-founder & CEO of Indent, joins Corey on Screaming in the Cloud to discuss how to get data security right without creating unnecessary barriers for your development team. Fouad and Corey discuss how getting admin access as a developer can be time consuming and vague, when it should be efficient and come with an easily defined reason for granting access. Fouad also explains why he feels most breaches are due to not getting the basics right, and why he feels storing customer and sensitive data should be done with the same principles as dealing with hazardous waste. About Fouad Fouad Matin is the co-founder and CEO of Indent, a security company that enables teams to perform mission-critical operations faster and more securely. With Indent, organizations like HackerOne, Modern Treasury, Vercel, and PlanetScale are able to grant secure, time-bound user and admin permissions for cloud apps and infrastructure through Slack. Prior to Indent, Fouad worked as an engineer at Segment, a customer data platform helping companies secure their pipelines for handling customer data. He co-founded a non-partisan non-profit in 2016 to help people register and get out to vote through easy-to-use, privacy preserving tools. In 2018, while validating Indent’s mission, partnered with Vote.org to build tools for users to find their polling place and preview their ballot using client-side encryption. Links Referenced: Indent: https://indent.com Nobody Should Have Production Access: https://indent.com/blog/production Fouad on Twitter: https://twitter.com/fouadmatin Indent on Twitter: https://twitter.com/indent Unplanned Maintenance: https://unplannedmaintenance.com Least Privilege in Practice Blog Post from Indent: https://indent.com/blog/least-privilege Additional Links Referenced: Email: mailto:fouad@indent.com Fouad LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/indentinc/ Indent LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/fouadmatin/
Feb 21, 2023 · 25 min
Being Present in the Moment Through Balcony-Hopping with Mai-Lan Tomsen Bukovec
Mai-Lan Tomsen Bukovec, Vice President of Foundational Data Services at AWS, joins Corey on Screaming in the Cloud to discuss her technique for spending time intentionally and prioritizing work-life balance called balcony-hopping. Mai-Lan explains how she created the concept of balcony-hopping and how it has helped her to be a better leader, mother, wife, and boxer. Corey and Mai-Lan discuss how in today’s age, attention is a form of currency and why it’s so important to be intentional with how and where you spend your attention. Mai-Lan also offers practical insights to anyone seeking to feel more productive, present, and balanced. About Mai-Lan Mai-Lan Tomsen Bukovec is Vice President, Foundational Data Services (FDS) at Amazon Web Services (AWS) and leads a number of high-scale AWS cloud services that provide storage and streaming of petabytes or exabytes of data and essential building blocks for modern application architecture like queuing and notifications, monitoring, alarming, logging and reliability validation. Mai-Lan’s teams include some of AWS’ first and largest-scale services like Amazon S3 and Simple Queue Service (SQS) to more recent and fast-growing services like managed open source streaming (Amazon Managed Streaming for Apache Kafka). Prior to joining Amazon, Mai-Lan spent almost 15 years in engineering and product leadership roles at technology companies including Microsoft and early stage startups. She began her technology career after serving in the U.S. Peace Corps in the Mopti region of Africa as a Forestry volunteer after earning her degree from University of California, San Diego. At Amazon, Mai-Lan is an advisor to Asians@Amazon, creator and sponsor of internal leadership development programs for Amazon employees, and is passionate about AWS initiatives and cloud services that maximize human potential everywhere. Mai-Lan has three children and lives in Seattle with her family. When she is not working on Amazon cloud services and spending time with her husband and kids, Mai-Lan trains primarily in boxing with additional practice in the martial art Savate. Links Referenced: LinkedIn post “Live Your Best Life Through Balcony Hopping”: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/live-your-best-life-through-balcony-hopping-mai-lan-tomsen-bukovec/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mailan/
Feb 16, 2023 · 31 min
The Complexity and Value of Scaling Reliability with Kannan Solaiappan
Kannan Solaiappan, Head of Reliability and Data Engineering at Circles Life, joins Corey on Screaming in the Cloud to discuss building a team in a start-up environment and the complexities of balancing reliability and security with scale. Kannan describes the challenges of building a semi-platform multiple instances model and how products like Severalnines have helped identify and optimize potential problems before they affect customers. Kannan and Corey also discuss the impact that major outages had on the world at large when it came to fault-tolerance on entry points, and Kannan explains how guardrails can improve reliability without creating the same resistance from engineers that governance can. About Kannan With over 20 years of experience in the technology industry, Kannan Solaiappan is a highly motivated and passionate leader with a track record of driving results. With a background in software development, operations, architecture, security, and Agile transformation, Kannan has served as a Head of DevOps/Reliability/Data Engineering & Architecture, managing budgets of over 10 million dollars. Kannan has successfully led teams of up to 80 members and has a strong background in building and maintaining world-class organizational structures and cultures. Currently, Kannan is leading a team of SRE, DevOps, and Data Engineering professionals at Circles Life, Asia’s first fully digital telco, where Kannan is working towards building the world’s best Telco SAAS platform with a focus on CiCD, observability, reliability, resilience, and security. Kannan has a diverse set of skills including IT Service Management, team management, IT strategy, vendor management, site reliability engineering, Architecture and leadership. Links Referenced: Severalnines: https://severalnines.com/ Circles.Life: https://circles.life Circles.Life Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/circleslifesg/ Circles.Life Twitter: https://twitter.com/circleslifesg Circles.Life Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/CirclesLifeSG/
Feb 14, 2023 · 33 min
Building Community in Open Source with Floor Drees
Episode Summary Floor Drees, Staff Developer Advocate at Aiven, joins Corey on Screaming in the Cloud to discuss her journey into the world of open source and the opportunities she sees to improve developer relations. Floor and Corey dive into the pitfalls and opportunities of being a frequent speaker at events, and Floor shares some best practices to help be prepared for those opportunities. Floor also shares why she feels events should include hybrid remote attendance options, and the benefits of hosting local events to breathe life into new relationships within the developer community. Floor and Corey also discuss the complexities of maintaining an open-source project and what goes into keeping an open-source community healthy and thriving. About Floor Floor is a Staff Developer Advocate at Aiven, a company that manages your favorite open source data tools for you without exploiting the projects and their maintainers. Previously Floor worked in DevRel at Grafana Labs and Microsoft. She is a Devopsdays Core member, and organizes the Devopsdays Amsterdam and Eindhoven chapters. She is a Microsoft MVP for Developer Technologies, and organizes a bunch of meetups, including-but-not-limited-to contributing.today, DevRel Salon Amsterdam, and the Amsterdam Ruby Meetup. Floor is also an art school graduate, who stumbled into tech face-first. Links Referenced: Aiven: https://aiven.io floor.dev: https://floor.dev Mastodon: https://mastodon.lol/@floord Twitter: https://twitter.com/floordrees dev.to: https://dev.to/floord
Feb 9, 2023 · 35 min
The Ever-Growing Ecosystem of Postgres with Álvaro Hernandez
Álvaro Hernandez, Founder of OnGres, joins Corey on Screaming in the cloud to discuss his hobby project Dyna53, the balkanization of AWS services, and all things Postgres. Álvaro and Corey discuss what it means to be an AWS Community Hero these days, and Álvaro shares some of his experiences as being one of the first Heroes to provide feedback on AWS services. Álvaro also shares his thoughts on why people shouldn’t underestimate the importance of selecting the right database, why he feels Postgres and Kubernetes work so well together, and the ever-growing ecosystem of Postgres. About Álvaro Álvaro is a passionate database and software developer. Founder of OnGres ("ON postGRES"), he has been dedicated to Postgres and R&D in databases for more than two decades. Álvaro is at heart an open source advocate and developer. He has created software like StackGres, a Platform for running Postgres on Kubernetes or ToroDB (MongoDB on top of Postgres). As a well-known member of the PostgreSQL Community, Álvaro founded the non-profit Fundación PostgreSQL and the Spanish PostgreSQL User Group. He has contributed, among others, the SCRAM authentication library to the Postgres JDBC driver. You can find him frequently speaking at PostgreSQL, database, cloud (becoming an AWS Data Hero in 2019), and Java conferences. In the last 10 years, Álvaro has completed more than 120 tech talks (https://aht.es). Links Referenced: OnGres: https://ongres.com/ Dyna53: https://dyna53.io/ Personal Website: https://aht.es Twitter: https://twitter.com/ahachete LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ahachete/