Can I get that software in blue?

Episode #38 of "Can I get that software in blue?", a podcast by and for people engaged in technology sales. If you are in the technology presales, solution architecture, sales, support or professional services career paths then this show is for you! Today Chad and Steve are talking with John Engates, Field CTO at Cloudflare and formerly the CTO and Rackspace. Their conversation includes a discussion of his time at Rackspace and what Rackspace might have done differently during the early rise of AWS, how Cloudflare's network now protects against threats in both directions not just against websites but also against desktop users, and how Rackspace is bringing AI inference to the edge by putting GPUs in their Points-of-Presence around the world. Our website: https://softwareinblue.com Twitter: ⁠https://twitter.com/softwareinblue⁠ LinkedIn: ⁠https://www.linkedin.com/showcase/softwareinblue⁠ Make sure to subscribe or follow us to get notified about our upcoming episodes: Youtube: ⁠https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC8qfPUKO_rPmtvuB4nV87rg⁠ Apple Podcasts: ⁠https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/can-i-get-that-software-in-blue/id1561899125⁠ Spotify: ⁠https://open.spotify.com/show/25r9ckggqIv6rGU8ca0WP2⁠ Links mentioned in the episode: Cloudflare 2024 Year in Review: https://blog.cloudflare.com/radar-2024-year-in-review

Episode #37 of "Can I get that software in blue?", a podcast by and for people engaged in technology sales. If you are in the technology presales, solution architecture, sales, support or professional services career paths then this show is for you! Today Chad is talking with Bob van Luijt, Founder and CEO at Weaviate, the premiere Open Source Vector Database company. Their conversation is wide ranging from Bob's background studying music composition at Berklee College of Music leading him to eventually decide that he should become a tech founder, to the early days and foundations of Weaviate and how he thinks the AI space will evolve to combat today's early problems of LLM hallucinations. Our website: https://softwareinblue.com Twitter: https://twitter.com/softwareinblue LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/showcase/softwareinblue Make sure to subscribe or follow us to get notified about our upcoming episodes: Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC8qfPUKO_rPmtvuB4nV87rg Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/can-i-get-that-software-in-blue/id1561899125 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/25r9ckggqIv6rGU8ca0WP2 Links mentioned in the episode: History of Weaviate: https://weaviate.io/blog/history-of-weaviate Bob's Ted Talk: https://www.ted.com/talks/bob_van_luijt_digital_technology_through_the_lens_of_language University of Kent Meshcode Memory News Article: https://www.kent.ac.uk/news/science/27956/a-new-theory-for-how-memories-are-stored-in-the-brain Meshcode Paper: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33716664/ Antifragile: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antifragile_(book) Nearest Neighbor Benchmarks: https://ann-benchmarks.com/ OpenAI and Newscorp Licensing Deal: https://variety.com/2024/digital/news/news-corp-openai-licensing-deal-1236013734/ DSPY self-improving pipelines: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2310.03714

Episode #36 of "Can I get that software in blue?", a podcast by and for people engaged in technology sales. If you are in the technology presales, solution architecture, sales, support or professional services career paths then this show is for you! Today we're talking with Jeff Yoshimura, or "Yosh" as his friends and colleagues know him. When it comes to high growth infrastructure companies, Yosh is at the top of his game having served as the Chief Marketing Officer at Synk and at Elastic before that. He's been through 3 IPOs (Salesforce, Zuora, and Elastic) and has some absolutely great stories to tell from his career including how the ELK stack came to appear on the tv show Mr. Robot. Our website: https://softwareinblue.com Twitter: https://twitter.com/softwareinblue LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/showcase/softwareinblue Make sure to subscribe or follow us to get notified about our upcoming episodes: Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC8qfPUKO_rPmtvuB4nV87rg Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/can-i-get-that-software-in-blue/id1561899125 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/25r9ckggqIv6rGU8ca0WP2 Links mentioned in the episode: ELK Stack Mr. Robot: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3sWxfLNV_wE

Episode #35 of "Can I get that software in blue?", a podcast by and for people engaged in technology sales. If you are in the technology presales, solution architecture, sales, support or professional services career paths then this show is for you! Dr. Santona Tuli started her career as a physics researcher at CERN where she analyzed what happens when you slam large ions into one another. Working with the vast amounts of data generated by those experiments inspired her to want to work in the data analysis space, so she became a Staff Data Scientist at Astronomer (a commercially managed Apache AirFlow vendor) and now she is the Head of Data at Upsolver where she helps build solutions for processing large amounts of streaming data in real time. Dr. Tuli was also featured in the IMAX documentary "Secrets of the Universe" In this episode we discuss her time as a research scientist and how they use similar ways of tracking research goals that corporations do, like milestones and OKRs. She tells us about her experience with using custom built scientific software versus existing open source solutions like MongoDB and Apache AirFlow. Then we talk about her Grand Unified Theory of Batch and Streaming Data Processing, and how Upsolver is helping customers do both of those in one platform. Finally we discuss a bit about her experience being featured in the IMAX documentary "Secrets of the Universe". Our website: https://softwareinblue.com Twitter: https://twitter.com/softwareinblue LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/showcase/softwareinblue Make sure to subscribe or follow us to get notified about our upcoming episodes: Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC8qfPUKO_rPmtvuB4nV87rg Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/can-i-get-that-software-in-blue/id1561899125 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/25r9ckggqIv6rGU8ca0WP2 Links mentioned in the episode: Dr. Tuli's character profile in "Secrets of the Universe": https://secretsoftheuniversefilm.com/character-profile-dr-santona-tuli/

Episode #34 of "Can I get that software in blue?", a podcast by and for people engaged in technology sales. If you are in the technology presales, solution architecture, sales, support or professional services career paths then this show is for you! If you want to get into building AI products, first go to school and learn about antenna design! At least, that's how our guest for episode 34, Shane Connelly did it. Shane is a deep expert in the search and indexing space having started his career at Autonomy working on early search indexing algorithms and setting up solutions for customers before and after the HP acqusition, later leading Product for the Elasticsearch side of the Elastic product suite. Now he's Head of Product at Vectara building out the next generation of semantic search and retrieval augmented generation platforms. In this episode we touch on benchmarks for gauging the relative performance of difference search algorithms and how it applies to LLMs for doing things like preventing hallucinations in generative AI, what kinds of questions Elasticsearch customers were asking that led Shane to believe that vector based algorithms were the future for doing next generation semantic search, and why he believes Vectara is building the top tier solution to solve these problems. Our website: https://softwareinblue.com Twitter: https://twitter.com/softwareinblue LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/showcase/softwareinblue Make sure to subscribe or follow us to get notified about our upcoming episodes: Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC8qfPUKO_rPmtvuB4nV87rg Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/can-i-get-that-software-in-blue/id1561899125 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/25r9ckggqIv6rGU8ca0WP2 Links mentioned in the episode: History of Lucene: https://www.elastic.co/celebrating-lucene Attention is all you need: https://arxiv.org/abs/1706.03762

Episode #33 of "Can I get that software in blue?", a podcast by and for people engaged in technology sales. If you are in the technology presales, solution architecture, sales, support or professional services career paths then this show is for you! Francesca Krihely-Price is an expert in the space of SaaS Marketing and Growth, having built several multi-billion dollar businesses with explosive growth at MongoDB and Synk. Now she's doing the same thing as the Head of Marketing at Oso, and also investing and advising companies along similar lines on the side. Francesca joins us to talk about her lessons learned growing those successful businesses like how to hire or set KPIs for DevRel teams differently for different stages of the company and her approach to angel investing and advising early-stage startups. Also, watch until the very end when Steve drops a knowledge bomb out of nowhere right before we have to leave the studio! Our website: https://softwareinblue.com Twitter: https://twitter.com/softwareinblue LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/showcase/softwareinblue Make sure to subscribe or follow us to get notified about our upcoming episodes: Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC8qfPUKO_rPmtvuB4nV87rg Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/can-i-get-that-software-in-blue/id1561899125 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/25r9ckggqIv6rGU8ca0WP2 Links mentioned in the episode: KPIs for DevRel Teams: https://devfirst.substack.com/p/kpis-for-developer-relations-teams Humor, Seriously: https://www.amazon.com/Humor-Seriously-Secret-Business-harness/dp/0593135288

Episode #32 of "Can I get that software in blue?", a podcast by and for people engaged in technology sales. If you are in the technology presales, solution architecture, sales, support or professional services career paths then this show is for you! Matt Riley was the co-founder and CEO at Swiftype, a startup which was acquired by Elastic in 2017. Now Mark is the VP and General Manager of all Search at Elastic and is focused heavily on the new Elastic Search Relevance Engine (ESRE) and Retrieval Augmented Generative AI (RAG). Matt goes through all the ins-and-outs of various components like Vector Databases, LLMs, Retrieval Augmented Generation and how Elastic is solving the problems caused by LLM Fine Tuning in a better way. Our website: https://softwareinblue.com Twitter: https://twitter.com/softwareinblue LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/showcase/softwareinblue Make sure to subscribe or follow us to get notified about our upcoming episodes: Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC8qfPUKO_rPmtvuB4nV87rg Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/can-i-get-that-software-in-blue/id1561899125 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/25r9ckggqIv6rGU8ca0WP2 Links mentioned in the episode: Selling is Hard, Buying is Harder: https://www.amazon.com/Selling-Hard-Buying-Harder-Enablement/dp/1632992949 Elastic Search Relevant Engine Announcement: https://www.sdxcentral.com/articles/news/new-elastic-search-tool-allows-enterprises-to-harness-generative-ai/2023/05/ Demo of ESRE: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qJmJTz0Luj0

Episode #31 of "Can I get that software in blue?", a podcast by and for people engaged in technology sales. If you are in the technology presales, solution architecture, sales, support or professional services career paths then this show is for you! Mark Green is the Director of Presales and Buyer Enablement at Consensus, a SaaS platform for automating the execution of presales demos and playbooks. He's also the co-host of two of his own podcasts, "Two presales in a pod" and "Burning Presales". Mark shares a ton of insights into how he thinks about the sales process, not just in terms of showcasing your product or offering correctly but also on coaching your coaching the champion at your prospective customer on how to sell your product and navigate the procurement process inside their own company. In sales we deal with procurement people all the time but potential buyers of software inside a company do not, and this is a very critical and often overlooked part of the sales process! Our website: https://softwareinblue.com Twitter: https://twitter.com/softwareinblue LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/showcase/softwareinblue Make sure to subscribe or follow us to get notified about our upcoming episodes: Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC8qfPUKO_rPmtvuB4nV87rg Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/can-i-get-that-software-in-blue/id1561899125 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/25r9ckggqIv6rGU8ca0WP2 Links mentioned in the episode: Selling is Hard, Buying is Harder: https://www.amazon.com/Selling-Hard-Buying-Harder-Enablement/dp/1632992949 Two presales in a pod Podcast: https://www.linkedin.com/company/2-presales-in-a-pod/ Burning Presales Podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/burning-presales

Episode #30 of "Can I get that software in blue?", a podcast by and for people engaged in technology sales. If you are in the technology presales, solution architecture, sales, support or professional services career paths then this show is for you! Earl "Mitch" Mitchell is the SVP of Predictive Analytics at Hard Rock Digital, the online gaming arm of the Hard Rock Restaurant and Casino Franchise. Have you ever wondered about the ins-and-outs of how online betting works, how the lines are set, and how these companies get and process data feeds for creating real time proposition bets? Come listen to Mitch's insights and rare behind-the-scenes discussion about all this online gaming stuff and why Hard Rock has some unique business value since they can comp you rooms at the real-life casinos for your online action! Also, since he's really really smart and used to be a Director of Technology at Wolfram Alpha's consulting arm, we dive pretty deep into AI and LLMs. The episode starts off with a bang exploring whether humans even have free will! Our website: https://softwareinblue.com Twitter: https://twitter.com/softwareinblue LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/showcase/softwareinblue Make sure to subscribe or follow us to get notified about our upcoming episodes: Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC8qfPUKO_rPmtvuB4nV87rg Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/can-i-get-that-software-in-blue/id1561899125 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/25r9ckggqIv6rGU8ca0WP2 Links mentioned in the episode: Stephen Wolfram's ChatGPT Explanation: https://writings.stephenwolfram.com/2023/02/what-is-chatgpt-doing-and-why-does-it-work/ Sparks of AGI: https://youtu.be/qbIk7-JPB2c?si=5YpTH-2nKH6CkL-b Lex Fridman Interview with Stephen Wolfram: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PdE-waSx-d8

Episode #29 of "Can I get that software in blue?", a podcast by and for people engaged in technology sales. If you are in the technology presales, solution architecture, sales, support or professional services career paths then this show is for you! Tanya Bragin is the VP of Product at ClickHouse, a very fast open source OLAP databases used by some of the biggest companies in the world. Tanya was hired to lead the effort to build a SaaS offering of ClickHouse, having previously served in similar roles as a VP of Product at Elastic. Come listen to Tanya's unique insights about how to take an open source project to market with a SaaS offering including how to engage and motivate the engineering team, deciding which features to build, acquire, or buy, how to hire and set goals for IC PMs, and most importantly HOW TO SET PRICING. Our website: https://softwareinblue.com Twitter: https://twitter.com/softwareinblue LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/showcase/softwareinblue Make sure to subscribe or follow us to get notified about our upcoming episodes: Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC8qfPUKO_rPmtvuB4nV87rg Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/can-i-get-that-software-in-blue/id1561899125 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/25r9ckggqIv6rGU8ca0WP2 Links mentioned in the episode: https://clickhouse.com/blog/my-journey-as-a-serial-startup-product-manager https://clickhouse.com/blog/vector-search-clickhouse-p1 https://clickhouse.com/blog/vector-search-clickhouse-p2