Nik Parekh is a founder and author of the new book The Future of Extraordinary Design. As Design Strategy Lead for Samsung, Nik bolstered earning potential by $35B by contributing product management to ‘go to market’ 17-person team for 4 separate ventures.  

We discuss the values and vision of great human-centered design and how empathy is not just a buzzword when it comes to understanding how to build great products.  Nik shares great insights for product managers and creators everywhere.  

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As we shift our focus in the industry to what’s next, the decision for us as techologists is to finding our footing in both the past and the future.  My thoughts on some of the AWS re:Invent conference and our evolution as architects should plant some seeds on how to build your path towards embracing public cloud in your IT portfolio.

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We enjoy a fun conversation with Justin Parisi who is the author behind Why is the Internet Broken and also the voice of the Tech ONTAP Podcast.  The chat covers the recent launch of NetApp ONTAP 9, the role of Technical Marketing and community, and much more.  Plus, another fun choice of books that you’ll hear about that Justin will suggest for our listeners. 

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Join the conversation as we discuss how to think like an architect with Rene van den Bedem.  Having achieved his VCDX and NPX certifications, Rene is a phenomenal example of elevating ourselves through community and learning.  The chat touches on the key points to progress from admin to architect and how the community opens the doors to a broad group of peers and mentors. Learn about Virtual Design Master and how Rene thinks we can all make the jump to architectural thinking in IT. 

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We chat with Ben Nye, Managing Director of Bain Capital and CEO of VMTurbo, as we discuss the importance of company culture, the art of growing a product into a business, the state of the venture capital environment in IT and much more. 

Ben is a dynamic speaker and inspires a large team at VMTurbo. Having a storied career in business and technology, it was a pleasure to dive into how the challenges of creating trust in the organization can prove to be the path to success for organizations. 

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We chat with Matthew Brender on his role at Intel as a Developer Advocate as well as the overall concept of developer advocacy and supporting open source communities. This was an enlightening chat which will really open up some eyes as to the importance of our participation as advocates for every aspect of open source projects.

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In an exciting chat about the rebirth of private cloud, we talk with Nick Colyer and Amy Manley on their 2Ninjas1Blog project, succeeding in a private cloud, and also the challenges of thinking cloud in a virtualized environment. 

We discover some great tips on what the common pitfalls are, and how teams can surpass them to succeed in adopting a private cloud.  Technology is a strong part of the solution, but the central focus is around people first, process second, and technology as the solution to solve the pain points.

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In this episode, we welcome Jonathan Frappier to talk about using Ansible as an automation and configuration management platform.  Jonathan gives is great details on how to get started with Ansible, ways to learn to up your Ansible game, and what the core reasons for automation are which drive the need for configuration management and automated solutions.

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In this episode, we welcome CoreOS founder and CEO, Alex Polvi. We talk about what 2015 at CoreOS was like, and what is upcoming in 2016. We touch on the strengths and challenges of open source, and Alex offers some excellent insight into his vision, that of CoreOS, and how open source is fundamental to delivering on that vision.

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In this episode, we are joined by Chris Wahl and our host Eric Wright as they discuss technology evangelism, learning, personal and corporate growth as a technologist and much more!

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