Adam tells us who he is an why he doesn’t describe himself as an expert in SQL Server. He then goes on to describe his role at Microsoft and his YouTube channel, Guy in a Cube. Cecil asks Adam about his tools of choice for making videos and Adam gives some advice for new content creators. Richie asks Adam to talk about all the great stuff Adam has in his cube. Richie asks if we can expect continued rapid growth for Power BI in 2016. Adam tells us what he’s looking forward to in 2016.

Links

• Guy in a Cube YouTube Channel
• Doug Lane’s T-SQL Level Up Course
• Guy in a Cube – Back to the Future edition
• Lego Star Destroyer
• Lego Super Star Destroyer
• A Futuristic Short Film HD: by Sight Systems
• South Florida Code Camp
• Let’s dev this | Cloud Tour
• South Florida Speaks .NET

Bio

Adam Saxton is a Senior Content Developer for Microsoft’s Business Intelligence products. Prior to that, he supported the Business Intelligence products along with connectivity for SQL Server which included all of the drivers used to communicate with SQL Server. He is based in the Dallas/Ft Worth area in Texas and has been working at Microsoft for over 10 years. Adam has been active in the PASS community and has spoken at PASS Summit and SQL Saturdays. He blogs and for the last year has been producing videos on a YouTube channel where he has the brand “Guy in a Cube”. He is married with two kids, loves playing video and board games when he isn’t working.

Buck gives us a run down of his fascinating career. Cecil asks Buck what was his military experience like? Buck talks about working at NASA and some of his philosophy on computing. Buck elaborates about his time at NASA and explains what it was like working at Kennedy Space Center when the shuttle program was active. Buck tells us how the Space Shuttle got it’s engines, how he uniquely solved a problem with an Amiga, and other stories from his time at NASA. Finally, Buck shares some tips for experienced and novice speakers.

Links

• Buck Woody’s Blog
• Kennedy Space Center
• Commodore PET
• Commodore Amiga 500

Bio

Buck Woody works on the Microsoft Machine Learning and Data Science Team, using data and technology to solve business and science problems. With over thirty years of professional and practical experience in computer technology, he is also a popular speaker at many conferences around the world; the author of over 650 articles and seven books on database and Machine Learning technologies, teaches Database courses and sits on the Data Science Board at the University of Washington, and specializes in data analysis techniques.

Aimee introduces herself and talks about her life as a figure skater. She then shares how she transitioned from athletics to software engineering. She describes her time at the Nashville Software School. The group has a conversation about mentors and how Aimee not only is being mentored but also mentors others. The panel has a discussion about her presentation for Angular Connect and what her preparation was like.

Links

• Sparkpost
• Nashville Software School
• Code Newbie Podcast
• charmCity JS
• Aimee’s Angular Connect presentation
• Angular Air Podcast
• JavaScript Jabber Podcast

Bio

Aimee Knight is a former figure skater, and software engineer at SparkPost. Outside of work, she’s a weekly panelist on the JavaScript Jabber and Angular Air podcasts, and co-organizer of CharmCityJS. In her spare time, she’s usually playing with a new library or technology, running along the Baltimore harbor, or trying out the latest flavor of Kombucha. Find her, and her contagious enthusiasm on Twitter @Aimee_Knight!

This is a special episode that we released earlier in the year to those that subscribe to our newsletter. To get more episodes like this sign up to our newsletter! Thanks for a fantastic 2015. Happy New Year!
Way before we became podcasters we were podcast listeners. In our first bonus episode, what we’ll be calling our Extra episodes, Cecil and Richie go over their top three podcasts and throw in a few more for good measure. You can listen to the episode or you can just review their picks below. Enjoy.

Cecil’s Top Picks

	This Developer’s Life – I love this show because it’s so introspective for me. The topics they cover such as learning, and even the most recent episode, they talk about faith. They’ve also covered motivation, pressure and criticism. Those topics for me, hit so close to home. I’ll go back two or three seasons and I just re-listen to the old episodes over and over again because I just love them that much.
	Get Up and Code – So I’m not a super-athlete like John is really or anything like that but I like working out. It’s another dimension of me that I do when I’m not writing code or doing something involving technology. I like swimming. I like going to the gym. This podcast actually discusses a lot of little techniques, discussion nutrition, different types of workout techniques, and even about the technology behind it and different apps that you can use to help supplement your workouts.
	The Freelancers Show – I really like this show because they discuss a lot of the things you wouldn’t know about freelancing. This show really goes into the different things a freelancer needs to do such as budgeting, how to plan out your projects, how do you bring on new people, how you quote estimates, and acquire new clients. They give really good advice. I love the show and I highly recommended it.

Richie’s Top Picks

	Rachel and Miles Xplain the X-Men – Rachel and Miles have endeavored to go over the entire forty year history of X-Men and explain every issue. This show is funny and honest look at the X-Men comic series from two of it’s biggest fans. It’s so enjoyable to hear people talk about their passions and for these two, it’s the X-Men. The unique way they explain the crazy, somewhat nonsensical history of the X-Men is truly amazing. I love it. You need to check it out.
	WDW Radio – I’ve listened to this show almost from its inception. I enjoy this show because as a kid I really loved Disney. Walt Disney World meant so much to me growing up. So much so that when I was in college, I interned there for two summers. Lou Mongello does such a great job of showing what’s going on in the parks and interviews interesting guests. One would think, “how long can one person talk about for Disney World?” Well for Lou, it’s over nine years. The show has won numerous podcast awards and has some of the highest production values in any podcast.
	.NET Rocks – I’ve been listening to this .Net Rocks from the beginning. Back in the day when .NET just came out, there was no content for .NET except for the documentation but we did have .NET Rocks. Even if you listen to those early episodes they’re still relevant. From a technical perspective, I don’t think you get any better than in Carl Franklin and Richard Campbell they both really know their stuff. But my favorite episodes are the Geek Out episodes. They are just straight wonderful. If you’re a .NET developer and not listening to .NET Rocks, you really should be.

Cecil’s Honorable Mentions

The Web Platform Podcast – I’m a big web guy. I love talking APIs, HTTP, and JavaScript Frameworks. This show talks to a bunch of the people that are in the web space. They’ve talked to the Angular team,  the HTTP2 team, and the people that are creating browsers and web servers. Most of the technology they talk about is upcoming stuff and things we should be paying attention to.

The Changelog – I really like The Changelog because they talk about stuff that I have no idea about. They discuss Ruby, PHP, Go, concurrent systems, and all this other stuff that I typically don’t touch in a regular day. So for me, it’s good to step out of my comfort zone and expierence something that I’m not completely familiar with and really try and see where the other side of the development world is going.

Richie’s Honorable Mentions

	Freakonomics Radio – I think what makes Freakonomics Radio a really great show is that they really get into the kind of the ‘why’ certain things work in the world. They obviously have a more of a business-y, economic way of looking at things, but they always make it interesting. It always makes you step away and think,”Wow. I didn’t think of it that way.” That’s why I really love Freakonomics Radio.
	Hanselminutes – I love the way Scott Hanselman interviews. He gets down to the nitty-gritty of things and always has different and unique guests on the show. It’s not what you expect from a technology podcast. Hanselminutes is definitely one of those unique shows you should check out.
	Nerdist – Nerdist interviews a ton of different celebrities and people in the entertainment industry. Chris Hardwick is really, really good at interviewing people and he just has a conversation and things just really flow. It’s really funny. It’s not safe for work. Doesn’t mean you can’t listen to it at work but just have headphones on. It’s really one of those shows that I really enjoy to pick up.

Special Mention

Serial – Serial is amazing.  Serial is a long-form reporting that investigates a murder of a girl. Throughout the show, they take different aspects of the case and you’ll constantly going back and forth saying, “He did it. He didn’t do it. He didn’t do it. He did do it.” It’s a really great mystery.

Cecil asks Joel about the beginnings of ONETUG (Orlando .NET User Group). Joel tells us how the group got started with his curiosity in the .NET Framework and how the community stepped up to help out. Cecil asks how was Joel able to rally the community prior to the advent of popular social networks. Joel talks about he leveraged contacts, mailing lists, UCF and more to grow the group.

Joel then goes in the how being involved has helped his career and made him much more knowledgeable about aspects of .NET. Cecil asks Joel if his networking helped in guiding him to become an author. Joel tells us about how his mentor, Ray West, got him into writing.

Cecil asks what technology has got Joel exited right now. We get into a discussion about the Maker movement and IoT. We then get into a discussion on fitness as Joel talks to us about boxing and breaking through mental barriers. Joel makes sure to warn his kids to be prepared for the zombie apocalypse. We then get into a discussion about working remote for Xamarin.

Links

• ONETUG
• Xamarin
• Mono Project
• Xamarin Evolve
• Gym Rat Boxing

Bio

Software Engineer at Xamarin. He is the founder of the Orlando .NET User Group, and an author of several books. Joel is also a functional programming enthusiast. Joel is excited about  data science, machine learning, the simplification of hardware, hacking, and connectivity. More on Twitter @joelmartinez and his blog at codecube.net.

Cecil and David talk about the amount of information on the internet and how we need to find better ways to filter information. David discusses how he feels how some social apps are creating a generation of vanity. The panel discusses the difficulty of remote work and the need for personal human interaction. Richie asks David how was the transition from developer to manager. Richie shares how he went from developer to manager then from manager to developer again. David shares how being a manager is emotional work and it’s something you can’t just leave at work. David shares how he’s taken up golf and explains his love of the movie going experience.

Bio

David Haney is the Core team Engineering Manager at Stack Overflow. He practices servant leadership by solving problems and improving processes. Previously he was a lead developer on Fanatics’ e-commerce platform which hosts over 10,000 websites including the NFLShop – The Official Online Shop of the NFL and NBAStore.com – The Official NBA Store. David is the creator of Dache, an open source distributed caching framework. His spare time is spent brewing and drinking beer, playing video games, and watching movies at old-school one-screen theatres with his wife.

Micheal tell us the story of how he and Slava met at college. Cecil asks how they got into open source database space. Micheal and Slava talks their mission to improve the usability of infrastructure software. Cecil asks why they decided to build RethinkDB and what problems it specifically tried to solve. Slava talks about the rise in event driven frameworks and the lack of databases in that space.

Cecil asks about building a company on an open source database. Michael shares how it has been advantages for them to build their product in the open on Github. Micheal continues on to talk how community is an important aspect to open source. Michael shares how important it is for their company to interact with the users. Michael and Slava both share stories about their involvement in open source before working on Rethinkdb. We then discuss on hardware thinking and handmade craft. Cecil then asks about startup culture and how does it compare to Silicon Valley the show.

Links

RethinkDB
Slava Blog
ReQL
RethinkDB Slack
Silicon Valley HBO
Coupa Caffe
DIY Electron Microscope

Bio

Slava Akhmechet was a systems engineer in the financial industry, working on scaling custom database systems. Slava is a frequent speaker and a blogger. He blogs about his interests in open source, developer tools, building delightful user experiences, and distributed systems on defmacro.org. He is currently on leave from a Ph.D. program in Computational Neuroscience at Stony Brook University.

Michael Glukhovsky is passionate about user experience and building infrastructure software. Prior to RethinkDB, Michael attended Stony Brook University and specialized in human-computer interaction.

David explains how he got involved with technology. The then tells of the difficulties he had transitioning from Canadian to the American culture. David then shares how Stack Overflow hires its developers and how only one in two hundred fifty applicants get hired. David also explains the difficulties that Stack Overflow has had to become more diverse. David explains how Stack Overflow changed the way they wrote job postings to encourage more women applicants. David then discusses his home brewing setup. Cecil then asks David what are the different kinds of beers? David then shares his experience with brewing his own beers and how it doesn’t always turn out the way you expect.

Links

Diversity Is Really Freaking Hard – HaneyCodes
Why Stack Overflow is a Good Workplace for Women

Bio

David Haney is the Core team Engineering Manager at Stack Overflow. He practices servant leadership by solving problems and improving processes. Previously he was a lead developer on Fanatics’ e-commerce platform which hosts over 10,000 websites including the NFLShop – The Official Online Shop of the NFL and NBAStore.com – The Official NBA Store. David is the creator of Dache, an open source distributed caching framework. His spare time is spent brewing and drinking beer, playing video games, and watching movies at old-school one-screen theatres with his wife.

Devin tells a story about how some Microsoft offices block Azure. Cecil brings up how the cloud scares some IT staff. Devin talks about embracing the opportunity to learn PowerShell. Devin further discusses his role as a trainer and how he leverages Azure virtual machines for his students. Cecil asks how does one choose what to focus on. Richie shares how we use Power BI for analyze the metrics for the podcast. Devin tells us the story of how he went from working at Blockbuster Video to learning SQL Server. Devin shares an interesting story on how his brother didn’t hire him. Devin tells us about the Pragmatics Works Foundation that helps military veterans to find work in technology.

Links

PowerShell
Power BI
Pragmatics Works Foundation

Bio

Devin Knight a Microsoft MVP and the Training Director at Pragmatic Works Consulting. He is an author of six SQL Server books and speaks at conferences like PASS Summit, PASS Business Analytics Conference, SQL Saturdays and Code Camps. He is also a contributing member to the PASS Business Intelligence Virtual Chapter. Making his home in Jacksonville, FL, Devin is the Vice President of the local users group (JSSUG). He can be found online at devinknightsql.com and on twitter at @knight_devin

Richie asks Brent what’s a MCM (Microsoft Certified Master not Man Crush Monday) and what was his journey to becoming one. Cecil and Brent discuss the relevance of certifications today. Brent describes what it’s like being a popular speaker and how it adds anxiety to every presentation. Brent tells he became a great speaker and describes his pre-speech rituals. Finally, Brent tells how he got married in Vegas in a red convertible Mustang.

Links

Brent Ozar Unlimited
eater.com

Bio

Brent Ozar loves to make SQL Server faster and more reliable.  He created sp_Blitz® and sp_AskBrent®, and he loves sharing knowledge at BrentOzar.com. He holds a bunch of certifications and awards including the Microsoft MVP award.