The conversation starts with Charles describing his journey into software and starting in technical support. He then shares how he started to learn Ruby and how the community was instrumental in supporting him on his journey. Charles then describes how he became a freelance developer and what it was like talking to his wife about it. The conversations winds up with Charles sharing how his successful podcasting career started.

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Charles Max Wood is a podcaster, speaker, and the CEO of Devchat.tv. He co-hosts the Ruby Rogues, JavaScript Jabber, and Adventures in Angular podcasts.

He also puts on a large number of online conferences about various topics of interest to computer programmers.

When he’s not coding or podcasting, he’s reading to his kids, watching soccer, or finding new ways to automate parts of his business.

He currently lives in Utah with his wife and 5 children.

Brian starts out with telling us about how his love for computing begin with his first Atari computer. He then talks to us about the various jobs he has before starting Kairos. Cecil ask Brian as what moment did he know it was the right time for him the launch a startup. Brian talks about Kairos, the problems they’re trying to solve and their vision for the future. Cecil ask Brian to share some of the interesting ways customers are making use of their APIs.

Brian used to work for Apple during the Jobs era. Cecil asks Brian what he learned about business from being around Steve Jobs. We then get into a discussion about why Brian decided to make Miami the home for his company. Brian gives us a run down on why Florida is a great place for startups.

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Brian Brackeen is founder & CEO of Kairos, a Miami based Human Analytics platform providing face recognition and emotion analysis to businesses with developer friendly APIs and SDKs. Kairos is an Endeavor company, and currently services more than ten thousand clients in 70 countries — processing millions of faces each month. Prior to founding Kairos, Brian served as a Senior Project Manager for Apple Inc., and before Apple he was a Senior Managing Consultant for IBM.

In addition to his work at Kairos, Brian lectures extensively around the world on entrepreneurship, code, digital economy, AI and machine learning— and participates in mentorship programs for organizations like Girls Who Code, Black Girls Code and School District of Miami Dade County.

Luis talks to us about how the advice of a family member got him into a career in technology. He talks to us about his past in Venezuela and also about having a child in the United States. We discuss moving to the US and balancing cultures for our children.

Luis talks to us about getting his first job as a student at FIU to working at Citrix. He also tell us about the importance of the cloud for software at Citrix. Then we then dive into talking about Luis’ books with Manning.

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Luis Atencio (@luijar) is a Staff Software Engineer for Citrix Systems in Ft. Lauderdale, FL. He has a B.S. and an M.S. in Computer Science and now works full-time developing and architecting web applications using Java, PHP, and JavaScript platforms. Luis is also very involved in the community and has presented on several occasions at conferences and local meet-ups. When he is not coding, Luis writes a developer blog at http://luisatencio.net focused on software engineering as well as several magazine articles for PHPArch and DZone. Luis is also the author of Functional Programming in JavaScript (Manning 2016), Functional PHP (Leanpub), as well as co-author for RxJS in Action (Manning 2016).

Joe introduces himself and shares how he got his start in technology. Joe then reminisces about his first technical job, his first programming languages, and how the community has grown over the past 20 years. Then Joe talks about starting three different companies and how he sold each one of them. Cecil then asks Joe to share how he transitioned from small business owner to Microsoft employee. Richie then inquires Joe’s experience with playing in a heavy metal band, recording, and album and touring. The panel then discusses their favorite playlists and what is their favorite music to listen to while working.

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Joe Raio is a Microsoft Technical Evangelist based in Miami, Florida. As a technical evangelist, Joe primarily focuses on presentations leveraging the Microsoft Stack focused on website development and cloud technology. Prior to becoming an evangelist for Microsoft, Joe successfully owned and operated three small businesses centered around website development and marketing. To learn more about Joe, visit his website at http://joeraio.com

This episode starts off with Kathleen telling us a little about her history being a Microsoft MVP, traveling, and her C# workshops. We then get into a discussion on where her passion for community comes from. She talks about the programming languages she’s learned over the years, and even talks about programming with Clipper. Kathleen also shares with us how she’s been able to stay relevant in her career.

We then get to hear about the lineage of programmers in Kathleen’s family. She also talks a bit about the Turing School for programmers and how her younger son’s reviews pull requests for homework. Moving forward Kathleen talks to us about her workshops, teaching techniques and going to conferences.

Kathleen also gives us a fun description of the Winter season in Denver, Colorado.

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Kathleen Dollard loves to code and loves to talk about code. Along the way she’s an architect, a “manager”, a teacher, a writer, a speaker, and hopefully still a fun person! She’s written tons of articles, a book, and spoken around the world. She’s the Director of Engineering for ROI Code, previously Real and has videos in both the Pluralsight and WintellectNow libraries.

We start off with Annie talking to us about her love for books, animation, and storytelling. Annie talks to us about some of her favorite illustrators. Then we get into a discussion about the emotional connection between an artist and their work. Cecil asks Annie about her first drawings. Following that, Annie talks about working for a technology startup. Annie walks us through her role at RethinkDB, and also tells us the origin story of the Thinker. We talk about her book, “The Three Things”. We also get into the role that books play in her life.

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annie_ruygt_bioAnnie is an illustrator living and creating in Napa, CA. She has worked with clients like RethinkDB, Twitter, and Let’s Mend, as well as published a few children’s books. She loves telling stories and cherishes their ability to help us discover ourselves.

Arturo introduces himself and shares how he and his family left Venezuela for Miami. He then talks about how he got started in technology with the CS50x course. Cecil inquires what CS50x is and how Arturo got involved with it. The pannel then chats about the Internet of Things and the Kickstarter project Jewelbots. Arturo then shares about working at Harvard and what it’s like being there everyday.

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arturo_real_bioArturo J. Real was born in Venezuela and lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where he works as a project manager and producer of Harvard’s Introduction to Computer Science. CS50. He is an advocate for volunteer work at all ages and in raising awareness of and action towards environmental causes.

We start of this episode with Frank giving us some background on early days learning programming on an Apple II and the BASIC programming language. Frank also tells us about some of the books he dug into. We then get into talking about the first app that Frank wrote and also some insight into this Calca app. Frank goes into starting a company and moving to India to work on a project. Cecil asks Frank about how he put together his plan for writing his own apps for a living. Frank tells us about struggle to profitability. Cecil asks Frank to talk to us about his latest app, Continuous.

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frank_krueger_bioFrank is an independent mobile developer living in Seattle, WA. He started work as an embedded systems engineer, moved on to be a web developer, and eventually found happiness as an iOS developer. He has written iCircuit, Calca, and Continuous. All the while, Frank has enjoyed releasing open source projects and contributing as much as he can to the software development community. His programming interests include computer graphics, simulation, programming languages, and artificial intelligence. When he’s not at his computer, you can usually find him hiking around some mountain or sleeping in a tent by a river.

Part two of our conversation with Jessie starts with a discussion about Angular and TypeScript. Cecil asks Jessie how he manages to learn new languages and technology. The conversation then goes into how the technical interviewing process is flawed. We then talk to Jessie about his podcast “Yet Another Podcast”. Jessie then talks about his love for books and music. The convo wraps up with Jessie giving some tips for developers to have a long career.

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jesse_liberty_bioJessie starts the conversation by introducing himself and describing what it was like when he started in the technology industry. Cecil shares about the first book he ever had about programming, a book that Jesse wrote. Jesse then talked about his time at Microsoft and what it was like working under Scott Guthrie. Cecil then asks about why Jesse when back to independent consulting and how he finds clients. The episode ends with Jesse telling us a consulting horror story.

Jessie starts the conversation by introducing himself and describing what it was like when he started in the technology industry. Cecil shares about the first book he ever had about programming, a book that Jesse wrote. Jesse then talked about his time at Microsoft and what it was like working under Scott Guthrie. Cecil then asks about why Jesse when back to independent consulting and how he finds clients. The episode ends with Jesse telling us a consulting horror story.

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Jessie starts the conversation by introducing himself and describing what it was like when he started in the technology industry. Cecil shares about the first book he ever had about programming, a book that Jesse wrote. Jesse then talked about his time at Microsoft and what it was like working under Scott Guthrie. Cecil then asks about why Jesse when back to independent consulting and how he finds clients. The episode ends with Jesse telling us a consulting horror story.