Techstrong TV – January 7, 2024

Hey, be careful what you say. AI may be using it to train their models. They may even be using this.

You are watching Text Drunk Gang. Hi everyone, happy Tuesday. Happy New Year to you.

Happy, happy. It's Alan Shimo for Techstrong and we are thrilled to be back for a new year of Textron Gang. We've got a lot of plans to shake things up a little this year.

Keep it relevant though, and keep you guys out there interested and make this worthwhile for you. Um, on that note, we've got a great bunch of things to talk about today and we have a great gang to talk about them. Let me introduce you to them.

First of all, joining us. He's got his guitars back. I'm glad to see.

I thought we were gonna lose the guitars for the beginning of the year. He's, uh, futur, uh, VP analyst, Mitch Ashley. Hey Mitch.

Welcome. Happy New Year, man. Happy 2025.

Yeah. Kicking the year off right with Techron Gang. Yeah.

2025, right? We're a quarter of a way through this century. Most of us here, with the exception of you, Bonnie mm-hmm.

Lived through much more than a quarter of the last century. That's quite a expansive time. And, um, well, there's something to be said for getting older, I guess.

But anyway, um, welcome Mitch. It's great to have you on joining us. Also, he's also back home.

I know he was wandering around a little bit during the holiday season, but he's home in Ohio. He's the, uh, founder, CEO of Tech Field Day, part of the Fu Room group. Our friend Steven Foskett.

Hey Steven, how are you? Um, you know what, I really miss Textron gang. I'm really glad to be back.

I love talking about this stuff with you guys and, uh, thanks for having me back. You know, look, if you wanna do more days here, you're more than welcome to, you know? I see.

Be careful what you wish for Don. Don't miss it that much. Take it easy there.

How? Alright. At the invites in your calendar, Steve.

Just throwing it out at you. But Steven, it's good to have you on and happy New year. Happy New Year to you.

Alrighty. Joining us. He's home in Harrison, New York.

Uh, but he's been with us all throughout our Chief Content officer and editorial driver at Textron Gang, Mike Ard. Hey, Mike, how are you? I am well and here's a positive note for the deep freeze, but I think if I've got my calculations correct, it's less than 45 days to when pitchers and catches report for spring drink.

Oh wow. That's right. That's right.

Exactly. Down here in Florida too. Looking forward to that though.

We still have football season. Nope. Football season's been, let's not call football.

Mm-hmm. Let me turn now to our sustainability analyst and editor joining us here live in our Boca Ratone Studios. Bonnie Schneider.

Hey Bonnie, how are You? Yeah, I'm great. Great to be back as well.

It's good to have you here as always. Yeah, Bonnie's usually on our Tuesday morning shows if you catch your or catch Tuesday morning. com.

com. That's right. We have the domain back there too, so check that out.

Alright, gang members, big story today, uh, we're gonna kick off on the A block is, uh, anthropic has been making a lot of noise lately about getting out in front of all these claims and there, and I do mean all these claims of, of copyright IP infringement and, and bully philanthropic. But quite frankly, when, when is the rest of that industry gonna line up? Mike, let's kick it over to you and we'll go from there.

Yeah, it looks like a little progress is finally being made, and it may not be everything everybody wants just yet, but Anthropic has agreed through the a lawsuit court case that involved the music industry where they're gonna use their controls to limit the, a number of instances where the output might have lyrics in at that point or copyrighted. Um, the case is still proceeding on whether or not it is very used to use copyrighted content to train an AI model. And that's still a hot debate, but it was interesting, uh, from what I see at least, that there was some movement towards some middle ground here that maybe folks can get around.

Because if we can use the controls to limit the output, then we don't have to worry necessarily as much as the owners of copyrights being hurt by people who are using their content without compensating them. It's a theory, but there are flaws in the theory. A couple of them come to mind immediately.

One is, it's not clear the controls actually work. Um, there's been some studies reported that, um, and philanthropic itself has shown that the LLMs will do everything they can, they'll work their way around the controls. And secondarily, um, well let's say that somebody does wind up using lyrics or some other copyrighted content in something else.

Do I, who calls the up and says, you know, pull that out and replace that. And, um, you know, the court says they'll enforce it, but how do I actually like get that repaired and, uh, 'cause I don't think philanthropic controls exactly who uses its output. So I don't know, Al let's start with you, but what's your take on what's going on here?

So I'm gonna put my Juris doctor hat mm-hmm. Juris doctorate hat on here and look at this from a legal perspective, really. So you mentioned what happens when they, when they're guilty, what happens when they do it?

Well, in, in legal terms, we talk remedies, right? And there's various remedies. One remedy is, and we see this in a lot of legal cases, is, Hey, I'm entitled to com compensatory damages.

Money, money makes the world go round, right? And so you use my stuff and now you gotta pay me, well, how much should I pay you? We could probably come up with a scale to measure the pound of flesh there.

Number two, what you are describing, Mike, sounds more like a specific performance type of remedy where I want you to remove cease and desist and remove that from your offerings. And I may or may not also want compensatory damages for what you've done so to date with my ip with my property. So a little bit of both.

That's gonna be, as you mentioned, that's going to be hard. Specific performance is always the hardest of, of the, of the remedies to, to do. Um, or do we set up some sort of, I mean, much like the music industry's done with Spotify, right?

And, and the other streamers going back to, uh, Mitch, what was the original music streaming one that broke everything with an n Napster. Napster. Napster, the Napsters, or, I'm not Mitch, but I am No, I I know you're not Mitch Steven, I haven't gone like, you know, it's only been a couple weeks.

I remember he has the beard. You don't, he has a ponytail and guitars and guitars, right? You, you know, uh, but that being said, you know, do we set up some sort of governing?

And I think that might be, it's gonna take some time, but that might be the solution that we do set up some sort of governing board here with, because I, Mike, I agree with you. I don't think you could take it out of the learning process. I, I think that's artificial and it's gonna hurt the whole thing.

But I think companies should be compensated and there should be a scale put in place. And I think that's the way to do it. It's just gonna take time.

You know, when I was in law school, um, one of our prof, one of my professors co taught Con Law, um, and he, he had come from Stanford where he taught William Requi. He was the con law professor for William Rehnquist, chief Justice Rehnquist and Sandra Day O'Connor, that's how old I am. Um, he was much older by the time he got to me, he was on his last legs.

I can tell you some, well, I'm not gonna tell you some funny stories, but anyway, but he always said, when it comes to technologies like this, it takes the courts and society three to five to seven years to catch up to technology. And so, and technology is constantly, doesn't stand still, it's moving forward. So I wouldn't be surprised if it takes us three to five years to come to grips or even more with this whole, how, how are the AI or the large, let's call 'em the hyper LLMs, the Claudes, the chat GPTs, the Geminis, how are they going to compensate?

Because in Inev, in inevitably they are using IP that doesn't belong to them. And they, and to think that we're gonna somehow cut that out and stop that, I think is you're kidding yourself. It's, it's already baked in.

Just what's the comp and, and, you know, how do you set up a recording Industry of America kind of scale thing that get compensates people for their I ai uh, for their IP being used? Well, we've talked about the troll topic before, right? The, uh, patent trolls.

Mm-hmm. And the copyright trolls, much of that, um, we're already seeing in the code space, companies like tab nine coming out with provenance tools where they will tell you, they'll analyze your code base and say, where did all this come from? And did some of it come from this repository on GitHub?

Is it somewhere else? So I I, I expect we're gonna see a lot of those kinds of tools available on the market, which is gonna essentially putting kind of weapons in the hands of the trolls to come after for copyright violations. So I'm not sure if that's the same, you know, if that has the same power behind it that patent violations do.

But, uh, you would know better than I, but certainly we're gonna have the tools in hand very quickly to tell us, is this copyright material? I think we would sign up for a service that told us that our content was showing up somewhere else, and it got there through some sort of an AI engine. I think that would be a useful capability.

And, But that service already exists and all this stuff already exists and it's not doing anything. And I think that, that, I think that's the saddest thing. This, this, this story is sad.

This whole situation is sad because essentially, as Alan said, um, the horses out of the barn, AI has been trained on legit material as well as copyrighted material. It's in there. Um, the, this court case, if you look at the details of this, this specific case we're talking about with anthropic and recording industry, um, you know, they're not even saying that they're going to not produce things.

What they're saying is, uh, they've got a filter in front of the AI that's gonna check for plagiarism and basically kick it back if it's plagiarized. This is some weak thought. Now, I do think that Anthropic deserves a pat on the back for being ahead of this thing.

I also think that the reason they went after Anthropic first is because they're in the eu and because they seemingly care more about copyright than the rest of these people. But the truth is that none of these AI systems give a darn about copyright. They've all taken every copyrighted material.

And, and now we're in a situation where people like us are sitting here on talking into cameras saying, the horse is outta the barn. There's nothing you can do about it. We just gotta accept it.

Well, that sinks. I hate that. And you hate that too, because, you know, the truth is, um, you know, I I actually just looked at a, a a a system that does this.

Um, actually I was talking to a company called Copy Leaks. They were a plagiarism checker. They now have an AI checker as well.

Um, this stuff is incredibly widespread. I ran some Textron stuff through it and found, uh, not AI generated ripoffs, just blatant ripoffs across the internet all over the place. com and Security Boulevard stuff from Gestalt it that I wrote, uh, being illegally used, improperly used all over the internet.

We've done nothing about that. We have the ability to do nothing about that. It just is completely rampant.

And now that's gonna be happening in the AI space that stinks. Welcome to 2025, where people rip off your stuff and there's no penalty. Well, I, Steve and I echo and agree with you, right?

As a publisher and a creator of content, you know, it costs us, I don't have to tell you, it costs money to create content and salaries, time, everything. And I'd like to be compensated for that. com, you know, to train their, their, their, uh, models on DevOps.

And I don't even know how many articles that have been on Security Boulevard over the years on the security bloggers network and everything, and I'm looking for checks. I I, you know, it's, it, we paid for that, that IP for that material to be created. I should be compensated for it.

I've had that happen to me. I wrote two books and I've definitely seen passages of my books that people have used, and they don't credit me for it. You know, if you sent, they'll recognize it and no, they don't even, and especially if it's another country that's happened to me.

Yeah. Oh yeah. Um, so I I, one of the models that seems to at least try to make an effort with that is perplexity.

You go on there, they will give you footnotes from, you know, which sources, right? And I think Gemini should do that and, and, and, and definitely chat GBT because they make up a lot of stuff. So I think I'd like to know their sources At at least citing a source and attributing attribution.

But I'm a attribution's fine and dandy. I want cold art cash. Yeah, you're right.

I'll be honest with you. I want money. Oh my goodness.

I wanna be compensated. So, So what is your assessment of the fair use argument that they're trying to make on content? It's a legal argument.

There's an argument to be made. I don't think it's a winning argument, right? Mm-hmm.

Um, fair use has some very specific, usually use case scenarios and patterns that it'll apply to. I don't think so. It, it's one thing if you're gonna tell me you took a song, here comes the sun, right?

And you used that, but you didn't use any of the lyrics or melody or anything like that, but you used it to train my AI about, you know, how the sun can brighten your day or whatever, right? It's another thing to to, to kind of, you see lyrics that are getting spit out that appear to have come from that song. The first could be considered fair use.

I think the second is IP infringement. The latter is IP infringement. And, um, but you know what, here's what I wanna avoid.

It shouldn't take you hiring lawyers to do this stuff, right? There's gotta be a system in place, and maybe it's through technology that says, Hey, this is clearly from that. Pay the man, pay the woman, pay the person, pay the entity.

This is how much you should pay based upon that violation. And that's what we need to get to, you know, attribution's fine, but it don't pay the bills. Yeah.

And, um, and I'm, and I'm speaking selfishly now, right? As, as a publisher, we, we do this too, Steven, we, we don't use a a program yet for AI stuff, but we try to track people who are reprinting our articles without permission and stuff. And, you know, some are good about it when you write 'em and some aren't.

Um, but we'll see. I mean, but a as someone else said, I think it was Bonnie said, you know, kudos to philanthropic for, for jumping on this. Also, wanna point out that in this instant case that we're talking about, they're only talking about go forward, not backward looking.

Right? So they're saying, well, what we did is what we did, but going forward, we're gonna be better. Yeah.

Well, they're also saying that they're outta data anyway, so they took it all already and they don't, you know, they're complaining that they now have to rely on synthetic data to train their AI models. 'cause they can't get access to any more new data for free, Apparently. Yeah, absolutely.

They're not even using, uh, I mean, basically they, yeah, all the data that's that's been scraped has been scraped now. And, uh, you know, back to Alan's point about, you know, that's how it's right. They've, they've already taken it.

It's not like they can go back and, uh, you know, clean that up or get that outta the model or something. Now they're gonna be using synthetic data. Actually, the synthetic data angle is interesting though, because they could actually develop a clean AI using only synthetic data and it would be clean of any copyrighted material because it would be only trained on the output of other ais.

And that would, that reminds me of, remember in the eighties, uh, the, uh, BIOS cloning for the IBM PC clones, um, you know, that clean room, essentially, it's the same kind of thing. So you've got the dirty AI that's generating, um, fresh training data, and then you've got the clean AI that doesn't have any access to any copyrighted material from anyone or any scraped material from anyone. And, um, that would be really cool.

Um, and also pretty terrible, but cool and terrible. And, and we would still need to, uh, I think have it, uh, check to make sure that it's not, uh, you know, plagiarizing. 'cause these things are statistical models and statistically they're going to come up with plagiarized stuff.

I mean, you know, I've got a, a William Shakespeare quote on my mug. I bet every AI is gonna be able to, uh, to generate this quote spontaneously simply because it's out there in the world so widely. It's part of our consciousness and our civilization.

And then to the fair use argument, I find that pretty interesting too, because if I create, well, first off, parody is protected by the US Constitution. Thank God the founders had a sense of humor. Uh, they seem to have.

And, um, you know, so if I create a parody song, it's completely protected. If I create a derivative work that is substantially transforms the work, it's also protected. And I could see somebody arguing that text generated from an AI based on, um, you know, for example, in the case, in this case, you know, specific musician's lyrics or style would be protected speech, um, under the First Amendment.

I could see that being a legit argument. Uh, you know, Under, under parody. I think it would be, Well, not even parody though, but just in the style of, because I mean, I can, I can write in the style of Mike Baard.

Well, I, I honestly couldn't do a good job of it, but I could try and, and Mike wouldn't have anything to say about it because frankly, um, you know, that's just me expressing as long as I didn't copy 'em. Um, I'll give you an example on that. You know, we have our Predict 2025 show, which by the way, we move from Thursday the ninth to Tuesday the 14th, because Thursday the ninth is a national day of morning year in the US for President Jimmy Carter.

Um, but to the promo for that show, the can't be promo as we do every year. This year's theme was, uh, the beat goes on Sonny and Cher, and I actually asked the AI and AI to write me a script in the style of the Sonny and Cher Show featuring a guy in gal, you know, similar to Sonny and Cher talking about Predict 2025. And if you catch the promo, it's on LinkedIn and all over it's Kim, our COO, uh, Kim Parker, and, and myself.

I'm Sonny, if you couldn't tell, but, um, but if you catch it, it is, it's written in the style. It's the same silly jokes. She makes fun of Sonny Sonny's the straight guy, you know, and, and it did a great job of, in the style of Sonny and Cher.

Um, and I worried, is this too close? Right? But it's parody and it's protected under parody anyway, but yeah, now I, Steven, I agree with you there a hundred percent.

Some of it always comes down to how, what is the commercial use case behind the usage of the thing, right? In your case, you're not really driving, you know, a, a, a subscription service on your parody of Sunny and Cher, but a lot of the people who are using the output from Anthropic or Open AI or whatever, are you are incorporating that, that into a product or a service that they're selling. And that's a much different issue.

Yeah. And actually, that's another point too, is that a lot of the cases that have been brought have actually been rejected because the, the plaintiffs failed to show any Standing, um, damage Well, that there wasn't any harm, Right? Any damages.

Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah.

Something to be said there too. Anyway, guys, we, we've exhausted our time limit on this one. We're gonna take a break here on text on Gang.

We're gonna come back and, and Bonnie's gonna give us a look at sustainability in 2025. Before we do, we should mention, you know, if you are watching this and you'd like your company sponsoring Text and Gang, we do have sponsorships available. com and we'll have somewhere contact you.

Alrighty. We'll be right back. Modernize your business to fuel innovation and elevate customer experiences with the builder community.

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Hi everyone. Welcome back to the Techstrong Gang. Well, it's a new year and we have new rules in effect for corporate sustainability reporting, particularly in Europe where there's mandates now being enforced.

The data was being gathered last year, but it's all due this year. So I took a closer look at what we are facing this year and some immediate deadlines that are coming up, um, in 2025. Hi everyone, I'm Bonnie Schneider with your Ecotech Analyst Insights.

It's January, 2025. And the European Union's corporate sustainability reporting directive, CRSD is now in effect, and it's not just for those overseas. The rule also applies to international firms with major European operations.

Given this broad scope, many industries will be impacted, including the tech sector under scrutiny data centers, as they now consume an estimated three to 4% of global electricity tech companies like Microsoft, Google and Amazon must comply with these rules while managing their growing AI operations. This means carefully tracking power usage, water consumption, and heat management. Plus tech companies based in America face the additional pressure of complying with evolving US rules.

Here in the states. The adoption of new SEC requirements for sustainability moved forward last year, but they are currently on hold, pending legal review. These rules would demand publicly traded companies to report their greenhouse gas emissions and climate related risks impacting their finances.

The momentum for sustainability reporting is growing for many large organizations. 2025 marks a new era of mandatory compliance. So as you can see, global tech companies will be faced with this challenge of mandatory sustainability reporting.

The biggest issue from the research that I've done is this Scope three aspect where you're responsible for reporting all of the emissions from the supply chain. And that is extensive. So I think there's gonna be a lot of trial and error going back and forth with what works and what doesn't.

But another emergence just over the past few years are these new tech tools that companies can use to effectively measure, um, emissions. And, and there's also lots of a touch and go with that as well to see what works. So it's an ongoing, evolving, uh, situation.

Absolutely. I, I think it's gonna be interesting. You know, we, we had the election certified yesterday, new administration coming in, and, and let's face it, these people are not big fans of government regulation.

And, you know, how is this going to now a lot of this regulation comes out of the eu mm-hmm. And, and the EU could say, Hey, you do what you want, but when you're over here or it impacts here, you're responsible for it. Uh, it's gonna be an interesting Yeah.

Kind of head banging here a bit as they, as we figure this out. Um, you know, the drill baby drill crowd versus sustainability. Agreed.

So, um, I think we're in for some turbulent times. Yeah. And even right now, just using the term ESG, um, has become con controversial for different and sustainable funds of things like that.

It, that, that what you mentioned that's happening now. Yeah. Bonnie, I'm curious, what's your assessment of the readiness of companies to do that reporting from?

It's Fun to ask Mitch, because I just was working on that, uh, over the holiday break, and I can tell you most of them are not ready. I, I, I know that's true because of, that's scope three aspect of tracking emissions throughout the supply chain. Most of the people I talk to are, are by default are in sustainability.

So, you know, they're aware of it, but, um, I would say they're not. And, and that's one of the problems why there, there have been delays in this reporting. Alan mentioned, you know, the new administration that there's, there was approval for reporting out of the state of California, but that's faced legal challenges, so that's on hold as well.

Um, so the readiness and the challenges, I think is, is gonna be an issue and delay it this year will be a telling year to see how different companies do their reporting, what is believed to be accurate reporting, and, um, you know, and, and then get guidance from there. I would think that somebody's writing an AI agent to generate their report for this thing somewhere. So maybe it'll bit easier If it's right, if it's true.

We'll see, we'll see. It's gonna be interesting times. Anyway, great story on that.

com, excuse me. Um, and that is the specific domain here within kind of the tech strong jungle for the sustainability work that Bonnie does. And, you know, this story's on there, but there's a ton of great stuff on there.

And again, go, go check that out. com. And as I mentioned earlier at the break, Bonnie's always looking for new topics, working with potential sponsors who are concerned about sustainability and Echo tech, and, uh, should check that out there.

Let's take a break here on Tech Drunk tv. We're gonna come back and talk about a loss for not just the cyber industry, but for the whole tech industry this past week. You're watching Tech Drunk Inc.

Hey, everyone, we're back. You know, unfortunately part of life is dealing with loss and death. And you know, as I've gotten older, I've come to realize that, and I think that's part of getting older, is coming to terms with one's own mortality.

But it still hurts. Nevertheless, when you lose good people and friends and people you respect, and especially when you lose people who go way before their time, way before their time. Um, we lost one this week.

Uh, a friend of mine, Amit Yuran, I first, uh, Amit, in case you didn't know am I say Amit, but you know, my Hebrew's a little off in Israel. They would pronounce it Amit. But Ahed, I've known for 25 years maybe.

Um, he was the, uh, CEO chairman of Tenable most recently. He took a leave of absence a couple months ago as he was battling cancer, which we were all thought that this was a very treatable form of cancer. And unfortunately, he lost his battle this, this past week and 54 years old, which is just way too young.

Um, let me just tell you a little bit about Amit, though. Amit is one of three brothers. Um, I'm actually very good friends with his youngest brother, Dov, who I speak with, pretty norm regularly on tax, at conferences and so forth.

All three brothers, their Israeli born, came to this country as young, young, young boys. Um, Amit went to West Point, right? And served in the Army.

Um, he then started a company called Rip Tech, which Mitch, I don't know if you remember Rip Tech, but in many ways Rip Tech was the first kind of real MSSP, right? They were doing managed securities. And I remember when I found out about it was like, what a cool idea, because most, you know, later on it's still secure.

We tried to pivot to win MSSB model, and a lot of what we did there, I, I took from what Amit did at Rip Tech Semantic, I believe bought Rip Tech early on. And Amit, you know, when after fulfilling his thing went his way, Amit and his brother, I think, and this is the brother, I don't know, EAD was the CFO at Rip Tac. And, um, Amit went to work, you know, with his West Point background, and he went to work in the government for the Bush administration.

Uh, and this was an interesting time. We didn't, you know, there were three people that were key cybersecurity people that helped define the federal government's role in cybersecurity. There was a guy named Howard Schmidt, who, if you don't know, you should, and he passed away.

Howard probably passed away at least five years ago, but man, he was a giant, a giant in this industry. Second guy's, a guy named Richard Clark. Richard A.

Clark Richard's written a ton of books. He's, thank God still with us. And, um, if you ever get a chance to see him speak it as he does speak at many security shows and everything.

Yeah, oh, all the time there. Um, just, again, a, a treasure. And Amit, Amit started a lot of the cyber intelligence stuff for the, for the government under Bush.

And, um, just did great work there, left there and started a company called NetWitness, which again was kind of early. So Dove, his younger brothers, started one of the first threat intelligence companies, and NetWitness was kind of that, but more RSA itself bought Net witness. And then sort of in that reverse merger kinda role that happens in the world of tech and startups, a meet became CEO of RSA, he hand, we ran the whole thing because Cream rises to the top.

He was that kind of person. He was an amazing human. Like I, you know, I spoke to him a lot about cyber, obviously, but just connecting with him at a black hat or an RSA conference or any place where you ran into a meet, he was a real person.

He wasn't a stuffed shirt as much as he accomplished. He was just a regular person. And especially if you hung out with him and Dove, you know, his brothers in there drinking, and oh my God, we, there were good times.

And, um, and then he, he left RSA and, and you know, Ron Gula friend Ron left, uh, tenable, and they brought a meet in as his successor there. And he took Tenable to heights that, frankly, Ron did it right, bigger and better. Even he did, did an amazing job because he was just such a quality individual in, in every sense of the word.

And, um, it, I, I was personally shocked when I, when I saw the news, I didn't even write anything online. 'cause I didn't wanna say anything until I knew this was not some oaks. I texted Dove and, you know, verify this.

And, um, you know, my heart goes out to the, their whole family, 54 years old. You know, you wonder why I, you know, I've, we all wondered this, why does God do these things, right? I, when I went to St.

John's, um, university many, many, many years ago, we were lucky enough to have Eli Wezel just before Eli Wezel was quite as famous as he became a guest lecture in one of our theology classes. And I remember someone asked him, you know, why does God do these things? Was God sleeping in Auschwitz?

Why, why would God allow Auschwitz, right? Or any of the concentration camps? How could there be a God?

How could we respect a God who, who does those things? And and it's the same thing here. Why does God, if there is a God, why does God let someone 54 years old a good person?

Why do these things happen? And, you know, as you get older, you can't blame God for everything is, is kind of the, the answer. But, you know, Eli Zel said, God was there, he was watching, and, and it's the same thing.

So anyway, just a really, I mean, a giant in the cybersecurity industry for certain in the tech industry, but just a really great person gone way too soon on behalf of everyone here at Techstrong. You know, our hearts go out too, Amit's family to Dove and, and the rest, I mean, I, I saw a lot of people on writing line writing, you know, condolences to Tenable. I don't know if you give a corporation condolences, but I know the people at Tenable will miss a meet.

'cause he was, you know, for Steven, you've done this, Mitch, you've done it, Mike, you've done it, Bonnie, you're doing it now. When you have your own company, when you have your, when you are running the show, you breathe life into that every day. It's, it's like it takes part of your life essence to, to run.

And, and Amit did that with Tenable for many years now as well. So they're in good hands. They'll be fine, I'm sure.

But anyway, I, I just didn't want this show to go through without, you know, commenting on this and offering our condolences and good thoughts. It will be missed. Ellen, you know, we, we say in, in the Jewish religion, may, may their memory be a blessing and we'll end it with that.

Anyway, that's Text on gang. We've got a full text on TV schedule for you today. Stay tuned for that.

And we'll be back tomorrow hopefully with better news and good, good things. Until then, this is Alan Hummel, we're out. This is Textron tv.

Hey everyone, welcome back here to Techstrong tv. You know, I'm really excited about this next interview. I have been since we originally scheduled this one.

I want to introduce you to Frederico Munoz. Uh, Frederico is the release lead for Kubernetes, and that is a lot in there, but let's welcome him to the show and find out a little bit about what he has to share with us today. Frederico, welcome to Text Drunk tv.

It's great to have you on. Thank you very much, Alan. Thank you for having me.

So, as I mentioned, your release lead for Kubernetes, but you know, how does one actually get to be the release lead for Kubernetes? What does it really mean? Tell us a little bit about your journey here today.

Uh, I mean, a fair question and one that I sometimes, uh, also think about it, uh, because it's, it's not something that I, I, I would think if you would ask me two years ago, uh, I would say that, that that was impossible. But, um, so I, I guess it's also tied with my overall journey in technology. So let me just go through that a bit.

Um, I've, uh, started in, in technology in general with programming and everything else, um, with the rise of the, of the Linux and the free software movement, uh, around there in the late nineties perhaps. Um, so I, that was the thing that brought me in. Um, it technology, et cetera.

My actual, um, academic background, uh, is in archeology and then, and then physics. But I started with archeology. So, um, in, in a way, free software and the open source movement that, um, uh, start, there was my gateway into everything around computers.

Um, I, I started with as a programmer, then I moved into, um, platform and Unix system administrator. Um, and this, uh, in a way ties with the, uh, with the rise of Kubernetes later on. Um, why, because, well then I, I, I, I, I joined, uh, IBM, where I've worked on a lot of different stuff from IOT to solution design to quantum computing.

Currently, I work at the SaaS Institute as a cloud architecture lead for Europe. But, um, the reason why this is important is because, uh, this background in Linux and Unix in general, uh, actually made, made my, um, going to Kubernetes and the entire cloud native, um, landscape and ecosystem that started just around the announcement of Docker, right? We have that, uh, fundamental, um, that, uh, fundamental aspect.

And then obviously Kubernetes as an orchestrator. Um, it's built on Linux as well. So, um, I started to work more and more with, uh, with, with, with Kubernetes as a, as part of my day job.

Um, and a couple of years ago, um, I've decided to just like I did when I, I, I joined the Dian Project, for example, and others to, uh, join Kubernetes as a contributor to, uh, because, uh, Kubernetes is the second largest open source, uh, project out there. And that's what I did. So, uh, the, the, the, the more direct path to be being, uh, be, uh, being the release lead was like two years ago, two and a half years ago when I joined, um, seek country of ex comms and, and other, um, uh, communities inside Kubernetes to just help out and do my, my my part as a volunteer.

Um, when you start doing that with some consistency, you then obviously meet people you trust people. I joined, uh, the 1 25 Kubernetes release team as a shell just to learn how things, uh, were, um, were done. Um, and I was, uh, consistently then, um, a member of the following releases, 1 26, et cetera, until, uh, last release.

I was nominated as a one, the Kubernetes 1 32 release lead, much to my surprise. But in the end, it's a result of this, uh, path, the short one that started two years ago, but's also a result of a longer, uh, I will, I'll almost say life, um, journey around the, uh, software and open source with a cloud native twist. Excellent.

So you mentioned this, uh, there's a new release of Kubernetes. 32, and it's called Penelope. But you know, we were talking off camera before we started, right?

When I first became aware of Kubernetes, it was actually at a docker con, I think, in Austin, Texas. So not even the first docker con, maybe the third, second or third Docker current. And, um, you know, while the news was all about docker off to the side at one of the booths or whatever it was, I saw them demonstrating Kubernetes.

8. And I remember, and people were so excited, right? And you gotta remember at this point, there wasn't, it hadn't been crowned the king of the orchestrators for cloud native or for containers, right?

You had Docker swarm, you had rancher, Mesos. There were, there were several different ways that looking at how to orchestrate containers. And, but yeah, the buzz around Kubernetes was, was palpable.

com already, security Boulevard. And I said, you know what? We shouldn't use the name Docker because they have it, uh, trademarked.

Maybe we should look at containers. I said, but everyone there is talking about this thing Kubernetes, but I don't think it's ever going to catch on. It's too hard.

You know, famous last words. Well, you what's wrong, but, uh, that's, well, that was good, right? Popular, but on popularity.

Yes. So, but, you know, so, but Kubernetes has, over that, I guess it's been almost 10 years, Kubernetes has grown from being the, the orchestrator for containers to really, the heart, the beating heart of, of the whole cloud native stack. And the cloud native stack today is in many ways the compute stack for, for modern architecture, right?

Whether, whether, yeah, absolutely. Whether we're, we're talking about a microservices based architecture, serverless, um, containerized. It is at the, at the heart of it.

And what I find remarkable is here we are, you know, 10 year anniversary of Kubernetes. I think it's eight years, or eight and a half years since version one. 32.

We're still in version one, right? It, it's not where you see other releases, you know, they do a ma two major releases a year with a bunch of miners. 32.

So I think it says something about the, the steadfastness and deliberation and what goes into a Kubernetes release. It's not something, you know, where we whip together a recipe for this month or this quarter. 32, Federico, talk to us about how are these releases planned?

Is it purposely, obviously it's purposely that, yeah, we don't do these quickly, or, you know, by happenstance, they're very well thought out. Talk to absolutely us a little bit about that process. Sure.

Yeah's a, a very good question. And, uh, just as an intro to, to that, and based on what you've, um, asked, also mentioned, uh, there's a, an interesting timeline here, uh, as well, because, uh, Python was, um, was released in 91. Docker was actually announced at the Python in 2013.

Uh, and then, uh, in DockerCon 14, which is in, uh, 20, uh, 14, um, Kubernetes was really, was announced. That was the first announced, uh, announcement was at DockerCon in San Francisco, uh, 2014. Um, so there's this like Python, docker, um, Kubernetes, uh, being presented in each other's conferences, which is interesting.

And as you mentioned, obviously, uh, Kubernetes has this past in Google as Borg, et cetera. That's almost pre history by, by, by, by this stage. Um, but you are right in that there were, uh, there were men, other competitors that still exist, well, competitors, I wouldn't call it competitors, but other viable solutions, uh, that, uh, fall within the same space.

Um, certainly it's true that in the last decades, Kubernetes has risen as, uh, as the most common choice in terms of container orchestration, but not only it's as a core piece of the, of, of development platforms everywhere, um, and around the releases themselves. So, um, the first, uh, one L released was somewhere in 2015 actually. 2, which were the ones that, uh, started, um, the now 10th anniversary of Kubernetes.

1. Uh, I think that in the last, uh, in the, in the next year, it was also, uh, one or two releases. But, um, uh, along with, um, so as time moved, uh, there was an, an, an adoption of framework, um, well documented and streamlined and, um, uh, uh, structured release project, which is, uh, essentially what we use today.

And what is that? So we have three, uh, Kubernetes, um, releases per year, um, in, in, so one's, one at the start of the, of the year, another one right there in the middle. And like 1 32, 1 at the tail end of the, of the year, uh, which, uh, explains the, if you do the math, obviously from 2016 to now, if you add up more or less three releases per year, we get to the 1 32 number that we, that we have.

Um, so the, the way that the release works, it's actually, it is interesting and, uh, it's, it's the results of a continuous improvement process at each release we do, uh, retro meetings in order to improve the documentation, the process to make things simpler and make things better for the next release team that will pick things up. Um, I will, I will point out, uh, point out that the, the people in the release team are also volunteers, which are chosen and nominated by their peers, including through a, uh, open shattering program. Um, and how does a release work?

Well, we, it, the release that we have a release lead with some release lead chats. We have a release team that contains people that will lead specific sub teams, like communications, like release notes, like enhancements, um, et cetera. Uh, and, uh, we have more or less, as I said, three months there.

There's a, a timeline that is published at the beginning of the, of the year, uh, of the, of the release. And, um, there's a call for enhancements. So any six special instance group, Kubernetes has several different special instance groups like, uh, seek notes, seek app, seek network will, um, identify the enhancements, the features that they think are ready to, um, be incorporated into the specific release, either as an alpha feature, a better feature, or as a generally available feature.

Each one of these will come with some specific requirements in terms of the feature documentation, tests, um, et cetera. And, uh, the, the release proceeds with the inclusion of enhancements, a code freeze, uh, making sure documentation is there, making sure that the communications is ready, making sure that there's no bugs or regressions tackling any issues that might arise. And after that three months period, there's a, obviously during that period, there's, um, several release cuts, alpha one, alpha two, release candidate one, et cetera, until we reach the release day and there's a Kubernetes release that will incorporate all the new features that were identified and chosen by, um, the, the, the respective six for, uh, debt release.

Excellent. That was fantastic. 32 13, of which, you know, based upon the, the kind of background you just gave us, 13 have graduated to stable, 12 are in bed.

Yeah, exactly. 19 are still in Alpha. But if you had to pick out what are the big highlights of this release that our audience should really be looking for?

Give, give us your top ones. Um, absolutely. It's a better off taste.

Um, I would say that there are a couple of interesting ones. Uh, I think that the way that dynamic resource allocation, which is, um, the, the feature and the, the, the capability that enables Kubernetes to, uh, manage things like GPUs, FPGA, so not only memory and ram, but uh, also such devices, which is very important for, uh, many different workloads, including AI related and ML related workloads. Obviously, um, in this release, there's a, a, a, a new implementation, and there's also the deprecation of the old IMP implementation.

And this new implementation actually plays very, plays, uh, well with the Quest autoscaler and, um, overcomes a lot of, uh, some of the limitations that the older implementation had. So I find this interesting because I think that the startup workloads are, it continue to rise in importance and it shows our, our Kubernetes release, um, incorporates, um, improvements that build directly with, uh, requirements that exist in the, in the, in the out there, right? So this is certainly one, um, I think that, um, there are, um, other interesting aspects as well.

I think that we have, um, some good stuff around improving the resource management. Uh, for example, we have the memory, uh, manager going, uh, ga so generally, uh, available. We also have the, some updates, some a new feature around the ability to determine, uh, resource limitations at the PO level.

So creating like a shared, uh, uh, limits that can be, uh, shared by multi pods, uh, multi container pods, which I, I, I think it's, uh, very useful, uh, in, in terms of streamlining and avoiding overcommitting. So, and a couple of them around this overall, um, improvement team on, on, on resources. Um, there's one thing that isn't specifically a, a re a, an enhancement, but I think it's fundamental to highlight here.

Um, 1 32 is the first release that has achieved 100% conformance testing coverage. Um, and this was something that was done, um, during code freeze, and it was, uh, it was actually the, the PR that did this was merged, uh, live during the Kubernetes contributor summit. Uh, it's during North America, uh, because of the relevance that it has.

And why is it important? Uh, conformance testing is what makes Kubernetes big Kubernetes, right? Uh, uh, it's, it's a se series of end-to-end tests that more or less determine the, the answer that a Kubernetes platform should have.

Um, we, up until obviously when this started, uh, the coverage was, um, below 10%, it's been improving, uh, and trying to cover all the, the endpoints through time. And in this release, during that specific, uh, um, moment, there was 100% coverage, which means that, um, uh, the, the, the very way that the, the testing and the conformance testing is done has, has reached a level of maturity that, uh, should make us all proud. Excellent.

Fred Rico, we're, we're over time already, but for people who want to go get, there's a lot more information than we were able to cover here in 20 minutes. For people who want to get more information, what, where's the best place to go? Kubernetes io slash blog, um, they have the, the Kubernetes release article there that covers them.

The, the, the, the features, the main statistics around the numbers, uh, the theme as well. Everything is there. And we have a series of, um, feature blocks coming out.

Some of them have, have already been published that go into a bit more detail into some of the specifics, uh, of the new features. For example, the, the memory management, um, aspect that I mentioned before as a specific blog entry in at Kubernetes io. Excellent.

Fredrico, you know, people don't realize what really makes the open source world go round and round are people like you, who, you know, you don't do this for the money, obviously it's volunteer work. Some people luckily, you know, do get paid. We're starting to pay maintainers now.

Yeah. Which I think, you know, CNCF does. And that's a great thing because the amount of time and effort, it's really, you don't do it for the money, as I said, it's a, it's a labor of love, if you will.

And, um, indeed people like you who donate so much of their time and effort into this. Thank you. Thank you for all you do, and thank you.

Thank you for thank you to the team. Appreciate that. Yeah.

And we are looking forward to great things from Penelope. Thank you for being on text tv. It was a pleasure, Fred.

My pleasure. Frederico Mno Muni's, uh, release sleep Kubernetes here on Textron tv. We're gonna take a break.

We'll be back in a minute. This is Textron tv. Hey folks, we're back at OpenText World in Las Vegas, and we're gonna be talking about what's going on in the energy sector with my new friend, Phil.

Phil, welcome. Yeah, thank you. Thanks for having me.

Pleasure. Um, in my mind, at least, the energy sector is almost, sometimes it's in its own bubble because, um, the requirements change, the industry changes sometimes when the economy's up the sector's down, vice versa. Yep.

Um, what do people need to appreciate about it in the energy sector these days? And, um, what kind of impact is it having? What are you seeing?

Yeah, so I, the world we live in right now through the lens I look through is we're energy limited. Um, the, the world's population's gonna go from 8 billion people to 10 billion people and by 2050. And, and we need to scale energy, and that's gonna be a very challenging task for the world.

And there's going to, information's gotta be flowing through enterprises in the industry efficiently to be able to make that happen. And how much of that challenge is actually like, you know, getting the natural resources versus just the distribution of the energy from one place to the other. All of it, all of it's a challenge.

It's, it's, it's a challenge to extract it, to generate energy, to ship it, to transport it, to distribute it. It's all a challenge. And in for, for all of those logistics to happen in a coordinated synchronized fashion and industry information needs to flow synchronously, um, as well to make that happen.

Is data management therefore more challenging in that sector than other sectors, or just different, I mean, for folks who don't work in that sector Yeah. What, what should they know if they decide to move into this sector? Yeah, so, so through the lens, I look through, um, I, I don't come from a career in software.

I come from the energy industry. And so I spent a decade of my career on the oil field services side as a field engineer. I spent a decade in industrial automation on the sensor side.

And coming into software world, it's been eye-opening for me because I see software as being the, the link between man and machine. And we talked about, you hear Mark Barcha talk about that is that don't send a human to do a machine's job and vice versa. Don't send a machine's job to do a human's job.

And so I see, I see information management as a technology to, that energy companies can use to modernize how people work to elevate their potential and ensure the world has the energy that it needs in 2050 and decades beyond, uh, on the energy side. And I guess in your previous life, I guess what you'd call those operational technology people, OT folks. Yep.

Were managing all that stuff. And then there's the classic IT folks and those two don't always see eye to eye. Is that getting better?

I mean, are we melding those things together? I think so. I think so, but there's still a lot more room to go.

Um, one of the most fascinating, uh, metrics that I look at when I have an opportunity to speak with a client as I go into their annual report and I look at the ratio of the gross plant property and equipment, which re represents all the equipment and assets and machines they have, and I look at it per person in their company. And if you look at that ratio of machine and man over the last decade, that ratio is anywhere between 40 to a hundred percent. There are more, there are more machines being maintained on a per person basis.

And to be able to, to continue with those efficiencies safely, people need the information to be able to do their job, to keep those critical assets running. You can't leave your house today without tripping over somebody telling you about some great new AI things. Yep.

How will AI get applied to make energy more efficient? Oh my gosh, there's so many angles to that. So as a, I'm gonna start with the, as a field engineer is, as a field engineer, I had to, I, to get safety information, I had to go to our safety system to get our maintenance records.

I had to go to our maintenance system. I had to go to five different repositories to get content, equipment manuals, uh, field tickets, safety instructions, procedures on the content side. If that isn't a system of record for content, now I can start using AI to ask that content questions, right?

That content was originated by humans. Somebody wrote that equipment manual, somebody wrote those safety instructions. And as a field engineer.

Now I can just type in how do I safely, uh, maintain a turbine or make, do, do the work that I need to do safely. And instead of spending time to find information and then not just find a document, but scroll through a 300 page document, I can just ask a question for the information that I need. How soon, and maybe we're already there, will we get to the point where, um, I feel like we use all these tools to investigate issues after the fact?

Yeah. Or we get to the point now where the machines might tell us proactively that there's gonna be an issue unless we go fix this thing now. Yeah.

So it it, the whole root, so I was ingrained with root cause analysis and fishbone diagrams and coming into the information management domain. When I think of information management, I think of a, a simple equation information plus human action equals business outcome. And for any business challenge, whether, whether it's a delayed project, unplanned asset downtime, a safety incident, any, any business event, if you did a root cause analysis and you found out the root causes for why that occurred, my guess is that there are going, you could group those reasons into human related issues and information management related issues with inadequacies and how information is managed.

Right. And a lot of those human related ones are just somebody kicked something they shouldn't have fatigue, um, didn't prioritize work. Um, poor communication, that type of stuff.

Yeah. We hear a lot about security. Is that becoming a bigger conversation among the energy companies because they are a critical infrastructure?

Yeah. The, the amount of the, the amount of security related cyber attacks are at an all time high as well as the incurred costs associated with them. And so security is a very integral part of the information management domain.

And, and companies need to not just organize and connect information and automate information, but secure it and protect it as well. Back in, back as a field engineer security, back when I was a field engineer, was connecting my laptop to with a cable. And we would, we would connect that cable around legs of tables and chairs.

And that was my view of security back in the day. But seeing the comprehensive technologies that OpenText has, it goes, it goes well beyond what it was when during my day as a field engineer and all these systems seem to be increasingly connected to the internet, but they weren't designed for that in the first place. So yeah.

Are we trying to overlay a security framework on top of critical infrastructure that's now connected to essentially a public network? Any information needs to be protected and secured. Um, and so wherever that information resides, it needs to be protected, whether it's it's on premise or in the cloud.

Um, it needs to be secured and OpenText specializes in in that security domain. Mm-hmm. We were talking earlier with other folks here about the persistent divide between IT and the business, and of course, you know, OT guys are in that mix too.

Yeah. Um, in the energy sector, is that better or do they have a greater appreciation for it than other sectors? What's your sense?

I think it's gradual, but there's a lot more room for improvement. And I read a recent report, uh, analyst report within the past week, fairly recent. And the analysts, uh, rec suggested that just anybody across the enterprise should have a basic understanding of IT architecture.

And having been an operational user of information my entire career in non-IT roles, I completely agree with that. If, if people in the business, whether it's in operations or maintenance or engineering or supply chain, that they understood the basic concepts of IT architecture, they can be better stewards of information across the enterprise. Do the executives in the energy sector trust the data that they're shown or they kind of dubious about the, where, how and when it was collected?

I think it varies by company. I think their information management maturity, uh, varies by company and, uh, there are some companies that trust your data and some companies that lack lie behind. I think the industry as a whole, uh, lags in its information management maturity relative to some other industries.

But I think they're committed to to progress it because of the challenge the world faces with trying to generate enough energy to supply for 10 billion people here in just 20 years, I'm sure as a field engineer, you have found yourself in some pretty obscure places. Yes. Are we getting to the point where we don't have to dispatch a field engineer to the remote corner of the world to go check some widget?

I think, I think humans, in my opinion, humans will always be needed in some shape or form. Um, human action will always be needed with information, but that human action's become gonna become more efficient, more productive, more safe because of the information that's gonna be at their fingertips and how well it's managed for them to safely execute their jobs. We live in a world of, shall we call it interesting times and yeah, energy may need to be rerouted almost instantly because we don't know what kind of conflict or Sure.

Or for that matter or climate event occurs. And so is the energy sector getting more dynamic with the aid of it to kind of shift things around as needed? That's, that kind of is a whole conversation around our business network capabilities and connecting people systems and thing and seeing those real time shipments of whether it's a, a, a con, a shipping container of oil or a critical spare part that is needed at, at a certain location by a DM 8:00 AM tomorrow.

Um, those logistics are handled and best managed by a business network, uh, connect once, reach anything platform. And I think with time, more and more companies are gonna make strategic connections with their vendors to be able to have visibility into all those, all those information exchanges. There are some probably IT folks who are not in the energy sector who are not familiar with it, but what's your best advice for them to kind of break into this space?

'cause you know, how do you get in for, for IT providers? Yeah. Speak their language.

Um, so I've, I, I've won the boots of a field engineer and I've felt the pain of inadequacies of, um, of information management at that time. And so I, I can relate to the pain, whether it's a safety accident or unplanned downtime. I've felt the challenges associated with those signi significant events make make partnerships with customers and understand their pains and what they're trying to solve and how the, how they're gonna use information to address those business challenges.

Mm-hmm. Do we need to restructure the way our IT and OT teams are organized today to kinda get to the outcomes that we're looking for? Or, you know, are we served with this kind of semi federated approach and we have different spheres of influence and disciplines?

I think, I think those spheres and disciplines are, are coming together and that it OT convergence and I think they're coming, whether they're, I don't see tomorrow or next year or even maybe five years from now that IT and OT will completely come together, but I think they are, they are starting to merge and there are synergies that can happen between IT and ot, um, to, to better deliver business outcomes for companies. Sometimes when I talk to OT people, they have a much higher standard of what's acceptable for, uh, downtime Yeah. Than IT folks.

And they kind of look at IT folks and they go, Hey, you're telling me you're gonna drop a few packets? And I'm like, I don't think so. Yeah.

Yeah. Um, we live in a world of, we all feel it. We all feel it when we fill our cars with, whether it's electricity or gasoline, we feel it in our home utility bills, in the heat we pay, and not just us as, uh, you know, home, uh, residential consumers, industrial consumers.

We all feel the added cost of energy and for the world to incrementally produce more energy the way we manage information, whether it's from information technology resources or operational technology resources. That information needs to be best managed so that those critical assets can always be kept running and that new assets can be scaled efficiently without any delays. Safeline, to your point, the sources of energy we have are more diverse than ever.

There's everything from windmills to nuclear power to, um, solar and there's traditional oil, gas and whatever else. All that has to be managed in some sort of cohesive fashion because I'm kind of playing one off the other based on availability and cost. So, yeah.

Um, do the IT systems in the energy sector kind of, are they able to manage that? Or is that in the next big aspiration? I think all, all of them manage information a bit differently.

I think these new new new industries that, um, whether it's geothermal or renewables, they basically get to start from scratch. And so they get to kind of start where they wanna be. Whereas, whereas the legacy energy companies, they've gotta change.

And so I see companies evolving their information management regardless. It's gotta be evolved, it's gotta be a, it's gotta improve, but there's different starting points, you know, uh, based on the type of company. And I think, I think whoever is most efficient with how they manage information, um, we'll win the race.

Do you think there's gonna be a lot of merger and acquisition activity across the energy sector? 'cause that's always a challenge when it comes to integrating the IT system. Yeah, and we're, we're seeing that, and I think, I think it'll continue to happen.

And I think information management plays a key role in that. Um, we have customers that, um, when they, when they get divested, they realize, uh, and they're becoming a standalone company, they realize, oh, we can't, we don't, we can't find all the information that we need. And so they use OpenText solutions to go out and crawl their networks, identify information, organize it, automatically apply and classify the data and then migrate it to a standalone system.

And it's, I think information management is in integral for divestitures acquisitions. And it's a great starting point to get your information under control. If it's not, of course the whole sector is highly regulated.

Um, are those regulations becoming more stringent or less stringent? I think it varies. I, I think it, I think it varies.

It, it varies. Um, and regardless whether they become more string, it comes in waves. And no matter what the regulation is, companies still need to manage their information, you know, and some of those regulations vary by state.

Yep. Some vary by country country. So how complicated does all this get at the end of the day?

Do I have to be a rocket scientist to manage all these different data governance rules? No, no. I OpenText serves, we serve industries with the most complex information challenges.

And those often entails, industries with that are highly regulated. And so in your information management journey, whether you're in a highly regulated or a moderately regulated industry, the, the technologies that OpenText provides serve those needs for those complex industries. Alright folks, you heard it here.

Hey, if you're looking for guaranteed lifetime employment, the energy sector's not a bad place to look. Yeah. Good stuff.

Yeah. All right. And we'll be back in a minute.

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6 20, 25. Be there. Welcome back to Textron Unplugged.

My name is Cassandra Chin and today we have Kaitlyn Hornbuckle. Hi there. I'm here at CubeCon from Oregon State University.

So let's hear about some of your stories of like how you got into technology. Oh, I can talk all day about that. So, okay.

I originally went to a completely different university and I studied journalism and media production because I was really into content creation at the time. And I recognized there was a divide between, um, communicating really difficult concepts. And I wanted to help, uh, figure out how to merge technology and communication together.

So I was always interested in technology my entire life. I always solved it issues in my journalism class when the printer broke and when my friends would have problems, um, with just different glitches on their computers happening. So I've always been into technology, uh, but when I did the journalism and media production, um, program, I did enjoy it at first, but it wasn't really challenging enough for me.

Um, however, I did learn a lot of really, really good skills as far as how to communicate concepts. I got a lot better at my content creation skills. It really opened up the door to learning what type of equipment I need, trying to figure out how to raise enough money in order to just get started with the bare minimum with content creation.

And from there I went on to do the computer science program and completely switched. So by the time I graduate, which will be about two years, I'll have about, it's gonna be close to 300 credits by the time I graduate, which is kind of ridiculous. But here we are.

I did learn a lot though, so I feel very prepared. So essentially, um, when I took the computer science program, there were a few things that, uh, happened. So I would say going into computer science was extremely difficult.

Uh, for me. I had never coded before. Um, I had worked with the scratch program a little bit, but that was about it.

I didn't do any other programming at all. So just blocks and then three modeling, but again, no coding. So when I was in my first computer science class, I struggled immensely.

I definitely had some nights where I was crying over my Yazi project. Uh, 'cause I had so many bugs and it was really funny. Um, so, uh, something that I kind of wish that I had going in was that I had more connections, um, and had made like more friends to, um, learn with.

'cause at the time it was very, I was very isolated. Um, and I was even more isolated. 'cause when I joined the computer science program, a few months later, the pandemic happened, the COVID-19 pandemic.

So talk about really being isolated. Right? And, um, that experience though was really good to, for me in a lot of ways because I ended up, um, working with a education technology company at the time.

And that was when my knowledge of how you can use technology to help people really skyrocketed. 'cause something that I felt in my classes was it focused a lot on technical con content and trying to, you know, get the right answer and get your code working. But it was, there was less focus on community, like how to actually use the technology to make a difference or to help a community or to solve a real world problem, which is something that I felt like was missing.

And that was what had driven me to journalism to begin with. So when I saw that outside of academia, it was possible to use technology to actually make a difference, I started to get deeper into that in the work, um, field, even though I didn't get my degree yet. Um, so I worked full time with them for a little bit, um, took some time off of school.

Um, and then I ended up transferring to another university because I just felt like I wasn't learning what I needed to be learning. The quality of the content just wasn't there for me. And it just wasn't a great fit, um, for what I was looking for.

So that's when I transferred to Oregon State University and I'm on the cybersecurity track now. And boy, I am wearing so much more, uh, now than I did a couple years ago. And technology is changing so fast.

Uh, now that it's, it's almost hard to keep up. Like sometimes some of the courses don't keep up. And so, um, sometimes I have to do a lot of research outside just to make sure I can continue to keep up, um, with uh, what's being taught like in the class, but also what's happening in industry.

'cause sometimes those don't match. Usually they don't. Yeah.

It's really funny though. Um, but it does challenge students to find a way to be able to learn, um, how acade, how academia views, um, the engineering field and how, um, industry views it. 'cause they are very, very different things.

Uh, something else that I'm noticing too, that there's a big divide between science and engineering. Um, I usually see people either in one or the other, but not necessarily both computer science or computer engineering. Right?

Well, not even that, but um, like when people do computer science, sometimes you're missing like the sciences, like biology, physics, chemistry, um, 'cause those all play a role in technology as well. Um, but you don't really get to learn that in the computer science field. It's all just, it's strictly tech.

Um, and that's something that I think is really missing. Um, 'cause we have like, you know, we have pharma industries right now that are trying, trying to use AI and ML models, um, to work with massive amounts of data that they're having trouble analyzing to be able to make good decisions, um, for our health. And I feel like that, um, there is a divide between science and engineering.

'cause it just feels like, um, industries like sciences and sometimes education industry tries to take what they're seeing from industry, but because, um, they don't have people from industry heavily involved, it could turn into a mess. So that's just my observations though, argue that like in computer science, they teach you all the coding fundamentals. Yeah.

But once you graduate, like you can basically go into a whole different industry and Right, exactly. Scientist, yes, you definitely can. Um, but I think it would be like easier though if you had some of the, um, you know, like for example, if you wanted to work in a biology, bio biology field, um, if you had no classes in biology whatsoever, trying to get into that field is gonna be really tough.

Um, especially when competing against people who maybe have a biology minor and a computer science degree that would, that would really set them up for it. But I definitely agree that as a computer science major, you can do a ton of different things. I mean, that's one of the main reasons why I joined it too, because I didn't wanna be stuck in just one field.

I wanted to be able to adapt this degree to a variety of different fields. So, yeah. Um, what are your feelings on, on um, science versus engineering though?

Um, honestly I always felt like computer science was more software and computer and engineering is more hardware. Yeah. But like they go together.

I don't actually know why we have to divide it like that. I agree. Uh, I know some students, you know, they learn, um, how to use CAD programs in computer engineering.

But my, the computer science department doesn't teach that, at least in my experience. Which is crazy 'cause I wanna learn how 3D printers work. I mean that's important to be able to program those.

Um, but I have to do that on my own time. There's no classes that teach me that. I've seen some colleges where they've just merged the computer science and computer engineering track.

Oh really? That's really cool. I'm not sure if they're doing it for good intentions or if they're trying to save resources.

Fair. I feel like, um, computer engineering feels more mathematical heavy and you have to know some physics in it as well, um, to be able to understand how the computer parts interact. But with computer science, it's all just software.

So all that's abstracted. So I almost feel like there's less math involved. Um, less math, physics and computer science versus computer engineering.

So yeah. I'm glad to hear that there's some schools combining the two though. 'cause I think that's definitely the right direction.

'cause when you only have computer science cleaner engineering and they're separate, you're missing, like one is even missing software, one is missing the engineering and science part of it. Right. So it's really good to have both.

Um, what I've been your experiences in your computer science courses, like do you feel like you're learning what you need to do to be successful in the industry? Uh, they just, I feel like they mainly just teach me how to code. But it's like very old style.

They don't teach me how to like integrate my code with modern development tools and like, definitely no ai. Oh really? Yeah.

They tell us not to use AI or else we'll get like a punishment of some sort. Yep. I definitely have taken some classes where if you use an AI tool, they won't let you pass the class.

So Yeah. I've, I've experienced that myself. It's really weird though 'cause um, some classes are okay with it.

So you have to really look at the, um, each individual syllabi of each class. 'cause every professor feels different about it. I personally feel like if we can learn how to use AI to like, um, to not cheat or not like, you know, not to, um, just have it do stuff for us, but have it be an assistant, like learn how to use AI responsibly.

'cause it's not really going away. And um, we could either ignore it or we can use it. So the search engine, right.

Exactly. Or the, when the calculator was invented, uh, you know, we used to have to do all calculations manually, but when the calculator came out, uh, made it made a lot of operations a lot easier to do. So yeah.

It's, it's an experience for sure. Do you wanna talk about your experience teaching Kids Day? I would love to talk about that.

So yeah, Adam, the Kids Day event, A Q con on Sunday, that was a lot of fun. Um, I got to help teach Minecraft modding, um, to kids and a lot of them hadn't coded Java before. Um, and a lot of 'em hadn't played Java edition before.

Uh, Minecraft Java Edition, at least in my experience when I've taught kids before, a lot of them are more familiar with Bedrock Edition. And I think one of the reasons for that is because it's very, it's more accessible to more people. 'cause you can play Bedrock Edition on tablets, phones, uh, computers, um, gaming consoles.

It's all merged together. Whereas Java Edition is only on the computer. So for a lot of them it was their first time learning the WASD keys, which is really, it's a common combination for gaming, but it was really cool to be able to share that and then also share how to manipulate their code to be able to make, um, their ideas come to life in front of them on the computer screen.

And it really helped a lot. Uh, something that I learned though, was it could be really easy to lose, um, their attention if you go too deep, too fast, however you wanna be careful with this 'cause you still want them to learn something, um, at the end of it. So keeping that in mind, I just remembered that they had never coded before.

And so some of the basics that they're going to see in every mod, um, are going to be the same and it's gonna be repetitive. So something that I focused on was getting them familiar with the process of, um, loading code into the eclipse IDE, um, learning how to, um, build and run it so that it's executed into, um, the Minecraft instance. They can play around, then they exit it.

So it follows the process of when you, uh, pull code into, um, your project. You make changes, you compile it, run it, execute it, close, um, the executable and then just redo the process. So I really honed that in this time when we taught it and the kids had it pretty much memorized by the end of the class, which was really great.

'cause that's one fundamental that I find can be really tough for kids to learn, especially when they use a computer for the first time. And the other thing I did too was, um, every mod that we loaded in, I would explain what it did. And every time I did, I highlighted just little parts of the code so they know what parts that controlled.

So for example, um, for spawning potatoes, if they put the magic word potato in the chat, and I always said magic word to get them excited because if I just say, oh yeah, if you type this fandom word, it's just doesn't, just doesn't sound as exciting. So I, I just highlighted potatoes and I said, okay, this is the magic word. If you change this, um, then when you type that it's going to spawn, um, 64 potatoes.

But if you want one than 64 potatoes, change that number. And I had several students put in 10,000 potatoes, encourages them to like modify the code exactly without having to say, okay, line one does this, line two does this, line three does this. Um, I just focus on the most important parts so that they could still modify that.

Um, and if they get stuck, the other kids still have something to work with. 'cause that's another problem is if I go too deep too fast, then I can have three students that are stuck on trying to customize their code. But then the other students don't know how to move forward yet.

Um, and so then they end up just playing Minecraft. So I tried to remedy that by having them all know how to load in, um, each mod. And then by the end when we had extra time, I helped them, uh, with trying to change their code, um, and with showing them like an easy way to change it.

Um, throughout when they did customize it, a lot of 'em didn't get stuck 'cause they weren't trying to change the whole thing. They were just trying to change a couple words to see what happened. Yeah.

I walked in on your workshop and that was the most focused I've ever seen the kids. Really? I was super glad to hear that.

Yeah, it seemed like they had a lot of fun. I definitely tried to keep them on their toes too, so they didn't get bored. And um, hopefully programming is a lot more exciting for them now than when they first walked in.

Do you have any future plans for kids workshops? So I do wanna talk to the, uh, curricula developers, um, a little bit. Uh, 'cause I wanna figure out how to update the Minecraft curricula for next year's Q Con in London.

So I'm looking at that currently right now. Um, something about the Minecraft Learning Workshop is it's a little bit outdated. Um, it was perfect for this, um, for this um, weekend.

But I wanna try to find something that the kids can relate to a little bit more. I'm gonna look into maybe how a mod and Bedrock additions because that's the version they're familiar with because then they, when they make mods, they can share it with their friends. Uh, with job edition, a lot of the kids don't have job audition themselves, um, or unfamiliar about how to use it, um, or how to, how to set it up themselves.

So I wanna try to figure out how to make it more relatable. And then I also really wanna look into how to implement a Roblox workshop. 'cause that's something that I haven't seen yet.

And that's something that I'm really passionate about, um, is Roblox game design. I do that just as a hobby, um, outside of academia and work. So I'm looking into getting involved with curriculum development more, um, teaching more.

'cause that's something I'm really, really passionate about. I just have to make sure I can talk to the, uh, right people and get ideas rolling for that. I'm really excited about your idea to like, do Minecraft Bedrock Yeah.

Where the little kids are at now. Yeah. I'm really excited about it too.

'cause I know there's this, um, there's this software too called Block Bench where you can create your own, um, mobs and your own items. And I already had some kids in the workshop this past Sunday ask, oh hey, can we make like our own items or our own, um, animals? And I said, oh, okay.

That would be I happy for Bedrock. Um, 'cause yeah, I wasn't familiar how to do that with Java quite yet. 'cause it's like both, both my both versions are a completely different process.

Um, but I did, I did refer them to Block Bench. 'cause that, that tool makes it a lot easier to be able to, um, to change those. And a lot of them are familiar with, um, content creators that use Bedrock Edition too.

And, um, modify Bedrock edition on there. Every content creator I've seen in Minecraft using Minecraft right now. If they're playing Minecraft, it's usually a Java edition.

But when they're playing on customized worlds, I am, I'm seeing more and more Bedrock edition. So yeah, it excites me too. I don't know too much about it yet, so I have to do some research, but I'm really excited 'cause I play Pet Rock version myself, so it's a lot of fun.

Yeah. I'm looking forward to see what you create and come up with at CubeCon London. Yeah, I'm really, yeah, I hope I can get it started.

Um, and I'm, I'm hoping that since I am already starting to get involved now, like a whole year in advance, that I hope we can make it happen. So yeah, a great chat. Thank you, Caitlin.

Yeah, of course. Thanks for having me. Welcome back to Text Drone Unplugged.

My name is Cassandra Chin, and today we're here with Catherine Paganini. Mm-hmm. Thanks for having me.

Introduce yourself. Uh, sure. I'm Catherine Paganini, head of marketing at Buoyant, uh, the creator of Linkerd.

And I'm also the, uh, co-chair of the tag contributor strategy and the facilitator of the deaf and Hard of hearing working group. So you're working on some CNCF diversity initiatives. Can you tell me more about it?

Um, sure. Um, about a year and a half ago, I started the Deaf and Hard of Hearing working group, um, which, uh, focuses on creating pathways for deaf and heard of hearing. And basically, uh, it was an idea that is inspired by, um, a program for Maori youth by, uh, JT Hema.

Uh, and if you wonder why deaf and heard of hearing, so my, uh, high school friend, she was, uh, her parents were deaf and her brother and I also happened to live, um, next to Galludet University, which is actually a very famous university, uh, worldwide if you're deaf and heard of hearing, uh, because it is for deaf uh, students, and it's also, uh, by deaf faculty, which actually was revolutionary at the time. Um, so, um, that's how it started. And so I created, uh, or I wrote up a link, uh, LinkedIn post, which the CNCF shared, and suddenly all these people started to join.

And then suddenly we had like a big group of, uh, uh, deaf people who wanted to, uh, yeah, just participate, which, uh, was very excited, uh, exciting. And then most recently, uh, I wanted to, um, yeah, create more opportunities, uh, or like, like, um, expand that effort. And so I'm working on a initiative, uh, that is Linox Foundation-wide.

Um, and, uh, so basically the deaf and heart of fearing will kind of be part of it. And then we also launched two other initiatives. Uh, one, uh, is the Bipoc, um, which is brand new.

Uh, we just had our second meeting, uh, last, um, week. Uh, we had a lot of people, which was really exciting. So it's promising, but yeah, very early on.

And we also have a, um, blind and visually impaired initiative. Unfortunately, there, uh, we have not really found that many people, uh, yet. So for some reason it's a little bit harder to find visually impaired people than deaf, uh, in our community.

I don't know why, but so if anyone knows anyone, so please send them our way because you need a, a cri critical mass to kind of do something. So yeah, that's kind of like the, em what are the goals of all these different initiatives? Yeah.

So, but basically three buckets. You have visibility, uh, you have creating a supportive network, uh, and you have, um, um, advocacy, right? And so visibility is kind of the fun and easy part, right?

Like it's basically supporting each other to, uh, give talks, uh, having, uh, uh, being visible right in the, in the community, um, um, where more senior, uh, members can, uh, help more junior members. And then kind of giving them tools, um, to be, uh, to participate in the conversation. Um, also celebrating each other's, um, um, accomplishments on social media.

That sounds a little fluffy, but if you think about it, if you have like someone who created something or did like a talk or, uh, um, another accomplishment, and you have the entire group, uh, that, uh, shares that and, and, and celebrates that on their social media, um, profiles, then a lot more people see it, right? Again, visibility is important to kind of show people that this community is there and present. Uh, and then, um, also like media interviews like here.

So this is really a, a, a good, and then I know you're gonna talk to Rob from our deaf and heart of hearing working group, so that's really important too for, um, yeah, raising awareness about these, uh, different groups and, uh, maybe the challenges they face, uh, in terms of accessibility, what do they need and so on. I'm glad I can help you raise awareness. Yeah, no, it's really important, so thank you.

And what, why are these initiatives important? Um, so DEI efforts are being scaled back, as you may know, right? So that's actually very sad, sad.

Um, but that's makes, that makes it even more important for a community, um, driven change to kind of to happen, right? Like, so we really need, uh, like we can, we shouldn't be sitting back because companies aren't doing anything anymore. Like, or fewer companies are, are already doing something and we need to kind of like, like, uh, take action.

And, um, it's, it's not that hard. Like, so if enough people know about it and, uh, uh, if we manage to educate the community about the challenges, the different groups, uh, face and enough, uh, critical mass knows about it and is passionate about it and, and does want to, um, drive this change, we can ultimately push for change. Um, I see it a little bit similar to what's happened with sustainability.

Like right now, uh, you have a huge amount, like of like a big part of the young workforce. They don't wanna work for a company that's not sustainable, right? They, they wanna say like, I wanna be for a company that is environmental conscious and so on.

So that's forcing companies to be more sustainable, sustainable because they wanna tap into that, uh, talent pool, right? And to get access to that talent pool, they have to kind of comply and kind of attract them. And so I do think that that same, um, um, demographic is very passionate about DEI like diversity and inclusion, but they may not necessarily know, um, or recognize, um, the issues, right?

For instance, one example is one of our deaf, uh, members, he, uh, had a job interview with one of the top financial institutions in this country. Uh, and all over the website it says like, they're accessible and they, diversity and inclusion is really important. And it was a horrific experience.

Uh, he, uh, explained them what he needed. They didn't read obviously the, the, the what he asked for. And, uh, so basically it's clear that a lot of it is marketing bs, right?

So it's like, it's not really, it's like that's what our, the young people wanna hear. So we're gonna say we're, um, diversity, like we, we, uh, cherish diversity and inclusion, but they don't really fall through. And so as you with these Inc uh, uh, with these initiatives, if we, um, if we can educate the community so they can recognize, uh, the, or they can see the difference between genuine, um, diversity, uh, efforts versus just marketing bs, you know, then they can kind of call it out.

And then, so basically I think that's, uh, that's something that I hope we can create at some point. Of course, it's a long-term thing. It's not something that's gonna happen in two years, right?

It's like maybe a decade, like, like really changing that. So educating enough people so that they, they see, recognize it, know what it is, and kind of push for change, uh, takes, uh, quite a little bit. But I do think that the open source community is very well positioned to do this because we are a community, right?

Like unlike, um, uh, the traditional companies where you have, uh, you basically if, if in the traditional companies you work, uh, within your company and you don't interact outside like maybe with some partners or some clients, but there is no such community where you kind of collaborate with people all over the world. And so that network, uh, allows us to really educate people and, and raise awareness. And so I do think that open source can lead the way and, uh, kind of, yeah, just lead the way so the rest of the industry follows with yeah.

With, uh, with these initiatives and hopefully will bring change. I hope so too. And what role does allyship play?

Um, allies are very important because minorities are by definition in the minority, and no minority can do something can bring change, uh, on their own, right? And so what, uh, allies can do is amplify the voices of underrepresented groups. Um, they can, um, um, advocate, uh, they can, um, educate, right?

Like that same thing that like, uh, people from the minority can do, but like, really kind of like, uh, we need a lot of people doing that. We need a lot of people advocating, educating and so on. And, um, so, and the other thing that's really important as well, minorities need to, to learn from minorities as well.

So it's not about the minority educating the majority, right? But minorities also need to learn about the challenges of the other minority so they can support and, uh, um, support each other, right? And so I'm really excited because we do have two, uh, deaf and heart of hearing members that are part of the Bipoc group, and the fact themselves that they are there in the meaning, um, exposing themselves or like meeting like all these other, um, BIPOC members are, um, is also very important because suddenly now they're touching and kind of making these connections.

And everyone who is in that meeting, uh, um, who may have never met someone who is deaf or heard of hearing, uh, may suddenly have a very different perspective of accessibility. But because like I always say, like accessibility is a very abstract concept if you don't know anyone who needs it, right? It's like, we know it's good, we know we should do it, but it's kind of a checkbox, right?

So yeah, I do feel that a bit. But if you meet someone and you put a face to accessibility, right? Like suddenly it's not just a checkbox, it's, and then it makes also people think more about it, right?

Like you're, um, yeah, it's just like more, more you, more awareness and, and, and yeah. And so it just focuses people on the importance of that. And, um, yeah.

So that I think is, is, is very important. So I think that the fact that we're seeing this crossover is very important, and I'm hoping that we can see more of that. Like different groups, like being different people being part of different groups and helping each other and supporting each other.

I think that's really important. Can you share some wins? Uh, yeah.

So, um, I mean, the wins are only for the, um, deaf haven't heard of hearing working group so far because, uh, the other ones are too new. Um, but coupon has been, um, accessible, uh, since a year for, uh, deaf signing individuals. Uh, so I don't know if you went to the keynotes, but if you were there, you might have seen interpreters on stage, uh, their interpreters like, uh, in like for the, uh, uh, deaf, uh, attendees as well.

And like, so allowing them to, to network. So that's amazing. Um, we have several, um, community activities.

So we're gonna have a community, um, a sign language crash course, uh, tomorrow. And so, um, basically, uh, that's just like a way of people to interact with, with a community and get like another chance. Like not only having people at the talk or so on, it's another chance.

So it's a fun way of kind of making those connections. We have an open, um, space discussion. Uh, we have a kiosk.

Um, all these things are very, um, all these things, uh, all these, uh, um, things kind of help, like making those, uh, connections that will hopefully change people's, um, relationship to the world, to the word accessibility. And then, uh, one example that is like really cool I think is like, uh, and we have some of them, but like, that, um, is like very, um, timeliest, uh, Anastasia, one of our deaf members, she just became the first deaf, uh, CNCF ambassador. Um, and she's, she's always, uh, she submitted talk, several talks, and she teamed up with someone from the community.

Costas is his name, and he's, um, an Argo maintainer and, uh, has, um, really become his men, her men, her mentor, and kind of like, um, they teamed up for, for conference talks. And it's just really, uh, great to see how like, the ability to come to conferences to meet all these people is kind of opening up, uh, so many opportunities and, and making professional connections. All the things that we, as hearing individuals, we take for granted.

We just go and make professional connections, um, that will open, uh, uh, that will eventually kind of like, maybe like, um, show us another job opportunity or, you know, like it's, it's so important to have those, and before it was not available, if you're not allowed, uh, if you're not able to go to conferences or, um, participate in the, in, in the in community, you basically don't have these opportunities. And so it's nice to see like these, how people kind of start growing and making those connections and also participate, like, take advantage of the things that you and I, uh, take for granted. Yeah.

Yeah. That's very important. And for the community members listening to this, how can they get involved?

Yeah. So, um, if you're a part of the minority, like any minority group, like, like we should join, like the more, the more people we have, the more effective we can be. But anyone can join, right?

You don't, like, I'm not part of any minority. I'm very passionate about that. And, um, we need allies, as I said, like allies are very important.

And so we have a Slack channel for the deaf and horror of appearing. We have a, a slack, a slack channel for Bipoc and for, uh, the blind and visually impaired. Then that's exactly the name of the, uh, slack channel.

So it's very easy to find, uh, if you don't wanna get too much involved, that's too much, that's okay. You know, you can still be an ally. Um, follow our members on, um, on social media, uh, share their posts.

We're sharing stuff about accessibility and so on. So share it. 'cause that's, again, visibility is really important.

So if anyone can help, you know, like, like, like get more eyeballs that is already, um, you're already being an ally, so you can be more involved, as I said, like by joining. But you can also just, you know, just help share and spread the news and learn about accessibility and education network, basically. I'm really happy that you're supporting this initiative a whole lot.

Thank you. And yeah, thank you Catherine. Okay, thank you too for having me.

I'm Bonnie Schneider, sustainability contributor to the Techron Group. I'm excited to introduce you to a groundbreaking new initiative from Techstrong Research, the sustainability pulse meter. The pulse meter offers valuable insights into how environmental responsibility factors into tech purchasing decisions for key players in the industry.

Position your company as a leader in the industry and differentiate from your competitors with a sustainability pulse meter offered exclusively from Techstrong Research. Hello everyone and welcome to Agility in Portfolio Management. So in the next 30 minutes, we're gonna talk about aligning strategy and execution with Safe Lean Portfolio Management.

So what we're gonna cover is what is Lean portfolio management, what are the key components? What is the, actually the issue with the traditional approach? And why would lean portfolio management matter?

How you can get started with that, and also how you can measure your lean portfolio management maturity. Before we dive in, let me quickly introduce myself. So my name is Christina.

I've been into Agile projects for eight years now. Uh, five of those. I'm working as a freelancer with my own company.

I started actually as a product owner, then moved to Scrum master roles, became released engineer. In the recent years, I'm actually supporting companies as agile coach and lean portfolio management expert. So you can also see a few companies where I have worked and, uh, supported.

Um, on the right hand side, um, I started on the H and Vienna and lived and worked, um, quite internationally actually, so far, which, uh, which I really like. So, um, let's get started with the topic. So what is Lean Portfolio Management?

So Lean Portfolio Management is a core competency within the safe framework that aligns strategy with execution. So basically, we wanna make sure that whatever our company's objectives, strategic objectives are, uh, are aligned with what our teams and our HR restraints and all the departments and all the people who are working for the company are working on the right things, on the right products, and that we can achieve our organizational goals. So this is also the main key objective of Lean Portfolio management, is aligning strategy and execution, and just making sure that everything goes towards the right direction.

The other key objective of Lean Portfolio management is to optimize the value flow, because of course, we also wanna make sure that we do it in a lean manner. So as the, as the framework suggests, it's lean portfolio management. So we wanna make sure that the, the value stream that we are, uh, choosing are basically our structure and our processes, um, are efficient.

There is no waste and, uh, we can deliver value as quick as possible, right? So when we go into this direction, we also wanna look how we can optimize the value flow through our system. Lead portfolio management, um, consists of three main components, and for every component, uh, safe actually, um, defined a group of people, um, or some roles who should be responsible for that.

So this of course is gonna differ from company to company, depends a lot on your size and what you're trying to achieve with that. But the three components, uh, basically remain, uh, the same, which you would have, uh, to have. So on the very top, we have the strategy and investment funding.

So basically here we have, uh, a group of people or a certain roles who gonna be responsible for defining our strategy, and also making sure that the funds or the investments are going into the right initiatives. The second component is the Agile portfolio operations. Um, and as the name already suggests, this is more the operational level, and here we wanna make sure that our restraints, our teams, our departments, or whoever is working on our strategy initiatives, um, that they can do it, um, seamless, and they don't, they don't have any, uh, bottlenecks or any impediments, which they're of course gonna have.

So this age of portfolio operations, uh, group or group of people is actually there to support them and to align between the two levels. And the third component is the lean governance. And the lean governance is there to establish clear policies, uh, and metrics to manage the financials compliance and performance tracking across the portfolio.

So we wanna make sure here that we are of course follow rules, regulations, compliance matters that are relevant for us, uh, and also we wanna establish a certain metrics, how we can track, uh, how successful we are, of course. And together this three components should actually create a very well balanced, flexible approach to manage your portfolio management. So what is the issue with the traditional approach?

You might be asking yourself, why cannot we just continue the way we used to do it? So too many things are changing too rapidly nowadays, right? So be it the budget, be it the scope, be it the priorities, be it the resources, be it the management itself, and basically planning one year ahead, the way it's currently been done, um, or yeah, the way current companies are doing it, it's basically very unrealistic and doesn't fit into today's, uh, world anymore.

So the issue with the traditional approach is that it's inflexible. Um, yeah, it, it gives us, gives us an inflexible planning cycle because we need to start, uh, or basically the company's already starting, uh, the previous year, sometimes even mid of the previous year, planning for the next year, right? And, and in that way it's, it makes it very inflexible because you don't know what's gonna happen and you're already looking in certain projects, um, and certain resources into that, and then you actually have a slow response to change.

So that will be the second point, because once everything is set and done, um, usually, uh, there is no room for adaptation or respond to changes, um, if we have to. So inflexible planning cycle, slow response to change, resource misalignment, because here as well, we already allocate our resources to the certain projects and product and initiatives a year ahead. And then if something changes, then basically we are not flexible enough, um, to, to adjust.

And sometimes we have, or quite often actually, we have ed decision making. So decisions are often made in installation, leading to your leg of alignment across the organization. And basically we just don't have this cohesive, um, strategy that everyone follows and there is no clear, uh, red line basically, which aligns all the departments, all the teams into one direction.

So why does, uh, lean portfolio management matter? Um, well, as we said, the traditional approaches to portfolio management were not designed for global economy or the impact of the digital disruption. So this factors, however, put a lot of pressure on companies to work under higher degree of uncertainty, which we simply have.

Um, and yet it's expected of them to deliver, um, even quicker and better solutions, um, to the market. So why do we need lean portfolio management? It's basically to create, create more alignment, which we don't have.

Also to create transparency, which is, um, sometimes either it's, uh, non-existent or it's only very limited. Um, usually we have too much in the system. So a lot of companies are struggling with that.

They have too many projects, too many products, too many initiatives all going on at the same time. Um, and it's just overloading the system basically, which makes us inefficient. Um, again, and at the end, we don't even know if that what we're doing is aligned with our strategy or even bringing the value that we want to create and, uh, a agility missing at the top.

So nowadays, um, a lot of companies, of course, established, um, agile methodologies, um, or agile ways of working on the, on the team level, um, or on team, um, within their teams on operational levels. But at the top, uh, we're still missing it. So at the top, it's still very, um, rigid, it's still very traditional, um, right?

And with lean portfolio management, um, we have an opportunity to bring the agility also to this level of our organizations. So why, uh, why is Lean Portfolio Management the future? Well, because it offers us, uh, the continuous adaptation or it give us, give us the framework, um, to be able to do continuous adaptations, um, dynamic resource allocation, strategic alignment across the portfolio, because at the end, this is really what we want and enhance agility, agility and responsiveness, uh, at the portfolio level as well.

So how can you get started with Lean Portfolio management? Now, you heard all this and you might think to yourself, okay, sounds good. I wanna, I wanna try it out, right?

So if you wanna get started with Lean portfolio management, there are kind of five initial must have steps, um, you have to take. So there, uh, I'm not gonna say that they're easy, they're not. Um, and there's of course way more work to do for that.

But this is kind of like the five steps you definitely have, uh, have to do, uh, to be able to get, um, to get started. So the first step would be to define your strategic themes in case you don't have them. Um, so what is, this is basically your high level business objectives that guide the organization's investments and initiatives.

Basically, what are you trying to achieve? Uh, or what does the organization try to achieve? So examples could be expand digital channels to enhance customer reach and engagement, optimize supply chain, uh, processes to reduce lead times and boost responsiveness or accelerate development of eco-friendly products to meet growing sustainability demands.

So whatever is that, that you're trying to achieve, why does that matter? Because we wanna have the alignment, of course, um, and we wanna create some sort of focus. So we just heard there's usually way too much in the system and the same time going on.

So we wanna create a focus within our company, what are we gonna focus on? What is, what is important, um, in order to achieve those, uh, strategic goals? And of course, also the investment.

If we know what is important, then we can allocate our budgets, um, accordingly. And prioritization is also very important, uh, um, aspect of that. Once we know what we're trying to achieve and which direction we're going, then of course it's way easier to prioritize the projects, the products, the initiatives, and so forth and so on.

So how can you get started? Well, first of all, identify your business objectives. Um, if you are the CEO or some sort of, uh, senior leadership, um, in a company, then you probably know them already.

Um, if you've been given the task to do it, then you need to engage with your executive leadership team and try to find out like what is the strategic goals of the company and what are they trying to achieve? Then we want to translate them into themes, right? So here I have a few more examples.

For example, increased market presence in new regions, or streamline operations to reduce costs, accelerate the development of inno, uh, innovative products, um, that meet evolving customer needs. So here as well, whatever the strategic goals, um, you have in your company. Then once we have those, we want to communicate them, right?

So we wanna make sure that everyone in the company knows them and understands them, and then we can start to align what we're doing with those strategic objectives. And then we wanna review them on a regular basis and adjust if we have to, right? Because we heard that's exactly why the traditional approaches, um, are not suitable anymore because too many things are changing to quickly.

So on a regular basis, we wanna see what's happening in the market space, um, uh, with the customers, with the competitors, with the trends, and, and then see if we need to adjust, uh, anything or not. Step number two would be to establish a lean portfolio management function. What is it?

It's, it is a dedicated team or a group of people who's gonna be responsible for the lean portfolio, right? And, uh, typically it includes, uh, portfolio managers. So this could be your CEO, definitely, um, it could be one person, or you could include some more.

For example, some business executives or some directors. Um, then we have the epic owners. That could be your department heads or seniors.

And they would be actually the ones who's gonna be responsible for certain projects or initiatives or projects, right? So they're gonna be owning a topic. Um, we have the executive enterprise, um, um, architect or architects, depending on the size of your company.

So this is your IT managers or system architects. And they basically have to make sure that the technological landscape, um, is there, or that the technological landscape enables us to actually achieve those business objectives. And we can include some product, uh, product managers that will be your product managers or product directors, basically with the deep insights into certain areas of the business or certain products or certain services.

And they can help us, uh, with their information and their experience to make better decisions. Why do we wanna have it or why is it important? Well, we wanna have a centralized governance, like we already said.

We wanna create this alignment, right? And wanna make sure that everything goes towards meeting those strategic objectives of the company. Um, then, uh, agility and adaptability and continuous improvement.

And then of course, the slim portfolio management team is gonna be also responsible, uh, to adjust it whenever it's needed. And, of course, improve, um, the process, improve the structure, um, improve the performance or whatever issues we're gonna identify. So how, how to go about it or how to get started with that.

Well decide who is gonna be in your lean portfolio management. Um, don't, uh, don't make it too complex in the beginning. Um, just straightforward.

Who do you think you need there? And if you then realize some other roles are missing, you can always appoint them, right? So, um, then the most important part is define the roles and responsibilities.

Um, clearly define what they're gonna be responsible for. So it's, um, everyone is aware of that. So if we take the example of the Lean portfolio managers, it's definitely should be your CEO, and you might want to include a few more people there.

So they're gonna be the ones who are gonna define and oversee the entire portfolio, making sure that all the initiatives, um, align towards the strategic objectives. They're gonna be the ones who are gonna prioritize the initiatives and also be responsible for the budget. At the end of the day, the epic corners, for example, uh, those people gonna manage large scale initiatives.

Uh, we call them portfolio epics, um, where you have multiple restraints, multiple teams, or multiple departments who are gonna have to work on them in order for us to, um, to accomplish them. So the Epic owner is gonna be responsible for defining the vision, the benefits, the acceptance criteria, um, and to also, um, yeah, make sure that, um, uh, the, the, the progress so that we're progressing on the topic, right? And if there are any challenges or any impediments that the teams cannot solve themselves, then at some point the epic owners would have to support.

And for example, if we include some business owners, uh, we can say that, okay, we can define them as our key stakeholders, who going to basically provide us with business insights, um, for specific projects, products, like we already said. Um, and this is gonna enable us to make better, um, decisions. Then, um, the third part here would be to develop governance policies, right?

So we want to establish governance policies that guide decision making, resource allocation, and progress mon uh, progress monitoring, um, in order here as well. Once we have those, make them transparent, make sure that everyone is aware, um, what we are tracking, how we're making decisions, and what is important, um, so it's clear and we don't have to discuss it, um, every time from scratch. Step number three would, uh, would be to create the portfolio Canon system.

I'm pretty sure everyone is aware what a portfolio, uh, what a Canon system is, right? So at the portfolio level, we would like to have one as well. And why is it important?

We wanna, uh, wanna have visibility and trans, uh, transparency, right? So we wanna see, uh, what is in our pipeline, what are we working on, and is that really the right products, the right initiatives with it? We also want to improve our workflow, right?

Like we already said, like once we have it visualized on our common board, uh, we can identify then the inefficiencies, the bottlenecks in our, um, in our system. And then we would, like, we have to, or we should actually, um, address them in order to, to make it more efficient. And hence prioritization.

So of course, once we visualize everything on the Kanban board, it's becomes easier for us to also prioritize because we see where things are and what we're working on, what is in the pipeline, um, and so forth and so on. And increase accountability. Um, it should also promote accountability because, uh, now we clearly see who is responsible for certain, uh, certain portfolio epics, but also who is contributing to those.

So if there are some issues or if we're not moving forward, we know who we have to speak to, how to do it. Uh, how to get started with the portfolio. Kanban, well, design your camera board safe, actually, uh, makes a suggestion.

I'm gonna show it on the next slide. And I would recommend just, uh, stick with that because it's quite good. And you can make your minor adjustments, um, to fit your company's needs.

Uh, but actually just, um, just go with the, with the, with a suggested, um, color board from safe. I would say. Then visualize your initiatives.

So whatever you have already, just put it on there. So you make it, um, you make it visible, you make it transparent. Set w limits.

Um, since our portfolio management has also just certain capacity, and we don't wanna overload our system, right? So we should define some realistic, uh, whoop limits, uh, monitor and optimize. Um, and then we wanna see how is the work, um, flowing through our system, right?

And as I already said, then we're gonna pretty much, uh, or pretty soon identify our bottlenecks, our inefficiencies, and then we wanna start to address them accordingly. Yeah, continuous improvement, that's exactly what we're gonna do, right? Continuously.

Look what can be done better. What is, uh, what can be done more efficient? Where do we have waste in our system, so to say?

And how can we become lean up? So this is the, the carbon board, uh, from safe, uh, that I mentioned. As you see, uh, they define the flow, um, and actually for every stage or for every step, um, they also defined what should be happening there.

Um, so I would just, um, go, uh, with that and start using that. And like I said, you can do minor adjustments, you can rename things, you can, um, define things maybe a bit differently, but on all in all, it's actually quite, um, quite a good, uh, Kon system already. Step number four would be to align on metrics and KPIs.

So once we have the, the business objectives, once we have visualized them and we know who's responsible for that, at some point we need to get started. Uh, in order, uh, we need to get started measuring how successful are we and how is our performance, right? And for that, we need to have some clear metrics and KPIs.

So metrics are usually quantifiable measures used to check performance, progress and productivity. And there, of course, a lot of metrics. So choose the ones, uh, who you feel are gonna, yeah, be the most suitable ones for your case.

Um, don't overthink it, don't do too much. Less is definitely more. Um, and you can always, um, adjust them and, um, or include some other metrics at a later stage.

So just focus on the few, the most relevant ones. So KPIs are metrics that are particularly, uh, critical to, um, for achieving key business, um, objectives, right? Um, so here some examples would be customer satisfaction score or value delivered.

Um, again, define the ones for your, your business or your, um, company objectives, which would be the most suitable ones. Um, start with them. And then after some time, if you realize you need to change them, you need to adjust them, uh, feel free to do some.

So why do we wanna have metrics and KPIs? Why are they important? Because we wanna have an objective evol, um, evaluation, right?

So we don't wanna make our decisions based on how we feel, or based on our gut feeling, but actually we wanna have some data's gonna support our decisions, so we wanna make informed decisions, um, and of course, alignment with business goals, making sure that we're focusing on those. How to get started with metrics and KPIs. Um, well first step reference to your organizational objectives that we set in the step, um, uh, the first step, right?

Um, then select the relevant metrics and KPIs that gonna support those and where you think they would be useful to, to measure it. Um, then very important, ensure your data quality. So make sure you collect, um, yeah, good data actually, that you have some, some practices, um, in place.

Um, um, making sure that the data is accurate, consistent, um, and timely. Um, and that you define a standardized data collection processes here as well. It would be very important to inform everyone, which data are you collecting, why you're collecting it, and what you wanna do with that.

Um, so, you know, there are no, I don't know, strange feelings of, of the teams or the people who are involved or where you're collecting the data. Um, set baselines and targets. So it would be very important to define your starting point and understand your starting point and define some real realistic targets for improvements.

So the emphasis here is on realistic. Uh, we don't wanna set any unrealistic targets because then, um, it's not gonna bring you any value. Implement a reporting mechanism.

So basically, on the regular basis, of course, um, you wanna, you wanna look at your metrics and KPIs, uh, so there are various tools out there for it, right? Your company uses probably some of them. So make sure you have good dashboards, uh, yeah, reports or, uh, you visualize that.

So it's easy to digest, easy, uh, to see the results in order to draw some conclusions from that. And then, like we said, review and adjust some metrics and KPIs and aesthetic. So on a regular basis, check, is it still the relevant metrics?

Are there maybe some better ones KPIs the same? And then, uh, improve as you go along. Step number five, uh, would be to establish a lean portfolio management events.

So here, safe suggests, um, three events where the lean portfolio management should come together, um, in order, yeah, to work on this, on this portfolio, right? Um, you can define maybe a few more events if you feel like you, you, you have to, but this will be the three, uh, to get started. The first one would be the strategic portfolio review.

It should take place once a quarter, and basically it should, um, ensure alignment, um, of strategy with, uh, the organizational goals. So we wanna look at our common boards, uh, and see what is in the pipeline, what is an implementation, what else is going on, and is it still the, the right things that we are, that we're, that we are doing right? Uh, or where we are investing our resources.

Meeting Number two, or even number two is participatory budgeting. Um, here it's all about budgets, right? And CSAF suggests to do twice a year.

So already bringing in some more flexibility and, um, agility into it. So going away from this traditional approach where we just do it once a year here, uh, safe suggest to come together twice a year and have a look where we have, where do we have, where did we allocate our budgets, into which projects, which product, uh, products, um, which initiatives, and is it still the right way? Are was still the right things?

Or, or maybe we should do a reallocation into some other initiatives. And the third event, uh, event would be portfolio sync. Um, so this should ha this should be happening every month, um, or taking place every month.

And this is where we wanna look more on the implementation side of our strategic objectives. And we wanna make sure that our age of release strains our teams, um, yeah, can, can actually, uh, develop the things, um, or yeah, and deliver the things basically that will require from them. Uh, and if they have any challenges or if they have any impediments, this is where we want to address them and see how we're gonna resolve them.

Uh, let's have a look. Um, or let's make a comparison be between the strategic portfolio review and the portfolio thing, because sometimes the two get a bit confu. Uh, yeah, get a bit, um, confused what they're, what they're, what they are there for.

Um, so let's just maybe compare. So on the strategic portfolio review, uh, the focus should be on the long-term strategy, epic status, budget alignment, and the strategic vision, right? And for the portfolio swing, it should, the focus should be more on the day-to-day, um, um, operational execution.

The feature status, and the immediate challenges, uh, the participants for the strategic review would be more the portfolio managers, the epic owners, the enterprise architect, um, and maybe you want to take your business owners, uh, with you, uh, for the portfolio saying it would be more the epic owners, the product managers, the business owners, system architect, release train engineer, maybe it's product owners. So you get the insights from the team. So it's like, it's more operational already.

Um, for the strategic portfolio review, the discussion point should be, uh, portfolio come on board, the budget adjustments, the resource allocation, and for the portfolio sync. Um, the discussion points are epic and feature implementation. The KPI reviews, the dependency management and the portfolio.

Uh, the strategic portfolio review takes place quarterly, and the portfolio sync, um, takes place monthly. So how do you, or how can you measure your maturity? Uh, basically, um, doesn't matter where you are in your lean portfolio management, um, cycle Safe gives or provides us a guide also to, to have a look, um, and gives us some, some tips on where to focus.

Um, so we have four different levels. The first level would be crawl. So like a baby, basically we're crawling at this stage.

Uh, we're just at the very beginning, um, to get familiar with Lin Portfolio management, and we don't have much in place. So it, if we're at this level, the focus should be on establishing a foundational lean portfolio management practices to gain the basic understanding of safe, of in portfolio management of safe principles. And just begin by aligning portfolio activities with your business objectives, um, from crawling to walking.

Um, if you are on the, uh, walk level maturity level, then basically, um, it means you have already a basically portfolio management, uh, framework in place, and you are starting to implement it and you're using it more consistently if you are at this level. So the focus should be on improve portfolio operations, enhance alignment, and start using metrics and KPIs to measure your success and guide your decision making. The next level would be run.

Um, so if we are, um, at this level, basically we have already, uh, pretty well established in portfolio management practices where we are applying them, um, uh, consistently. Um, and if we're here, then the focus should be on even more optimizing the processes, refine your governance, continuously, improve in portfolio management practices to enhance value delivery and business outcomes. And the last step, uh, at this maturity level would be fly.

Um, so if we're here, that would mean that we have already a highly mature, um, um, yeah, we have a highly, uh, mature, uh, lean portfolio management practices in place. Uh, we operate already, uh, with full agility. We're effectively balancing strategy and execution, and we are actually achieving our strategic goals on a consistent basis.

So if you're here, your focus should be to innovate and lead a lean portfolio manager practices, push the boundaries of what's possible, because we know there, there is always room for improvement. And we actually, we want to sustain the long-term success through continuous innovation and improvement, because of course, we don't wanna lose what we already built up, up to this level. So that will be the end.

Uh, that was the short introduction to, uh, lean Portfolio Management with safe. Um, if you would like, um, we have to have more information or to get in touch, um, you can follow me on LinkedIn, you can have a look at my website. Um, I also have a book on Amazon, um, called Mastering the Art of Link Portfolio Management with Save.

And there will be a course coming out, uh, shortly. Thank you for listening and hope to hear you soon. Hey guys, uh, first of all, thank you very much, Dr.

Strong, to give me an opportunity to give this presentation on this very important topic, which is OS and enterprise agility. Often we run, uh, different kind of agile methodologies, innovate environment, scrum, scrumban, scrum, uh, uh, Kanban, hybrid methodologies. We are more focusing on the team level, team level agility, how we become, how we become more agile.

But what happens when, uh, we have an organ, we're working in an organization, and the organization has certain vision, vision and certain goals. So often it is seen that there is a disconnect between the agile execution and the overall enterprise strategy. All the organizational strategic objectives.

That's my topic of the presentation, how OKRs help an organization to become more agile, to become more responsive to changing, uh, market conditions. So I'm Varsi, uh, having two decades of experience in the software industry. Uh, major portion is on the program and project management side have been using agile methodology for the past several years, have been associated with the SaaS company for the last seven years.

And, uh, have been you leading different agile teams on different important projects to deliver some impactful features for our product. I am, uh, PMP certified and the self agileists. Uh, and I love speaking, I love writing that, why you are seeing me here delivering this presentation.

So let's start. So As I told you, in, in, in the, at the start, that organization, uh, spent so much time on devising strateg. They assemble all leads or company leads into the meeting.

Often they have a meeting on the offsite, on the onsite. So their focus is to formula certain strategies so they can complete in the given market, they can compete with their co competitors. But what happened when these strategies are translated into the execution plans, he observed that in many cases, the strategies are not well translated into the execution plans of the departments and teams.

So Gardner didn't, uh, research on it. And in 2023 report, Gartner highlighted three important challenges that organizations face, uh, when they try to like materialize, they realize their dreams, their goals into the execution strategies. So number one challenge is the ambiguous responsibilities.

An organization having objectives, and then they try to communicate these objectives. Then if they have 10 to 20 or 30 people at very small startup, then it's very easy to translate or communicate the vision goals to different team members. Say, we have a hundred plus people, 1 50, 200 people, it's still, the company is a startup, but it's gradually scaled when the company start gradually scaling, then it becomes really difficult to align with the organization strategy to keep the strict with the most important work which organizing wants.

So number one thing we got to observe is the ambiguous responsibilities. And number two, inability to cascade objectives to teams and individuals. As I said, that if you are going, if you are scaling, then it becomes difficult to keep track of the overall objectives of the organization while you are doing so many things at, at the departmental level, at the team level.

And in between, there is one more important thing that happen that is no clear priorities. So gutter identified three key challenges that is being, that are being faced by the companies who are able to formulate their strategies, but somehow struggle at execution level. Although these companies may use, uh, SCRAM may use scan one, any other methodology, but here is, uh, the problem is not.

The problem lies in between. What's the solution? Let's take an exam.

Our enterprise has certain visions, has certain vision and mission, and it has certain goals to achieve, say next, uh, six months, that's the one year. And then they have certain initiatives converting into the proper programs or projects, and they work in an IT fashion. So what I'm trying to communicate here is that, that this enterprise that has very ambitious goals and the team who is on the ground and executing the program projects.

So there has to be a very strong lead between the two, the strategies and objectives at the enterprise level, and the teams who are executing those strategies. And objective, because we are not working in an environment where there is no change, we are observing or we are having constant changes. So in order to cope up with the continuous change, there should be a strong link between the goals of the enterprise and the execution, uh, framework.

What happens in an enterprise that works in this web? And most of the organization work this, there a team goals, they formulate these goals and they communicate to the teams and the team start working well, Again, number one problem is the lack of alignment. Teams often work in silos with no unified direction.

Misalignment can result in disjointed efforts and efficiencies, but different department pursue conflicting priorities. Sales has different priorities. Marketing has different priorities, right?

Unclear priorities, as I told that the uh, team does not have a clear focus to work on some impactful full work. Like we already know the principle 80 20 principle. So there is a problem that what are the 20 most differentiating tasks that if we can do that can bring 80% of the desired outcome?

And the third is the reduce agility. And then it is very difficult to measure the problem, major problem, not in term that, okay, we destined to like, uh, 500 users or our product, uh, uh, this quarter that is miserable, uh, like objective. But again, when you are scaling and when with different department, different team, that is very difficult to objectively measure that how mu how much, uh, contribution in terms of numbers, in terms of metrics a team has contributed to that overall objective of the organization, right?

So the solution is objectives and key results. Objectives are the direction Like their organization want to move or what organization wants to achieve. And the key are how an organization can achieve that objective, right?

So okay is a goal setting framework that gives organization, uh, a framework where an organization, uh, formulate certain objectives and also formulate how uh, it is going to achieve those objectives, right? Why OKRs? So many companies are using OKRs.

Even big companies are using OKRs and as well as OKRs are applicable at a very small startup. If you have 10 to 20 people, you can implement OKR. Say, if you are a hundred plus people, 200 plus new people you can use, ok.

So OK is a very lightweight framework then we can use to connect the execution with this steps. And if this connection is established, and if this connection is stronger, then it can fuel the enterprise agility, the required agility organization needs in order to thrive and to digital it. So you can see on the screen a very simple structure of the, of an ok, for example, top level object.

For example, a company wants to, uh, increase market share in the SaaS industry, right? So this is the direction the company wants to move or this is the objective the company wants to achieve. Then how this objective will be achieved, that is translated by the key results.

So company has three key results achieve 20% increase in customer acquisition, expand into two new geographical markets, launch three new products tailored for enterprise clients. So if these three key results are achieved, then the organization would be achieving or, uh, the objective. And what is the objective?

Increase market share in the SaaS and desk. So this is a company level objective. Now, for example, in the days the sales department and then sales department can pick up one key result and make it its objective and it can drive key results against that objective and work in that damage.

So for example, uh, in this scenario, the sales department has picked w objective, achieve a 20% increase of customer acquisition, right? And made it object. Now, there are three key users.

If the sales department achieve, then it can achieve the objective of, uh, 20% increase in customer acquisition, which is, which is in fact the key result of the company level OKR, right? In a similar manner, if there's a regional sales team, which is working under the sales department, then it can pick up a KR of the sales department and make it its objective and then drive different key results and work in that direction. So in that case, the regional sales team has an OKR close these with 50 new enterprise customer, which is in fact a key result of the sales department, right?

And this regional team at its level create certain key results that are helpful to achieve the objective. So in a similar manner, if you can see that the OKR are being cascaded to different departments in the organization hierarchy, you can see the picture that CU has a vision or goals. And these goals are drive or translated into different objectives.

These objectives have certain key results, and these key results have may become different objectives for different teams and different departments. And this goes on and on. On an average, we can say that the OKRs are translated into the departmental level and then the team level and then at last, at the individual level.

So what does it mean that the departments can drive their OKRs? Teams can make their OKRs inheriting from, uh, from the department, and even the individual team members may have their respective okays inheriting from the teams, okay? Right?

So that is the alignment that actually do that actually connects different parts or different work, different team workers working in different, different entrenches in the organization to the overall objective of the organization. Cascading has a DISA disadvantage as well because in case of any change at the end graduate, then this change again, will again, uh, need to be translated to different departments, the and the individual. But OK r provide this flexibility that if an individual can drive an OKR from the top level, maybe from the team level, maybe from the departmental level, even from the company level.

So this flexibility is provided by the O care, and this is, this legacy exhibit is very important in the current environment where we are observing constant change. And in order to try in the digital age, we need to have this kind of agility in our enterprise. If you are working in a project based organization that, again, KR helps you on the top level, you can have certain strategic goals written in terms of OKR, and then you have certain initiated that are ated programs and projects and under project you can have different team member working on different tasks.

So this kind of arrangement can be done or this kind of, uh, implementation can for the OK R in a project based setup. If an organization works under this KR framework, then five, you can may say benefits and organization candidate, or you may say also that the OKRs has five superpowers that can be gained if you adopt o Never think is focused. The team driving their OKR from the departmental level or department driving their OKR from the company level has a clear focus and what is important at what needs to be achieved in a certain period of time.

In a typical manner, the organization work on a quarterly basis. So they create annual okas and then drive, uh, their quarterly, okay, from the annual chaos, right? So in that three months period, like in in one quarter period, the team members were certain, okay?

The departments and the teams and the company as well, they have a clear focus on what used to be achieving that three months time period, right? But we call less is more. And then as you know, as DF explained, that the cascading effect actually brings about the alignment among the departments among words why LA is important.

Because whenever we want to do something, we cannot do it. We, we need to work in collaboration with other department. For example, we want to release a feature.

A feature may have dependency on the engineering, may have dependency of the product, may have dependency of the market marketings and customer support, et cetera, et cetera. So due to this inter interdependencies, this alignment helps us to resolve these dependencies, right? And give focus to the department so they can create their OKRs in a way that are highly aligned with other team members or other departments, right?

And once it is done, they have a focus, they have a alignment, and we get that level of commitment from the teams and depart. That is very much reward 'cause in any environment, in order to make the people productive unit three things, experts say unit need treatments. One is autonomy, and second thing is its purpose.

A third thing is trial to get more better, right? An OKR framework provide this, they give you autonomy to, okay, the KR related or inherited from the, uh, upper level, say department level, say company level, and give you freedom to create key results. That how in what manner you can achieve that objective, right?

And this it process give you multiple learning cycle so you can improve your working tracking. If you have an objective and you have a clear key user, then key should be measurable. And this is the principle of the, okay, we cannot meet any key user that is not measurable.

For example, in the previous slide, we see that there is objective to increased market share, but there are three key results which are highly measurable. They have some numbers, really three features increase 20%, uh, customer acquisition, the case there should be measurable at. That's where we, we can actually track the focus of an objector.

And that's how we actually, uh, track the progress of the OKR. So this tracking is very important, and you can see that if you have implement the OKR, the department at tier and digital level, then this tracking is applicable to each level. You can nurture the results and that's actually the, uh, superpower of the okr because it can help you objectively measure the company performance at any level.

And then loss is a stretch. Certain goals are challenging, certain goals are big rocks that we may think we cannot achieve, but we can try. These are the stretch goals and okay, helps you to define these kind of stretch goals that so, uh, are not full commitments but keen, but teams stretch, team stretch and try their best to achieve them.

And this is the typical OKR cycle. Like if you want to implement OKR, then you have to start OKR planning like four to six weeks before the actual quarter starts. For example, if you want to start, uh, OKR implementation from January, January 25, and what happens that you need to plan is like four weeks, uh, like, uh, in the month of November or early in the December, right?

And there the business actually bring stone drives in business variet and finalize company level. Okay? That's a very cheap like sheet two four, a max five.

And then after this finalized, uh, edition of the OK r, the departments make their OK r the team make their OKRs and even individual make their OK R, right? And then once OKRs are, uh, uh, designed, they're published and every company, uh, member mostly OKF, then there is a checking session. Checking sessions are sometime like, uh, maybe a half an hour, one hour one-on-one sessions between the subordinate and the line manager at the team level, uh, team lead between team lead and the departmental head at departmental level between departmental head and the CEO level at the company level.

So what happens, this check-ins provide an opportunity to discuss the OKRs progress, and the manager gives their feedback and, uh, at this point, but is generally a very conservative feedback, which we'll cover in the next slide. And then once the, uh, the OKR cycle, which is, uh, in fact treatment cycle, a quarter cycle is go, is, uh, new to completion, then okay, assessing then that how much we are going to achieve, uh, per this quarter, or if we are working in the six month period, then how much we are going to achieve per six months or whatever the time period period we set for the, okay. And then at the, and at the end of the quarter, uh, the retrospective, is that what we learn?

What did, uh, what uh, we did right, what we did wrong and how we can improve. And then the next, uh, cycle for the, yeah, for the next quarter, uh, is a start. So I was talking about, uh, that OKRs framework is one thing that is more at debt planning level.

But what happens during the quarter, as I told you that they, the care check-in session, these check-in sessions, uh, have a distinct term, which is called CFR conversations, feedback and recognition at this is a very good opportunity for a manager to give a constructive feedback, a feedback that is helpful for the team member to grow, to reflect, uh, on his, uh, thicknesses and to leverage his strengths, right? And it is an opportunity to get guidance from the mangel, the how that certain o okay, I can be achieved, right? So this session, uh, which is called is done, uh, is done a different lab team level, member level, departmental level, team level, and the company level.

So conversation, feedback and recognition. The last part is the recognition. If team member has done a department has done, uh, or uh, uh, completely certain objectives, but it then the recognition should be done in any way.

And this is very open in okay, that you can formulate any means of recommendation. But you, as you can see, that this very systematic process, sometime we work hard, but we forget to recognize people in the timely manner. So this, okay, these check-ins provide opportunity that, okay, where the team member struggle, you have a constructive feedback mechanism and where the, where the team member has access, then you have the recognition mechanism.

And where we structured, uh, way of recognize a team member, they can feel motivated and they can, uh, they can try at their workplace. So I have explained you, uh, an agile environment an in that agile environment, it the implement OK R And not only ok, the OK with the superpowers along with the CFR, then how it can help our enterprise, right? To drive the required enterprise agility.

Number one thing, enhance focus and prioritization. No prioritization is very important. And if you are working on project basis, then this production helps you to select certain projects which have high potential to achieve the organization objective.

For example, if you are a having a backlog, so many features that I attend, right? And you need to prioritize which features should be implemented for the next 4K cycle or the next three months, five months because you have a limited engineering capacity, Then Zu is healthy. So prior, in prior auto you and you focus point of view, the OKRs give you a clear focus both at the company level, departmental level, team level, and the team member then.

And the second part is the alignment because each team on department drives all create their inherited from the company level, right? So they have common objectives, yes, they have different keys that, but they're all key and objectives are combined to achieve a bigger objective. So everybody feels connected, everybody knows that how his or her work is contributing to the overall objective of the organization.

And of course os are flexible. If there is a change in the enterprise level in the market, then companies can change the os for example, company, uh, create the o and, and at the annual level and the execute Q quarter with test with those objectives. And in the second quarter, there are certain changes in the market so they can change their work here.

And again, the teams or departments can create their OKRs according to the new needs of the organization, right? So this is also possible so that that kind of flexibility is provided by OKRs to accumulate the desired change, right? Increased transparency, as you can see, it's a crystal there that what are the company objectives?

Departments driving their own objectives and the team depa, uh, team member driving their own objectives. Everything is very transparent and everything very connected and very, very much aligned. So anyone can see, okay, if you are working in that direction, then how it can contribute to the different parts of the organization, right?

App power teams, as I told you that occurs, provide autonomy to the team members. They can work, they can think then how a special object it can be in, uh, despite of dictating them, despite of micromanaging them. Teams are empowered, right?

And remember we have C FFR session, we have these OK are con, uh, continuously assessed and the guidance is provided by the manager to three members, right? And the last thing is a continuous improvement. 'cause if accurate cycle OK, R works for female, then we against it and discuss, uh, assess the okia, how much they are effective, and then we can change our priorities according to the new dynamics of the market.

But second, continuous learning and improvement. So at the last I will say that everything look fast in digital, customer deserves competitive trades, technology choices, business expectations, revenue opportunities, demand OKRs, cultivate enterprise agility, empower organization to respond quickly to market changes s innovation and pivot efficiently than needed. And OKRs also promote collaboration and IT progress for building resilience and adopting enterprise culture.

And then we implement OKS effectively that all enterprises can drive continuous improvement, agility, and sustainable growth. So I would, uh, I would advise you guys, if you haven't implemented O OKR before, give it a try. And I can give you my personal experience that, uh, uh, we implemented O OKRs.

I have been shepherd, uh, who has been involved, uh, in the OK implementation across the company level. And then After the OK are, were implemented, I have been involved, uh, or the quarter planning cycles to guide teams how they can ride better OKRs, how they can, uh, actually, uh, and what are the, uh, interdependencies and how to resolve them among the departments, among the teams in order to bring that kind of alignment, right? Which is required the OK framework.

And, uh, we also drive how we can actually make the performance using this. Okay? Right?

And I can tell you that these OKRs give us enormous strength, enormous resilience to cope up with the changing market conditions. We also created the Covid scenario and, but our pace of growth, uh, was a bit dis, uh, like affected. But we continued our, uh, progress and OKRs were instrumental behind the hyper growth of our company.

We were a small startup, but in few years we became, uh, uh, uh, we, we came to a level where it was acquired at a very good, uh, like, uh, price, which is around three $65 million, uh, by cloud hosting company. And, uh, I would say that OK, instrumentals in this broker and played a catalyst role in this, uh, whole, I would say story. So if you haven't tried it, give it a try and let me know if you face any problems if you have, uh, any questions.

Thank you very much for your time listening me. If you want, uh, more details on the OKR subject, then you can read about which of what matters written by. And he has written excellent examples of big companies, how they implemented OKRs to achieve the required growth and achieve the business objectives.

Thank you very much. Cloud native now is the web's leading resource for the growing cloud native ecosystem. com is your destination for news, thought leadership, features and webinars on cloud native architecture, Kubernetes serverless, cloud native application development, microservices, service mesh, cloud native security, and more Stay on the cutting edge of modern application development at cloud native.

Now Welcome to the Tech Field Day podcast, where we discuss a single topic or premise. In each episode, we record these in association with our tech field day events, and we're actually on site here in Santa Clara for Cloud Field Day 21. Each episode is brought to you by the Futurum Group, which is now the owner of Tech Field Day.

But these are not sponsored episodes. These are general discussions about, among our delegates this week we're talking about acquisitions. Yes, that's right.

Corporate acquisitions and the fact that basically, uh, so much of the progress that our industry makes is based on acquisitions. You know, we don't, we love to hate 'em, but they're practically not a bad idea. So before we get started, let's meet who's on the panel today.

I am Ray Lucchese. I am, uh, gray Beard on Storage podcast co-host. I am, uh, rayon Storage blogger, and I am the one only person at Silverton Consulting.

Right. And I'm John Hildebrand. Uh, currently an independent contractor, which is fancy words for partially unemployed, and I can be found on LinkedIn under that particular name.

John Hildebrand. And I am Ken Naone. I do private cloud solutions development and go to market at a large enterprise IT consultancy and solutions provider.

And I'm pretty sure I'm the only Ken Naone on LinkedIn. Pretty sure. Well, I'm Steven Foskett and, uh, I think I'm the only Stephen FoST in the world.

In the universe. No, probably not. There's probably others.

But, uh, I am, uh, the president of the tech Field Day business unit and I organize the tech field day events. And of course you can find me on LinkedIn as well. So this was something that, uh, has been sort of percolating, I think, in all of our minds, but probably the entire industry, uh, for a long time.

It does seem like acquisitions are sort of part of the circle of life, doesn't it? You know, a new company will come up with a new idea, a new product. They, they work on it, they try to bring it to market, and then they get acquired.

Sometimes they get acquired real early before they have many customers. Sometimes it happens much, much later. But, um, you know, it, it's funny, once those acquisitions happen, it does seem like it breathes a new bit of life into the acquiring company or they just get lost entirely.

Ken, I'm gonna start with you. Uh, talk to me about a little bit about this. What's your impression of corporate acquisitions in the IT space?

There are various styles, and there's the one you just talked about, somebody with a great pedigree working at a lot of, no well-known enterprise company says, I want to do this new thing. Uh, they feel they can't do it with their current employer. This may a passion project.

They're like, they're probably gonna tell 'em no, keep your head down so they leave, start something new, then I'm getting acquired by that company or somebody else. Familiar with them in the industry. And in, in that way, yes, it does fuel innovation, uh, because the new cool thing they're doing, everybody's like, why didn't we do that before?

This is great. Yes, let's bring it into the fold of our portfolio. Every once in a while though, you get some huge corporation that's been around for a while, it gets sold up by a huge corporation.

Uh, and usually that comes across as being nothing more than a cash grab. They got a lot of customers we can get them, we can milk them for into perpetuity until, you know, it's just not a viable product anymore. Everybody walks away from it.

So it kind of depends on the style of acquisition. In my opinion, the startup acquisition is the part that's necessary, but the behemoth acquisition is not really beneficial to much of anybody other than an investor. I think most acquisitions are toxic.

The challenge is there's a mix of cultures that go on, whether it's a small company being bought by a large company, I think those are more successful. But in, in the end, the small company's functionality may actually occur and, and, and survive this, this transition. But for the most height, they're bringing people in and they have to re acclimate to a whole new culture.

If they're both big companies and one's huge and one's not so huge, the cultural clash is intense and it lasts for a decade until people die off or they retire or, or the organization spun back out, which has happened right now. These things, it's, it's, I think acquisitions. I don't think they push technology in, in essence, they actually stifle technology.

Well, how do those little guys get a leg up though, right? They get a leg up by buying, by getting customers, by expanding organically, by getting into the market and, and, and engaging. What an old fashioned idea.

You mean a company that would develop a product, bring it to market, find customers, sell it for profit and make money? What a Strange concept. And if they don't, then they, they go away.

And that's the way of, of startups, that's the way of capital. And that's the way resources get better allocated to other organizations. I guess so.

But you see plenty of cases where the right technol, the best technology doesn't win, of course. 'cause the big competitor stifled them. It's, it's not just technology, it's marketing, it's sales, it's, it's the organization, it's everything.

It's a business. You gotta be successful as a business. Technology is a part of it.

Oh, absolutely. Don't get me wrong. Yeah.

And, and a lot of times these small companies, they start up to think our technology will win out and ignore the marketing and the sales and everything that's required to actually bring it to market properly. That's a mistake. Yeah.

And that's a mistake. Uh, and maybe they're suffering until they get acquired because they couldn't make it. And if they get acquired by a bigger company and they've got great technology, maybe maybe some of that technology will show up in a product in 20 years or 10 years.

Well, we just saw VMware here at Cloud Field Day and for the last, what, 10, 15 years, they've been basically a company of acquisition, right? So NSX formerly ra, that was, that was brought in. Um, and we saw how now they're just now getting to the point of being able to cross pollinate and integrate those things together because they got acquired, right?

Yeah. It was like they, they had no focus so many years later. Maybe it shows up, maybe it's actually similar.

Maybe it's, maybe it's innovative at that point in time and maybe it's not, but they, they're like a company, like to your point though, they're like, they kind of weren't really innovating for a really long time. They were just acquiring and integrating all those different things in their portfolio. Everything that was automation operations focused and what was formerly Alize and who knows what it's name now, all the NSX stuff, everything.

And they said, we're gonna create a great go to market for private cloud around this. And what they had was just a ton of point solutions. And then it took a huge company to acquire the, the also huge company to say, no, we're actually just gonna make you integrate it now and it's gonna be a real thing.

And time will tell if it's that, if that's successful, you know? But the whole go to market that VMware had around all these comp innovative companies they acquired wasn't working. Yeah, that's that's an interesting point.

I think that, you know, if we can see patterns in the industry, there certainly is a pattern of big companies being less innovative. Mm-hmm. There's a pattern of small companies, like very small companies being incredibly innovative and trying new ideas.

There's a pattern of the big companies buying the small companies in order to basically inject some of that DNA to reinvigorate themselves to Ray's point as well. There's also a, a pattern of small companies that really aren't the, the whole picture, right? They're just the hamburger patty.

Mm-hmm. They don't have a, they're not a whole meal because they don't intend to be because they basically are just waiting around to get acquired. Right?

I mean, you've certainly seen that before Ray. Yeah. It's stupid.

I mean, you know, if, if they've got technology, they can, they can bring on board the technical talent or, or the marketing talent, the sales talent, the business talent, the strategic talent. They can hire damn consultants being a consultant of course, to do all this stuff they want. The thing is, if they're gonna be in this game, it's a business.

They gotta understand how to run the business successfully. They gotta understand how to acquire customers successfully, and they gotta understand how to grow. If they don't wanna do that, then why are they doing this?

Why don't they go join Cisco or Dell EMC or whomever, right? Yep. Well, I think a lot of them do intend to do that.

I mean, yeah. Well a lot of them do end up being bought by some of those big companies and we may never hear from them again. Uh, we were just discussing beforehand not to pick on HPE or Cisco, but at the same time, there's plenty in their portfolio over the last decade or so of companies that they acquired.

Yeah. That, uh, basically went nowhere. We haven't even seen the IP from those companies injected into anything else.

They've just fallen by the wayside and, and other examples of companies acquiring very good technology and, and taking 10 years to, to integrate it and, and effectively move forward. But it's never as good as it was outside. Mm-hmm.

And, and there's certainly a lot of examples of companies, uh, some of these big guys buying an a successful small company and just sort of surfing on the, the technology, the products that they had developed. Yeah. Not investing in it.

And eventually the product just goes away. It just vaporizes. Uh, once there's no more there.

I mean, I lived through that several times as a customer before I do did what I do do now. I was just, you know, a cis admin, an IT manager. I'd buy the exciting new thing and it would get acquired by Dell or HPE and I'd be like, okay, how long do I have to sit on this before I get out of my environment because it hasn't been updated in six years or whatever the case may be, which happened multiple times to me.

Right. But back to the premise here that this is a necessary evil, I think you could make a case that it's a necessary evil because it's driving, um, advancement for the big companies where the impact happens. Uh, frankly, let's imagine a scenario where there was no acquisitions where, where smaller companies either had to Organically grow, organically Grow or die or die.

Think about that for a minute. If there was no acquisitions, if there was no exit possible, uh, would there be, as many small companies started, would people take a chance on a small company that may die instead of grow? Maybe they would, maybe they would be more excited about, uh, working with a smaller company if they thought that it had a, had a future.

So, so let's, let's do that. Okay. Let's set our, our alternate universe here to where there are no acquisitions.

What does that mean? I think that's true to a limited degree, but I work with a lot of enterprise customers and risk is a huge thing to them. And you just pointed out a lot of risks in working with a small company.

So they might have the attitude of, I'm gonna try this thing out, but I'm not going to deploy it enterprise wide until I know it's real for the foreseeable future because I need something in my data center or the cloud that's, uh, rock solid and, uh, predictable, uh, until I decide to move on from it or, or whatever the case may be. Uh, and so if they don't have the pedigree of that huge company behind it that they know is gonna be there, uh, you know, a a a year or two from now and not just shut over their doors because they weren't profitable, that's an incentive for a lot of customers. So, so what that environment would look like is that there's no acquisition exit.

There's either go public or, you know, organic growth or die. Those are the three choices. And acquisition is off the table.

I think in that environment there'd be more startups. I think there'd be more successful startups 'cause they, the successful startups today are getting bought and getting absorbed and stuff like that. Mm-hmm.

And I think to some extent the enterprise is gonna start seeing where the functionality is being innovated is not in these big companies. And it's rather being innovative in the small companies and in that environment. If they've got the functionality that these guys need, they'll buy it.

Well, I, and I think a lot of that comes back when we start to think about past statements. Like, nobody gets fired for buying IBM or in some cases the adoption curves and where's where, you know, the early adopter, later adopter. Yeah, yeah.

Whether they're early adopters crossing the chasm, so to speak. And I think in that particular regard, um, you are, I think you're kind of right in the regards of the new companies. There'd be more of them, but I don't necessarily believe that they would be too many that are super successful.

There'd still be a lot that would be existing, but I don't necessarily know if you talk about the VC money and things like that, that gets injected into these companies, whether or not, whether or not they're gonna see the return on investments. Well, I, I think the promise of that acquisition fuels innovation in that you can recruit the best people and give them those shares and say, you're in this ride with us and if we do really well, then you'll be rewarded. Right?

Otherwise, they're probably just gonna languish and never really go anywhere. I think, here's the thing from my perspective, you take, take a look at somebody like Google. They are, they are acquiring companies in their, in their, you know, adjacencies to try to block startups, to try to block innovation, to try to bring that innovation in and hopefully surf on that.

If that option wasn't available, there'd be a lot more big startups coming out in existence over time. Google was a startup. They did great on search and look what they made.

They made this thing. Meta was a startup. Social media, these guys can get there, but Meta allows them to buy WhatsApp.

What? And then, and all these other YouTube and you know, these are all acquisitions that block those companies that were very, very successful. Yeah.

From going after the big guys. That's, that's actually, I mean, think about Google. I mean, what is, you know, Google's cash cow is their advertising business, which was an acquisition.

Yes. Their, um, you know, continued relevance in many ways relies on YouTube, which was an acquisition. Mm-hmm.

Um, you know, I, I think that that there's, that's a, a great example of a company that's actually done pretty well by acquisitions. But, but, but in the, in the, in the alternate universe, what would it look like? You know?

Yeah. YouTube Would be a separate company Exactly. And, And be doing really well.

And, and, and, you know, AdWords would be doing real, real well as well, you know, so it's, it's, it's, you know, I, I understand that acquisitions to some extent are necessary evil, but I don't think they're good for industry. They're good for capitalism, they're good for tech. But I do think, as Ken said, that one of the reasons we have so many acquisitions comes down to VCs and private equity.

And I think that, you know, in many ways, the, the allure of that money is one of the things that drives this whole, um, startup acquisition cycle and concentration of companies into these giant, you know, IT providers. You know, that that's, that's what the, uh, that's what the VCs want. They want to put some money in and get their money out at a, with a return.

That's what, you know. And, and then on the flip side, there's private equity, which is the engine that's driving a lot of these acquisitions. And I think we should talk about that too.

So, you know, those of you who know something about it, tell us a little bit like, what is private equity? What does that mean, and what happens in the tech space when those companies get acquired? I gotta be careful because I work for a company that's funded by private equity right now, actually.

But I mean, essentially they're just looking for constant growth. They wanna return on their investment. They're putting some money into your company so they can have an exit at some point.

And during that time, you have to show growth. And I've seen that where I work, you know, where I'm not talking about a vendor. We don't make anything.

We're a solutions provider, but we have been acquiring other companies as part of our growth strategy pretty much nonstop since I started working there. Almost tenfold increase in about five years in terms of staff. Um, it's very chaotic internally at times.

Right? As soon as when acquisition's done, everybody's integrated and used to it, you're starting over on the next one. And that's to essentially keep the growth momentum going so that we can see that next exit from one VC to an to another, another, no, sorry, not vc, private, private equity to another.

And, um, you have to be careful that you don't allow to get toxic in a road. Mor morale inside the company, essentially, when they think that, you know, the, the decision makers here are really only interested in cashing out rather than being an innovative company. Right.

If, if they feel like the focus, the only focus at a leadership level is like, how can we make more money so that we can continue to move this train forward? It, it probably doesn't keep the employees who are responsible for that innovation excited. Yeah.

It, it, it is, it is interesting though, because, you know, IIII will say that it seems like some private equity companies do it better, and some do it much, much, much worse. Like VCs to some extent. Yeah, That's true.

It's, it is true. Because some of the VCs do a nice job too. I have to say.

Some of them really are looking for, looking to build, uh, productive companies. They're not looking just for a quick flip. And they're looking, and some of the VCs actually provide what I think a lot of the founders wish they would provide, which is open doors and contacts and coaching and support and other VC companies absolutely do not.

They really are hands off and they're just looking for return on their investment. Yeah. And I guess that's what it comes down to is how good is a private equity firm?

Are they actually making an investment? Are they looking to cut costs so they can turn around and sell for profit? There's two approaches there.

Yeah. Uh, and one of them is actually going to fuel growth and innovation within a company. And the other is just, you know, all about cash extract cash.

Yeah. Yeah. But that, that being said, I am a bit cynical and feel like, uh, in a way it's the old, uh, you know, everybody has a plan until they get punched in the face.

I think every, every VC would love to be the nice kind of VC that coaches the founders and helps them to grow a, a meaningful business. But unfortunately, uh, many of them end up, uh, just doing a cash grab because they need to meet their numbers. So I guess let's get, let's finish up with the, the core question with the premise.

Uh, is our acquisitions a necessary evil? Are they something we have to have to maintain the IT industry or not? Uh, Ray, No.

And I, I believe I've stated my position, I think organic growth is a better solution to, to create more innovative companies and create more competition in the IT marketplace, which, and create more functionality. Well, Ray's trying to convince me over here of, of the, the answer that he wants me to say, but I will say that I believe that acquisitions are a little bit of a necessary evil. Um, I'm not gonna completely jump full in on that particular pool in that regard, but I do see where Ray, you're, where you're coming from in, in your stance on this premise, right?

And I understand Ray's stance as well, but I'm of the mindset that they're always gonna exist. We're never gonna get away from 'em. So we may as well look for the kinder, gentler acquisitions, I suppose, right?

The ones that actually do fuel innovation that are, uh, looking to, you know, make the whole industry better for everybody in, in, in one way or another. Uh, and those are the ones that we should probably be more optimistic about. But absolutely not every single acquisition is good.

Yeah. And I, I, I would say that it depends, is always the answer that we, uh, that we end up with Yes. On the podcast.

But I would say that, um, in a, in a, in an ideal world, uh, we wouldn't need acquisitions and we would have companies that are organically growing and building viable products. But unfortunately we live in a very flawed world where, um, in many cases, I think a lot of these companies just would fail. If, if it weren't for acquisitions, I think we would see a lot of small startups, uh, rise and fail.

And that would stifle continued investment. And that would be that, um, you know, I'm gonna come out on the, on the, they are a necessary evil, um, with, with, with an emphasis on the evil. Because unfortunately, too, the flip side of that is that we see a lot of negative come out of acquisitions, especially as you said, when, uh, when the monsters eat each other.

Mm-hmm. That ends up being a really challenging time for a lot of people. Um, a lot of the customers, uh, certainly a lot of the employees.

And, um, and it's not at all clear that those end up benefiting anyone in the end, whereas, you know, maybe some of these smaller ones, maybe they are a benefit for the smaller ones. We'll see. But, um, it, it is an interesting question.

Uh, I will pose it to the audience as well. Uh, do you agree that, uh, acquisitions are necessary evil, or do you agree that acquisitions are just evil and we should find a different way to grow the IT industry? Uh, thanks for listening to the Tech Field Day podcast.

If you enjoyed this episode, please do give us a sub subscription and, uh, we would look forward to seeing you again. Before we go, um, let me hear from each of you on the, on the panel, uh, where can we connect with you and continue this conversation? Uh, Ray Lui at Twitter, uh, like I said, gray Beard's on storage podcast and Ray on storage blog post.

Yeah, and I pretty much switched to LinkedIn for most things, so I'm also on LinkedIn, sorry, so searching for me on LinkedIn, John Hildebrand, and we can connect there. And you can find me on LinkedIn as well, Ken Albo. Uh, I am still on the ex, formerly known as Twitter, but not very active.

You can find me there and maybe it'll take you to my LinkedIn or something along those lines. Yep. And you'll find me on, uh, most social media networks as s FoST.

So once again, thanks for listening. Uh, if you enjoyed this conversation, you'll find more. com/podcast.

This podcast is also broadcast on Textron tv. So look for us there. Uh, you'll find me, uh, every Tuesday or most Tuesdays on the Textron gang as well.

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