How did you get into the software and what was your career arc like since then?
I got into software as a student-enthusiast way back in the late 1980s. I then studied Computer Science in University and got to work on Microsoft Excel as a student intern in the early 90s. After graduation, I worked in Oracle for a year and then returned to Microsoft, where I worked on Microsoft Project and what eventually became SharePoint Server. After about 5 years in Redmond, I moved to Microsoft India and worked on a clean room implementation of Java for .NET before quitting to start my own company. I ran my own company for 7 years, building code-generators and tooling for the nascent web industry, and then using our tools for consulting and building custom business web applications for customers in Asia, Australia and the US. After moving the company to Singapore, I retired from my company and moved to Australia. In Australia, I worked for MYOB for 5 years, taking their desktop-centric accounting application to Azure – and being recognized for my work as an Azure MVP. I then had the opportunity work in a professional FP environment with Scala, F# and Haskell, before being hired back at Microsoft to work on Azure. I returned to Redmond and had the opportunity to work on the Quantum Computing team in Microsoft Research, where I was one of the founding team that designed Microsoft Q# and wrote the first compiler for it. After 5 years in Redmond, I’ve moved back to Australia where I continue to work for Microsoft on the Azure Kubernetes Service.
What changed during the last year for you? How do you keep your enthusiasm for tech going? The last year was tumultuous – I said goodbye to the Quantum Computing team in Redmond to join the Azure Kubernetes Team in order to return home to Australia. I have continued to be an active part of the Quantum Computing, Functional Programming and Cloud Native communities, and the confluence of these three areas has a lot of interesting work going on!
What tech is the most exciting for you? What projects have you found and liked so much that you shared them with friends?
I love distributed computing and enjoy working on AKS. For fun, I have begun working on implementing nature-inspired algorithms for optimization problems – and learning Rust whilst doing so.
Which people in tech are the most interesting to you? Who are some people you regularly keep in touch with about tech?
I enjoy talking to a wide variety of people on different topics: Helmut Katzgraber (@katzgraber) for optimization, algorithms and scientific computing; Dave Bacon (@dabacon) and John Preskill (@preskill) for quantum computing; Don Syme (@dsymetweets) and Shriram Krishnamurthi (@ShriramKMurthi) for language design and programming language theory; Sergey Bykov (@sergeybykov) and Reuben Bond (@reubenbond) for distributed computing; my colleagues George Pollard (@porges), Ivan Towlson (@ppog_penguin) and Jacob Stanley (@jacobstanley) for FP.
I also follow John Carlos Baez (@johncarlosbaez) and Bartosz Milewski (@BartoszMilewski) for abstract mathematics. This isn’t, by any means, comprehensive – so if you want more recommendations, follow me (@johnazariah) and I’ll introduce others!
How do you see conferences and meetups evolving after pandemic? Do you want to meet by the bay in person or stay online?
I think that there will be a definite need for in-person conferences. I think once the pandemic settles down, I would love to come back and speak in person – but until then, I’m happy to participate online!
We are happy to invite you to the 9th conference Scale By the Bay!
Bill Venners is president of Artima, Inc., provider of Scala consulting, training, books, and tools. He leads the open-source projects for the ScalaTest testing library and the Scalactic library for functional, object-oriented programming. He is coauthor with Martin Odersky and Lex Spoon of the book, Programming in Scala. And he is a community representative on the Scala Center’s Advisory Board.
How did you get into the software and what was your career arc like since then?
I was attracted to software because I felt it was a way to be creative that was also a realistic way to make a living. I started out as a programmer working in various cubicles, took a sabbatical to write a book about Java, and ended up doing software consulting, training, and book publishing.
What changed during the last year for you? How do you keep your enthusiasm for tech going?
I got a glimpse of a quieter life promised by retirement, and liked it. But I’m still quite enthusiastic about programming, so I want to keep working. I don’t need to do anything to keep my enthusiasm alive. I find programming very interesting and want to keep doing more of it.
What tech is the most exciting for you? What projects have you found and liked so much that you shared them with friends?
Roller coasters are probably the most exciting tech for me. I recommend github to friends. I quite like using it and feel it does a great job at facilitating teams working on software.
Which people in tech are the most interesting to you? Who are some people you regularly keep in touch about tech?
I’ve spent a lot of time learning about type theory the past several years, so lately I’ve been reading a lot of papers and watching videos from people in that field. The tech people I keep in touch with are primarily people I’ve met through programming communities, mainly C++, Java, Python, and Scala.
How do you see conferences and meetups evolving after pandemic? Do you want to meet by the bay in person or stay online?
I want to meet in person again. Historically I often watched talks as videos later, spending most of my time at conferences talking to people in hallways. So I actually attended conferences both in person and online before the pandemic. I miss the in-person part.
We are happy to invite you to the 9th conference Scale By the Bay!
Adi Polak is a Sr. Software Engineer and Developer Advocate in the Azure Engineering organization at Microsoft. Her work focuses on distributed systems, big data analysis, and machine learning pipelines. In her advocacy work, she brings her vast industry research & engineering experience to bear in educating and helping teams design, architect, and build cost-effective software and infrastructure solutions that emphasize scalability, team expertise, and business goals. Adi is a frequent presenter at world-wide industry conferences and O’Reilly courses instructor. When Adi isn’t building Machine Learning Pipelines or thinking up new software architecture, you can find her hiking and camping in nature.
How did you get into the software, and what was your career arc like since then?
Wow. As a kid, I loved computer games. That passion drew me to learn about CPU, RAM, processors, network, software, hardware, etc. Later on, I decided to do a degree in the field, which lead to an M.Sc. with a thesis and three fantastic years working in the lab as ML Researcher. From there, I held several positions until my current job, managing a team that works on large-scale Analytics solutions. For me, it was always a synergy of passion for tech, specifically Data & AI, and helping people do more with technology.
What changed during the last year for you? How do you keep your enthusiasm for tech going?
Last year was challenging for everyone around the globe.
To keep the energy, I reminded myself daily that’s it’s ok not to be ok. Take time off, recharge, and come back energized.
What tech is the most exciting for you? What projects have you found and liked so much that you shared them with friends?
I’ve been using Apache Spark since 2013 and was fortunate to see how it evolved from version to version, using it in production systems and helping people onboard to using it on the cloud. I’m writing a book on Machine Learning with Apache Spark that I am very excited about. It captures experience from multiple projects that can allow engineers to design their distributed machine learning systems better.
Which people in tech are the most interesting to you? Who are some people you regularly keep in touch with about tech?
Zhamak Dehghani for her DataMesh vision, updates, architecture, and new emerging technology. Martin Kleppmann on his research and innovative work with CRDTs (Conflict-free replicated data type). And Matei Zaharia and his students on tech advances in Data Lakehouse, Delta Architecture, and large-scale computation.
How do you see conferences and meetups evolving after pandemic? Do you want to meet by the bay in person or stay online?
I enjoy tunning in from the comfort of my house, watching fantastic educational and inspirational presentations. Yet, I miss the hallway conversations greatly, meeting with the community face to face, and just hanging out.
We are happy to invite you to the 9th conference Scale By the Bay!
Mary Grygleski is a Senior Developer Advocate at IBM with the Liberty/Websphere team, focusing on Liberty, Microprofile, Jakarta EE, Java, Open Source, Cloud, and Distributed Systems. She transitioned from Unix/C to Java around 2000 and has never looked back since then. She considers herself as a polyglot and loves to continue learning new and better ways to solve real-life problems. She is an active tech community builder outside of her day job, and currently the president of the Chicago Java Users Group (CJUG), as well as a co-organizer for several IBM-sponsored meetup groups in the Greater Chicago area.
In your work with technology, what is the task, situation, setup when you’re the happiest and in the flow?
I am the happiest when I feel that I am trusted, with my manager essentially entrusting me to decide on how to do my work. I was a software engineer for over 20 years for different companies, before becoming a developer advocate in 2018. There were a few occasions in which I was given a project to finish, and was given the freedom to choose the libraries and frameworks to get my work done. Obviously I did not just go blindly with my assignment, and I sought approval and advice from those who were more experienced than I was. Overall it gave me great satisfaction when I felt trusted to get the job done.
What was the most positive thing you realized, or that just happened to you, during the pandemic?
Strange as it may seem, there are some positive things that have happened - or are still happening, to me during the pandemic. The fact that the meetups that I am hosting for the Chicago JUG are all digital, we are now having new members joining from not just Chicago, but from all over the world! Even though our meetup times are very late for some of these new friends who are based in, for example, Europe and India, we post the recordings on our YouTube channel, so I think everyone is benefitting from that as well.
Which person, in tech or anywhere, gives you the most inspiration?
There are more than just one person, but now that I am being asked, I have to mention Venkat Subramaniam being one of the most inspirational for me. He is amazingly knowledgeable and articulate, but more importantly, he is so humble too. I remember the first time meeting him in person about 5 years ago, when I was the meeting director at CJUG and scheduled him for a meetup, I picked him up at the hotel in the Chicago suburb where he was giving a few workshops that week, and then we took the commuter train into the city where the meetup venue was. I have to say that it was one of the most memorable train rides that I ever had! He and I struck up some fantastic conversations, not just technical stuff but life itself! I myself could not even believe that I was riding the train with a tech legend! I learned a lot from him, and to this day, I feel that my advocacy work has been influenced by how he carries himself - being very genuine and sincere in what I do as speaker, that I am out to share the knowledge and not a bit about myself.
Should we stay online, go all-in for in-person, or do a hybrid setup next year? Which one do you personally prefer?
This is a tough question! While I would love that you go for an all in-person conference next year, the fact that the pandemic is still posing a high risk, it would not be good that any event should expose people to the risk. So I’d say let’s play it by ear, and perhaps a hybrid setup would be more realistic and should, hopefully, give SBTB the flexibility of going either way depending on the situation.
We are happy to invite you to the 9th conference Scale By the Bay!
Anna Warno is a data scientist graduated in mathematics, employed at 7bulls. Involved in projects in the field of computer vision, NLP, time series. Actively participates in conferences and research projects, including advanced Horizon 2020 research projects. Published on conferences, including NIPS. Hackathons lover.
In your work with technology, what is the task, situation, setup when you’re the happiest and in the flow?
I find I work most effectively in quick creative sprints. If the product I’m working on can actually improve people’s lives it gives me extra satisfaction.
What was the most positive thing you realized, or that just happened to you, during the pandemic?
If you get rights around you, you can also focus really well at home
Which person, in tech or anywhere, gives you the most inspiration?
Maybe not a particular person, but the attitude of people who spend their whole lives learning new things in technology or other fields, not out of compulsion but for pure pleasure.
Which other SBTB 2021 talks do you want to attend? Which ones look like complementing yours well?
SBTB 2021 promises a lot of good content, but machine learning presentations are the closest to my heart. Especialy I would like to see ‘Apache NLPCraft - Breaking Years Of Dogma in NLP’ and 'Chip Floorplanning with Deep Reinforcement Learning’ or 'The SAME Project: A New Project to Address Reproducible Machine Learning’.
Should we stay online, go all-in for in-person, or do a hybrid setup next year? Which one do you personally prefer?
I think the hybrid solution is the most convenient for everyone. Personally, I prefer live meetings. You can talk to others more easily then, and this is very important at conferences.
We are happy to invite you to the 9th conference Scale By the Bay!
Milecia Mcgregor
is a Senior Software Engineer, international tech speaker, and mad scientist that works with hardware and software. She will try to make anything with JavaScript first. In her free time, she enjoys learning random things, like how to ride a unicycle, and playing with her dog.
In your work with technology, what is the task, situation, setup when you’re the happiest and in the flow?
It doesn’t take a whole lot to make me happy. As long as I have an interesting problem and I can make myself sit down for 15 minutes, I can really get in the zone and time just flies by. All I need is a laptop and internet and I set to be in a pretty good place.
How much time do you spend on your setup that you need to do actual work? What are the things that you cannot do without in your environment?
My setup is actually really basic. I just have a desk and a few laptops. I did finally give in and buy a good chair! The main thing I need in my workspace is a window. I love watching the people go by and noticing how the seasons change. If I don’t have a window, it completely throws me off.
Which other SBTB 2021 talks do you want to attend? Which ones look like complementing yours well?
I’m really interested in the Making Kubernetes How We Build Things talk! I’ve been wanting to learn more about Kubernetes, so I’m hoping to learn more about what it actually does.
Should we stay online, go all-in for in-person, or do a hybrid setup next year? Which one do you personally prefer?
This is such a hard question! I’ve been personally conflicted about a lot of things around this, but I think hybrid setups are the best. It gives people more options so they can choose what’s best for them without missing out on the core content.
We are happy to invite you to the 9th conference Scale By the Bay!
Tim Condon is a Swift developer from Manchester, UK and part of the Vapor Core Team. He’s the server-side Swift team lead at raywenderlich.com and has written the unofficial-official book on Vapor with the founders of the framework. He founded Broken Hands a few years ago and delivers talks and workshops on Vapor and server-side Swift around the world. He also co-organises the ServerSide.swift conference - the world’s first and only conference focused on server-side Swift.
In your work with technology, what is the task, situation, setup when you’re the happiest and in the flow?
I’m definitely a night owl so it would have to be at night! I’m a big proponent of TDD, no matter the project and I find making the tests go green hugely rewarding and motivating. Another awesome part of my job is working together with Vapor’s fantastic community and discussing design and evolution with everyone.
What was the most positive thing you realized, or that just happened to you, during the pandemic?
Having a garden! I know a lot of people in cities suffered during the lockdowns and I felt incredibly lucky to be able to sit out in the garden.
Which person, in tech or anywhere, gives you the most inspiration?
It’s hard to call out any particular individual!
However I’m inspired by all of the open source developers who have both come before me and after me. It’s amazing to see what the world of open source has achieved.
How much time do you spend on your setup that you need to do actual work? What are the things that you cannot do without in your environment?
I’ve spent a lot of time dialing in my setup over the last few years. Spending a large amount of the day in one place means it really pays to make yourself comfortable. Investing in a good chair is the biggest thing you can do! I also have a sit-stand desk which I find really helps me stretch my legs when I need. Monitor arms also really help to get your monitors at the fight height. Finally I’ve recently been using a split keyboard which I’ve found interesting! I switched my keyboard layout at the same time so I’m still not sure if it’s been a good experiment!
Which other SBTB 2021 talks do you want to attend? Which ones look like complementing yours well?
I’m looking forward to all the talks! However I’m most looking forward to seeing Konrad’s Distributed Systems with Swift talk. It ties in with my talk on tracing and it’s great to see Swift gaining traction as a server-side language.
Should we stay online, go all-in for in-person, or do a hybrid setup next year? Which one do you personally prefer?
Personally I prefer in-person. As someone who works from home full time (even before the pandemic) conferences are my social time! They’re a chance to catch up with old friends, meet new ones and hang out with like-minded people.
We are happy to invite you to the 9th conference Scale By the Bay!
Joshua Arvin Lat (Arvs) is the Chief Technology Officer of NuWorks Interactive Labs. He previously served as the CTO of 3 Australian-owned companies and startups. He is an AWS Machine Learning Hero and has spearheaded and led the Machine Learning Zero-to-Hero online international events. Years ago, he and his team won 1st place in a global cybersecurity competition with their published research paper on secure two-factor authentication systems. These past couple of years, he has been sharing his knowledge in several international conferences and events to discuss practical strategies for companies and professionals. He is also the author of a Machine Learning and Machine Learning Engineering book called Amazon SageMaker Cookbook: Practical Solutions for Developers, Data Scientists, and Machine Learning Engineers using R and Python.
In your work with technology, what is the task, situation, setup when you’re the happiest and in the flow?
I am currently the Chief Technology Officer of NuWorks Interactive Labs. As the CTO, I like solving complex problems that involve the unorthodox use of tech solutions to solve long-term business and management requirements. One example of this would be the usage of machine learning to automate some of the tasks that usually take a significant amount of time when performed manually. In most cases, simpler and more straight-forward strategies would do the trick and I simply just focus on making sure that the team executes the game plan properly. Right now, I am comfortable and experienced enough to properly deal with all sorts of requirements and challenges. I am happiest when the clients are happy and the entire team I work with is able to reach its goals and targets.
What was the most positive thing you realized, or that just happened to you, during the pandemic?
I realized that I had a few extra hours per day during the pandemic since we are all forced to work remotely. In the past, about 3-4 hours a day would be lost due to commute and preparation time just to work in an office setup. A few months when this setup was enforced, a member from the Packt team reached out and asked me to write a book on machine learning. I took the opportunity last year and used the extra time per day to write a 700+ page technical book for intermediate and advanced machine learning practitioners. The title of the book is “Machine Learning with Amazon SageMaker Cookbook: 80 proven recipes for data scientists and developers to perform ML experiments and deployments”.
Which person, in tech or anywhere, gives you the most inspiration?
I am most inspired by tech professionals who contribute to open-source software that help make the world a better place. In the past, I had the time to write and maintain some of these myself. After a while, I realized that maintaining an open source project for an extended period of time takes a lot of commitment and discipline. Generally, tech professionals who contribute to open-source software are able to solve more difficult challenges as they are used to going an extra mile just to polish their skills and master their craft. This is the primary reason why I respect them.
How much time do you spend on your setup that you need to do actual work? What are the things that you cannot do without in your environment?
I would spend probably about 5-10% of my time on my setup needed to do the actual work. Being organized will go a long way towards being more efficient and effective at work. I usually just need a laptop to work on 80% of my responsibilities. When I need to code for an extended period of time, I would probably need about 1-2 hours to set things up and a few extra hours to automate some of the common tasks. If I need to dive deep on specific technical requirements, I would probably take about half a day “building my own lab” to ensure that all potential risks and side effects are managed. Of course, without this environment, it would be harder to guarantee 100% success but after a while I have found ways to work with what I have.
Which other SBTB 2021 talks do you want to attend? Which ones look like complementing yours well?
All of them! If we would have the opportunity to watch the recordings of the talks then that would be great.
Should we stay online, go all-in for in-person, or do a hybrid setup next year? Which one do you personally prefer?
Good question! I do not have any personal preferences as we simply need to work with what is best to help the business succeed. In most cases, an in-person setup would be the most effective setup. However, the pandemic changed the rules of the game a bit. A hybrid or even a pure remote work setup may prove to be better next year. The health of the employees is a top priority and we can not afford to risk their lives with an in-person setup.
We are happy to invite you to the 9th conference Scale By the Bay!
Jennifer Reif is a Developer Relations Engineer at Neo4j, conference speaker, blogger, and an avid developer and problem-solver. She holds a Master’s degree in Computer Management and Information Systems and has worked with large enterprises to organize and make sense of widespread data assets and leverage them for maximum business value. She has worked with a variety of commercial and open-source tools and enjoys learning new technologies, sometimes on a daily basis! Her passion is finding ways to organize chaos and deliver software more effectively.
In your work with technology, what is the task, situation, setup when you’re the happiest and in the flow?
Probably when I have a cup of hot coffee, and I’m coding or writing technical content.
What was the most positive thing you realized, or that just happened to you, during the pandemic?
Not being on the road, I’m more productive and have time to learn new things or deepen my knowledge. Also, my baby was born. :)
Which person, in tech or anywhere, gives you the most inspiration?
My dad. He has worked as a developer advocate for several years and constantly pushes himself to continue learning. He aims high and rarely misses, always striving to be current in the industry.
How much time do you spend on your setup that you need to do actual work? What are the things that you cannot do without in your environment?
I try to avoid too much time, though I do incremental changes or experiments to improve. I have daily habits that I try to keep in order to always accomplish certain things. Things I cannot do without….some ergonomics, coffee (also water), list of priorities for the day. First, small bit of movement at various intervals makes a big difference for stiffness. Whether that’s a stand for the laptop, an ergonomic keyboard, a large screen, a standing/sitting desk, or something else - anything to give my body and brain a bit of a shift. Second, I love coffee and drink it throughout the day, but I try to keep water close at hand, as well - fuel and hydration. Finally, a way to list a few tasks or priorities today helps to encourage me to accomplish things during the day!
Which other SBTB 2021 talks do you want to attend? Which ones look like complementing yours well?
* Troubleshooting Techniques for Complex Codebases by Anatolii Kmetiuk * Relational Databases: Don’t call it a comeback! by Rob Hedgpeth
* Retrofit your Java App with a Reactive Flow Pipeline by Mary Grygleski and Fabio Tiriticco
I think all of these complement my session because they are discussing applications and databases. I’d like to expand my knowledge and get other perspectives, and I think these sessions will do that with a focus on data and Java.
Should we stay online, go all-in for in-person, or do a hybrid setup next year? Which one do you personally prefer?
I think a hybrid could offer the best of both worlds. Those who can or want to attend in person are able to, and those who are not or cannot still can participate.
We are happy to invite you to the 9th conference Scale By the Bay!
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