The Tech Blog Writer Podcast - Inspired Tech Startup Stories & Interviews With Tech Leaders, Entrepreneurs And Innovators

In 1999, Michael Beckley, Matt Calkins, and two other friends were in a basement. Twenty-three years later, Appian is publicly traded with more than 2,000 employees - and was the most successful software IPO of 2017. Today he joins me in a discussion on growth in tech and shares tips to push through the looming recession. He shares how they grew Appian to be a company with a market cap of more than $3B, giving giants like Salesforce and ServiceNow a run for their money. Appian became a unified platform for change that accelerates customers' businesses by discovering, designing, and automating their most important processes. The Appian Low-Code Platform combines the key capabilities needed to get work done faster, Process Mining + Workflow + Automation, in a unified low-code platform. Michael offers advice for newer tech execs on how to combat economic downturns. We also discuss why companies automating tasks in white-collar office roles are not taking away jobs but changing the workflow dynamic to remove meni

In today's episode, Neil shares his new year message and explores the opportunity to learn more about leveraging technology to make lasting connections. Then, Sarah Elkins, the founder of the No Longer Virtual (NLV) Conference, shares her insights on how to use technology to create meaningful connections. Through her inspiring stories and lessons learned, Sarah provides tips on how to benefit from stories to shape personal growth and development. She also discusses the importance of pushing oneself beyond fear and taking risks, as well as her favorite song, Hang On Little Tomato, by Pink Martini. Sarah shares how to use technology to create meaningful connections and build relationships. She also shares her motivation for creating the NLV conference and how the stories we tell ourselves that shape our perception of the world. Listen in as Sarah offers advice on how to push ourselves beyond our fears and encourages us to open ourselves up to the opportunities that technology can provide.

In today's Tech Talks Daily episode, I explore technology's role in demystifying music licensing and its complexities. More Specifically: how Tracklib has automated sample licensing to the benefit of both music creators (artists, producers, and songwriters – superstars and budding talent) and rightsholders (labels and publishers). Today's guest is Pär Almqvist: who caught my attention when he said, "There's a big, positive implication from knowing you can sample something and not be afraid of being sued." I learn more about how Tracklib makes sampling and sample clearance fast, easy, legal, and affordable for every music producer worldwide. By simplifying music licensing, can technology unlock creative opportunities for all the world's music creators, new revenue for the whole music industry, and change how the world can make music? Listen in to learn more.

Otovo is Europe's leading online residential solar marketplace and has assessed over 4 million homes across Europe. They're currently active in 13 markets, serving 90% of Europe's population. Andreas Thorsheim, its founder and CEO, joins me on today's episode of Tech Talks Daily. I learn more about how Otovo uses proprietary technology to connect customers to local, vetted installers, making the process of adopting solar at home as smooth and seamless as possible. We discuss how the online marketplace takes a customer's address and then automatically calculates the size, shape, and specification of suitable rooftop solar products. Using satellites, Otovo also calculates exactly how much sun is shining on a roof and how much energy can then be produced from it. It then runs an automated, 'real time' auction between local solar installers to find the cheapest price for the work required. As a pioneer in solar, Otovo is already the market leader in their native Norway, where they've managed to cut the price of s

Pete Sena is a design-led entrepreneur who loves to partner with forward-obsessed founders, entrepreneurs, and business leaders to unlock new possibilities and growth. For nearly 20 years, Pete has built and led cross-functional teams that have delivered many successful multi-channel programs and activations, ranging in scale from venture-backed startups to Fortune 50 companies. Pete joins me in a conversation that covers everything from marketing, branding, entrepreneurship, design thinking, tech (Web3, AI, metaverse), and the importance of a growth mindset. I also learn how he constantly remains curious and the tech trends that excite him in 2023.

2219: EdgeQ - RISC-V: The Linux of 5G EdgeQ is a 5G chipmaker leveraging the RISC-V architecture to open its tech. RISC-V is not only shaping the evolution of 5G, it's also redefining the broader mobile landscape. The mobile/telco industry has historically been dominated by proprietary, closed technologies and vendors. However, with RISC-V's growing popularity, the mobile industry is adopting openness at a massive scale for the first time. Just as Linux drove enterprises to embrace open-source software, RISC-V is driving mobile operators and telcos to adopt open approaches to building networks. This is a necessary shift: For 5G to pay off, organizations need the flexibility and customizability RISC-V delivers. But the impact of this shift will extend beyond 5G and enable the industry to deliver other innovations that would be lost in a proprietary ecosystem. Adil Kidwai shares with me how RISC-V adoption is transforming the mobile industry and what this mean for 5G and beyond.

Neil McGregor, COO at REPL Group, Part of Accenture, has amassed over 15 years of consulting experience – mainly focused on global retail systems integration. Neil has been at REPL for over six years, taking on the role of COO back in 2020, where he leads all people, projects, and operations across the consulting team globally. Before that, he was Consulting Operations Director, where he lead and motivated the delivery team; and Consulting Director, where he was responsible for leading complex change, system implementation and developed teams of solution oriented consultants. Prior to REPL, Neil has held roles at both EY and Accenture – where he kickstarted his career. In today's episode, Neil shares his story and the retail technology trends that excite him along with a few predictions and challenges for the year ahead.

Cyber crime is everywhere, it's on your phone, laptop, it's even seeping into warfare, shutting down entire countries. How many times have you received a notification saying your password has been compromised on a retail website you've spent far too much time on? Usually you change the password as soon as possible, the risk to bank details and other personal information is too great. Yet, the same attention and diligence is not given to cybersecurity for businesses, despite reports of fraud and cybercrime in the UK reaching more than 400 000 in 2021 alone. It is critical that businesses have strong cyber defences in place, much like changing your personal password, businesses need to be on top of threats before they go too far. JP Perez-Etchegoyen, CTO of Onapsis, a cybersecurity provider for business-critical applications, has extensive experience identifying and solving these threats. Onapsis provides cybersecurity solutions to 20% of Fortune 100 companies around the world and has grown 187% over the past t

Ryan Lasmaili is the Co-Founder & CEO of Vaultree, the world's fastest searchable encryption technology for databases. Ryan has been fascinated by technology breakthroughs from space travel to EnviroTech since childhood, and in the last 12 years he has been involved with technology startups developing solutions to major problems. Ryan's background is in financial mathematics with a passion for astrophysics and economics, having also worked in corporate environments in roles ranging from project manager to senior analyst, reporting to executives in listed multinationals. Ryan is always looking for ways to improve and apply his out-of-the-box thinking to solve significant cybersecurity problems, with his biggest undertaking to date solving today's and tomorrow's data encryption and protection challenges.

Surveillance State tells the gripping, startling, and detailed story of how China's Communist Party is building a new kind of political control: shaping the will of the people through the sophisticated—and often brutal—harnessing of data. It is a story born in Silicon Valley and America's "War on Terror," and now playing out in alarming ways on China's remote Central Asian frontier. As a minority separatist movement strains against Party control, China's leaders have built a dystopian police state that keeps millions under the constant gaze of security forces armed with AI. But across the country in the city of Hangzhou, the government is weaving a digital utopia, where technology helps optimize everything from traffic patterns to food safety to emergency response. Award-winning journalists Liza Lin takes listeners on a journey through the new world China is building within its borders, and beyond. Telling harrowing stories of the people and families affected by the Party's ambitions, Surveillance State revea

The machines we interact with every day make our lives easier. As they become more intelligent and able to help us in new ways, we need to take a step back and consider whether how third parties govern them is fit for purpose, particularly as we move towards a world with autonomous vehicles. Many machines, devices, and vehicles we use daily are centrally controlled, limiting what the machines can or can't do regarding the provision and rendering of goods and services. Machines built for Web2 exist in a closed, permission-based environment, which massively limits how they can interact with other machines, where they can go, and what they can do. Existing identification numbers are one-dimensional and are used to label machines and their specifications. This does not enable them to leverage their identity to enable movement, service authorization, trade, or payment. Sheridan Johns, Enterprise Lead at Ocean Protocol, and Leonard Dorlöchter, co-founder of Peaq discuss their mission to enable the secure, fast, and

Push Protocol is a web3 communication network, enabling cross-chain notifications and messaging for dapps, wallets, and services. It powers communication for over 100 of the world's leading dapps and service providers across DeFi, NFTs, gaming, dev tools, and more. Until Push, no solution existed to enable native communication between wallets in response to on- and off-chain data. The result was a fractured dapp ecosystem, held together by antiquated and centralized communication platforms. Push is building the communication network for Web3, addressing a gap in critical infrastructure and improving the everyday experience for blockchain users. Harsh Rajat, CEO and co-founder of Push Protocol (recently rebranded from EPNS), joins me on the Tech Talks Daily Podcast in a conversation about bringing simplicity and ease of use to web3 communications. Listen in as Harsh defines what Web3 communication is and why it matters. He also offers an overview of Push Protocol and PushChat. Finally, we explore the future of

Sean Farrington, EVP EMEA at Pluralsight – the workforce development platform, joins me on today's episode of Tech Talks Daily to talk about the ongoing challenges around hiring and the role of internal skill development in plugging gaps. We discuss the scramble for talent and how tech companies must still take on high revenue projects, bring new products to market and keep customers happy. This means talent remains critical, but businesses will need to turn to expanding the skillsets of existing teams, rather than relying on new hires or outsourcing work, and support them to deliver on new projects. We also talk about the importance of capitalising on the hunger to learn. For example, 75% of technologists determine whether to stay at their company partly based on how dedicated their employer is to development opportunities. Now more than ever, reducing turnover is key. A commitment to L&D can support this, and develop more engaged team members. Finally, we discuss why tech leaders need to create a cultur

Steven Furnell, IEEE senior member and professor of cybersecurity at the University of Nottingham, joins me on today's episode of The Tech Talks Daily podcast. Steven discusses the findings of his recently published paper titled 'Assessing website password practices –Unchanged after fifteen years?', which explores how leading websites guide and support users in making appropriate password choices. The paper presents the fifth in a series of studies that have been conducted every few years since 2007, with the aim of examining the level of guidance provided to users before and during the password selection process, as well as examining the nature of the passwords that users are then permitted to choose. We also discuss the enforcement of password rules and applying various tests which determine whether the site filters out common or predictable password choices. About Steven Steven Furnell is a senior member of the IEEE and professor of cybersecurity at the University of Nottingham. His research includes usa

A recent report has revealed that Google harvests 39 types of private data on its users, which includes users' specific location, their browser history and the emails on their Gmail accounts. Google is constantly invading our personal space thanks to the many formats at its disposal, including: Search, Chrome, Gmail, Youtube, Maps, Workspace, and Android. As Google's oppressive dominance continues to grow, more and more email users are ready to embrace new decentralization tools that are providing private solutions. Skiff is fusing the mail interface that consumers use everyday with Web3 open source technology, to provide a privacy-first, end-to -end encrypted, wallet native workspace. Users will be able to send messages, write notes and share files all while completely owning their own data. Utilizing IPFS, Skiff users will also have the option to store their content, including all Skiff Drive files, fully decentralized and end-to-end encrypted. In light of this, Andrew Milch, CEO and Co-Founder of Skiff, jo

When every business is talking about the power of digital experiences, I want to learn more about what that means and look beyond the buzzwords and toward the business value it offers. Contentsquare, the global leader in digital experience analytics, was recently named a winner of the 2022 Aragon Research Innovation Award for Digital Experience Analytics. So today's guest is Dave Anderson from Contentsquare, which helps brands deliver the power to make the digital world more human. Dave shares his origin story and the path that led him to an AI-powered platform that provides rich and contextual insight into customer behaviors, feelings, and intent at every touchpoint in their journey. I also learn more about the story behind Contentsquare, founded in Paris with offices worldwide and has raised $1.4B in investment funding. We also discuss the emergence of apps and reliability but the lack of focus on the experience. Finally, we talk about the Tech Seeking Human Podcast - a podcast about AI built on the back of

Draft.dev helps businesses achieve their technical content goals through a team of writers who are also professional software developers and subject matter experts. As a result, they create content that resonates with technical audiences and performs well on search engines. After spending eight years as a CTO, building software engineering teams in venture-funded startups, Karl Hughes started Draft.dev to help companies create authentic technical content that resonates with software developers. Since founding the company in 2020, the team has grown to include marketers, editors, engineers, and over 130 technical writers. Karl joins me on Tech Talks Daily to share his story of transitioning from engineer to team leader to business owner. He also reveals the skills and lessons learned throughout his career. I also learn how he had to learn to sell and closed over $1mm in new business in his first year. Karl also discusses growing a business quickly and going from 1 to 16 employees and 200 contractors in 2 years

Jeffrey Partyka, Principal Data Science Engineer at Xactly, joins me on Tech Talks Daily in a discussion about the rise of data scientists and their value for companies. Jeffrey shares how forecasting models work, the importance of statistical analysis, and how wider teams can utilize data to create better business products. He discusses how this role has evolved and is better institutionalized in recent years. We also explore Xactly's survey report - Insights on The Sales Talent Crisis of more than 400 U.S. sales leaders, and the lessons learned from the great resignation. Jeffrey Partyka has been a principal data science engineer at Xactly since July 2020, actively conducting and overseeing numerous machine learning/statistical projects relating to sales forecasting, churn, cross-selling, and other sales areas. Jeff has worked in data science since 2007 as a Big Data engineer, data science team lead, research & development manager, and part-time professor across multiple domains, including geospatial in

Continuous digital transformation has created a data explosion that's overwhelming many organisations. Every tap, click, or swipe from a user, new code deployment or architecture change, and attempted cyberattack generates more data that can be captured and analysed. However, there is too much data to store and use cost-effectively. Organizations are therefore forced to discard most data or lock it away in cheaper storage layers where it can't be analyzed. This has led to a tipping point, where the datasets used for observability and security analytics are too incomplete to be truly valuable. The value of observability and security data is in the insights it can provide to help organizations optimize their digital services. However, current approaches to analytics mean they often need help to maximize the detail those insights contain. As well as having an incomplete dataset, most of what they keep is stored and analyzed in silos, so it lacks a crucial ingredient – context. This means any answers from data an

The transportation industry is going through a massive digital transformation right now. The changing value proposition of cars is moving software to the center of a legacy business. So it's a great time to get in on an early software trend that will soon redefine driver expectations. In today's episode, I want to learn more about how the advanced technology team at General Motors is doing inspiring work driving the future of transportation, from EVs and AVs to connected cars. Padma Sundaram, director of Software Defined Vehicle Quality and Operations at General Motors, joins me on Tech Talks Daily to share how she played a crucial role in launching a new software platform called Ultifi. I learn more about how Ultifi will leverage a Linux-based operating system allowing third-party developers worldwide to create apps for GM. This will also help expand the capabilities of a customer's connected car long after it's sold and create collaboration opportunities never seen before. We discuss how open source is powe