Episode 59 - The Babe Ruth of Tech Talk Red Hat's Stu Miniman

Episode 59 - The Babe Ruth of Tech Talk Red Hat's Stu Miniman

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you know one-on-one in person and uh yeah happy to share uh happy to share with your community so look when i started the show i honestly made this show out almost to be like the anti-cube right it'd be not to say that nothing was wrong with it and i was like look because the cube was like you know very much you know folks in college shirts talking to you know folks and get you know getting in there but then i started studying you because putting together this content it's not easy folks like i'm on almost 50 episodes and by by when this airs i'll be in season two so like it takes a lot and i'm like this guy is my hero and i'm like every single week he was he's he's hard-hitting he knows the technology he's doing the research so i want to talk to you about your journey right so like again you know i mean we know about your apple 2c from the start we know about you know starting on your mother's trs-80 and you know on the apple 2. i want to know like hey i want to be a journalist i want to be an analyst talk to me about post getting the computers and saying i love this now i want to kind of be this analyst talk to me about that well so first of all analysts journalists never were on my career path pop you know it's funny that you say that so you know a techie at heart um you know i studied engineering i actually went into sales for a number of years because i i had one of my early companies working in telecom back in the 90s um voice video and data was helping people running all their stuff and my uh my se would be like hey stu why are you bringing me on this call you know more about the tech than i do it's like well pop you know why your sales rep rather than the sc it's actually the money it's like the biggest thing you can kind of you know move up as just a young hard driving uh you know going out there i knew the product really well and went so i did some sales i took some corporate jobs i've been a product manager worked in engineering and you know worked for a large storage company maybe your audience might remember emc for 10 years um and i was actually in the this corporate cto office uh my last three years there which was like my dream job working at that company said i wanted to either work in an m a or work in the cto office so you know got to look at all this forward-looking technology play with a whole bunch of stuff and obviously this was about you know that was 2007 to 2010 was in the cto office you know it was that that transition of what was happening in virtualization and cloud and it was really exciting stuff and i was you know trying to advocate as much as i could internally to say we need to move faster we need to embrace this more and an opportunity came my way so you know dave vellante who was my boss for 10 years at siliconangle the cube wikibon with the research he came to me and i actually at first i'm like look i've never wanted to be an analyst most analysts that i thought of back then i didn't know if they really knew their stuff we'd actually you'd pay analysts to like rewrite white papers that i had done internally uh so you know i i didn't as you know an engineering background i did not necessarily have the best you know didn't think the best of analysts overall i mean yeah they had their place but when dave hired me it was hey let's be able to talk about a lot of different technologies uh let's talk about let's talk about that because i think it's one of your best traits yeah i'm sorry i'm going to interrupt you like yeah yeah i think it's one of your best traits because we again we come from that world when you're in sales you have to come in and kind of talk about you don't want to get you want to be you want to kind of walk a mile in the customers shoes or the you know the pair speed watching the audience watching this show okay they want to understand quickly what's they don't want the fluff they don't want the marketing slides they want to know is this going to solve my problems what does this thing do and will it solve my problems that's the thing i admire so much about you you get right to it man you get you don't you don't pull punches you know this is not going to be a marketing thing right you know it's you know us yankee fans you know we we want to understand what's real and what's bs uh and kind of dig into some things so look when i hired i actually i tell you my first like year or two there you know an analyst hat i was tough i'm like uh i'm not an analyst i'm a blogger you know i do all these things i write this stuff i talk about it and like you know you want to debate something great but you know what is an analyst but i got to know a lot of analysts i i've got friends at you know some of the big firms some of the small firms there are people that there are smart people at every single analyst firm and plenty of them that i respect the heck out of now the analyst business model i'm not a huge fan of you know we were small firm we were boutique and the analyst business in those early days actually was the driver to help us start and kick off the cube so it was we were an analyst business uh there was journalist business and the cube of the side thing to do videos and interviews um and it took a couple of years i tell you pop you know i i think i sucked when i started i was good at recruiting guests knowing who to have on the program i would do background research for john and dave who did a lot of the interviews but it took me years before i was really more comfortable unless you know it was a technology that i knew well or a person that i'd you know read their stuff or knew their technology really well so it took it took time there's cycles you know it's very different you know talking across the table with somebody rapid fire you know just like it's a little bit different doing all these remotes now so you know ever every you know medium can be a little bit different and it definitely was one that you know i wrote about it on my blog when i left after 10 years because people were like oh you're so natural and you're really good at this i'm like yeah after you do a thousand interviews the next one's not that tough it's getting through that first thousand um you know that that that can be a bit challenging and that's something we'll talk about a little later advice for folks that are you know in this new media that want to like you know do this because right now i think this is the medium like doing this type of thing and talking about it people are starting podcasts every week and trust me you know you're you know in terms of what you did like a thousand shows to get your rhythm i mean it's almost 50 shows and i almost feel like i don't i'm still getting my rhythm right so you know so talk to me about this again this is where i want to know that one episode of the cube like okay we got this right i want to know that oh boy um that's a great question and it was what i really loved doing some of those big ecosystem shows so for you know the the 10 years i was there one of the big ones for us was vmworld so vmworld was a great place because i had you know we had our sponsors so first of all one thing different you know from just a blog or you know no offense just any podcast is this was part of our business model and we were transparent as to we have sponsors and this is how we do it and and and this is what we do um and when we create content we do a lot of it so you know we go to a big show we'll do three days of wall-to-wall coverage where you're doing like you know a dozen interviews a day and actually sometimes we were doing two sets so i mean a vmworld or an amazon re invent you know we could be doing 60 70 interviews now it all wasn't a host we did two hosts we we spread out hosts uh you know you send a whole team on it to be able to do it but i've loved like vmworld amazon re invent or like kubecon uh you know more recently were ones where i really loved architecting a program where you say okay i have some sponsors and i'd work with my sponsors to get good content like bring me your customers as many customers as you can bring me some good thought leaders and people that can talk and then i'd reach out into the community and pull in those guests you know i look through your back catalog and i'm like hey there's some good cube alumni in there you know good people and that's you know leveraging my network my community and doing research as to like hey who's going to be good story how do we cover various topics and get a broad spectrum to try to hit a diversity of topics a diversity of backgrounds and hey that diversity is also a good thing if we can manage it too and let's talk about this again you're so known for your foresight and the technology and i remember you back in the you know the the openstack days and i worked at hp helion and that was the first time i went to a conference i'm seeing this big lights seeing stu he's interviewing somebody and i'm like yeah this guy's you know he's got it but you're force like you again you as this you know this engineer that you had this background about it you called some shots so you went to like this and you called like babe right you know you did that so talk to me about like one you were like let's let's talk about like kubernetes for instance when you were like yeah this is it i get it i get it now well i i i tell you it's it is it is challenging to say where do we make our bets i mean an early one even before kubernetes i'll tell you you know docker there was just a drum beat in the community i was hearing it loud and clear uh you know i solomon hikes i had on at red hat summit in 2014 um i i tell you i actually attended the first dockercon uh you know not long after that and it's the the one time that i will tell you you know hey pop i was in a press release and i was excited about it yeah i was quoted in the docker 1.0 press release and it blew my mind because i was so excited because it was like you know i'll show my age a little bit i was dating my wife when we were in college and i remember bringing her to the computer lab i'm like you gotta really see this there's this world wide web thing with like graphical pages and she was like what's this some kind of toy and everything i'm like no you don't understand this is gonna change everything and docker we could feel that in the early days it was you know hey i was at amazon re invent when they announced lambda and i tell you i didn't understand it at first it was like you know the the i talked to the red monk guys i talked to some others out there and they're like no you don't understand this is gonna change the way everything happens so um you know kubernetes um you know we were we were watching it there was you know all the container orchestration battles uh going on at the time and it seemed pretty clear relatively early um that you know kubernetes was the one to bet on uh so you know watching that and i really enjoyed the cloud native ecosystem i know you're gonna ask me about what brought me to red hat i mean that was you know that ecosystem uh the community that's forming around it it's you know just amazing to watch having watched you know the virtualization ecosystem what's happening in the public clouds that that cloud native space if you will is something that's you know still in relatively early days and just so much excitement around it you know it's interesting you bring up solomon and again interviewing i i don't think he gets the respect he deserves and and what i mean by that is like look i mean in terms of the the technologies out there to be able to kind of give this to the give almost that google experience to the lay user i i think you know in terms of you know you know container technologies there wouldn't be it without docker so i you know give props to them on that uh and especially to solomon yeah well you know here's the thing about communities there's people underneath the communities and you know we would have these debates in open source and say do you need you know the fanatical dictator to drive something in the early days you know if you're a docker solomon was like over your shoulder like watching the commits i had some friends that worked at docker i knew some companies that got bought by docker and watched and the other people there it was is docker you know is docker trying to have too much control is it going to be more open so there are some p people that have some you know friction with solomon personally um but papa i agree with you i i think we we we owed docker uh a debt of gratitude to what they helped spark you know if it wasn't for docker you know we wouldn't be talking about kubernetes we wouldn't be talking about you know openshift and all the the pieces here um so every one of the godfathers i've had on you know i've had like you know joe beda and craig mcluckie and brendan burns and then i have said clayton coleman recently and again it's all of them already talk about that weaving that little thread throughout was docker right and so to me he's in that mount rushmore of what we do without a doubt yeah so let me let me talk to you about this and again is going back to like you as you know you stu what would you say you're these three there's three traits again i think is you're you're very you know if you want to find out about a subject you're fanatical about getting that subject that's one thing the foresight on technology but also again it's that ability to kind of bring in people that's starting this program talk to me about like just building that like again you did this over a series of shows but talk to me about building those those those those capabilities like what did you do to hone them in yeah so so first thing what you really need to understand is you know what is the goal what are you doing and uh you know i wrote about it in the it went when i left the cube but you know dave vellante you know instilled in me that who we're talking to eventually is you know we want to help customers you know that's in the back of my head as to you know who i'm talking about so everybody can have their marketing discussion and we can talk about you know various features or this and that but at the end of the day right how are we helping businesses you know how are we helping them move forward you know what is the role of i.t going

forward and you know are we spinning our wheels or are we actually making progress so you know starting from there and being able to put yourself in that the the shoes anytime you give a presentation you know the first question you have is hey who's my audience who am i trying to reach there if i can't speak enough of their language they're not under gonna understand there's uh what we have sometimes you know there's there's these gaps that we need to worry about so number one you know if we're talking about really cool new technology the question is is that uh you know is that approachable to most people you know i used to say you know hey when you work for any company and you come up with brand new product and you want to say hey this is wonderful and this is great well if your average customer is running something that's two years or four years old they might not be able to get from where they are to where you want to be so how do you close that gap how do you make it approachable how do you help you know bring them along you know one of the things i i love you know and i've been an advocate if you talk about cloud in general um is you know hey am i actually keeping up on versions and you know we've all worked on the oh hey i install something and let me leave it there because it's not breaking anything but we know that you are more secure if you're constantly updating your code um and the whole cicd movement is to be able to break things up and move faster so you know i'm a big advocate of not necessarily chase the new shiny but hey we need to try to keep up with things because if you don't keep up with enough pieces you know your competition will will all be netflix amazon you know however you name it you know you need to be able to keep up and take care of it because if you're doing something and it becomes five or ten years old you know you're likely just going to be disrupted so you know that putting yourselves in those shoes is one uh the other thing you know i talk about kind of my spider sense out there how am i connected with the community because pop here's the thing i've been around long enough and know enough to know that i know nothing uh but that being said you know there are shows that i would go into and you know a week before the show it's like i've never heard of the company i don't know the technology um so you know you go do that basic research luckily there's usually there's podcasts there's blogs and videos and lots of ways to learn that if you learn you know 10 you know 10 things about a certain technology you probably know more than 90 of the world out there and then once you know those base pieces you can build on it and learn and our process also doing the cube is if you do one interview and you need to study up for every interview well here here's a little thing that we get to do normally it's more like you're going to do 10 interviews so maybe on the first interview you're a little bit shaky and not knowing anything and you can start a little bit broad with 101 by the time you get to that fourth or fifth interview on the same topic it's like i'm a pro i've already heard the ceo talking about something i talked to a customer i got to ask you some questions so you do need to ramp up fast so you know i i do have uh you know you talk about that you you want to have that learn everything not that know anything know everything uh mentality so i think i hit three things there i did it to you you nailed it you nailed it i mean one of the things like i do and just like again it's i have the we all have the luxury right now because we're home right i if i have a guest on i get their technology i install it in my in my rack here i mean i'm using it right i don't wouldn't have that luxury like you said if i'm having to do 10 interviews a day like you know i'm saying so that's amazing so you're basically like weaving this tale based on a different all different sources that takes talent man not blowing sunshine up here so so look i mean here's one of those tips is you know there's certain things that i'm not going to be an expert on everyone but there's certain you know i'll have a premise so you know okay hey it's 2020 coming into the year you know what are some of the key themes that i want to poke and prod at uh you know i did a series before i left i called it cloud native insights and it was like hey when i talk to most people and you say cloud native the first thing they think of is like oh we're going to containerize our environment and you know play with kubernetes and i'm like wrong answer you know to be cloud native i want to be able to take advantage of the innovation and agility that's out there and by cloud native it means probably mostly in the cloud because you know here's one of look on premises your data center it's great if you can get rid of all of them it's gonna take time you know modernizing your applications the long pole in the tent it's gonna take time um but where is innovation happening where can i plug into new services there are some things that can go across all the clouds you know security data protection uh maybe people have heard of open shift you know these are things that can go in your data center in the public clouds in lots of different environments but where are some of the cool new features happening a lot of those are really happening either by the public cloud providers or from their massive growing ecosystems so you know that that's something i poked on and hey you know a lot of the things i was poking at the last couple of years you know serverless serverless is still pretty cool you know we will see if it you know is a wave that takes over we've been watching uh the connection between uh you know the containerization and what's happening with like cloud native to connect to serverless so it these technology trends tend to broaden a little bit and it's it's not like everything all goes to the new thing so i'm gonna ask you again um a question about like basically i'm gonna ask i'm gonna ask you what your top three interviews were that you were like wow you know what like look i i want to get into it man i want to know like these were things that were like wow these people like again would talk about the technologies you were like blown away by a doctor doing like kubernetes vulnerably about openshift right but then you look talking to these people and like they get it this these are three people in my brain in your brain that were like they get it i i'm sorry out of a couple thousand interviews you're asking me to get pick three yeah i do a top ten list every year and that is i want you to do three you're on my show i want three i want a little boy and then i want your three worst i want you i want three worst oh boy uh the the the worst ones are the are easy that's you know when uh you know mid-level product manager wants to tell you about the uh you know dot revision feature list that that he's got and it just you know you want to so you want to tell a story um so so look you know there are so many interviews i've done that i was a gog so you know my background is networking you know the mount rushmore of networking like i've met and talked to some of those people like james hamilton who is like you know the einstein architect of aws i mean i've talked to him a bunch of times i've like hung out at a cocktail hour with him and his wife you know pop when it's not just that i've met these people but i get to know some of them which was like amazing to me you know so you know top three you know look andy jassy probably has to be there just you know there are a few people that are just legend in this industry that are you know absolutely unreal uh you know andy jassy you know leaders like you know michael dell's the one that when people you know that aren't in our industry would ask me what i do i'm like oh yeah i work on technology i do this and that you know yeah i was like somebody like you've probably heard of michael dell and they're like yeah of course i've heard of him i'm looking at his laptop right now it's like you know and michael is fascinating like if if they wrote a book on michael you know i totally read that because he is just you know so focused and you know people in the cloud space would be like uh you know they're they're like laptops and infrastructure and they're not that interesting i'm like michael is fascinating if you are a you know a student of technology and what has happened he has been through so many waves in what he's done so uh andy you know networking i said like uh andy bechtelstein uh who is one of the founders of sun he's one of the founders of arista he did so many startups i mean i tell you personally i was so excited we did an interview with him and he like usually doesn't like doing media john furrier and i did it and he's walking away and we can hear him say to his people he's like that was a lot of fun we should do that again sometime we're like high-fiving it's like not just our audience enjoys it i mean the thing that would give me such joy is when people would stop me and be like hey you ask great questions i love the guests you get um so three andy jassy is one um i i tell ya there are so many cios that i've spoken to uh that i've just loved and i can't even choose one uh there's a couple of cios of like towns uh there was one in texas and one in ohio you know if you talk about you know innovation and like using sensors uh and you know doing it on a relatively tight budget you wouldn't think of like a town government as you know the source of innovation growth um but you know those kind of things so excite me um i had a friend of mine you pisgah was the cto at a service provider and you know i met him it was at a nutanix show and i had interviewed him and talked and like a month later i put out my list of top ten and he sent me a note he's like hey stu i think you made a mistake i'm like what do you mean he's like how many interviews did you do this year i'm like a few hundred why he's like there's no way i'm in the top ten i'm like no your story was awesome like service providers how fast they move on technology he ended up being a host for the cube and he's a friend of mine he lives in the netherlands so you know meeting those people around the globe um so see you know i i'm good at talking and going off on tangents so i don't think you know if the the generic cio uh that has a good story uh you know andy jassy and you know community people it's i tell you i used to joke you know if you come on the cube you know five times i'm gonna turn you into a host you know brian gracely who's now peer of mine at red hat been a friend of mine for more than a decade was on thecube a bunch i spent years recruiting he came and worked for us for a year he was sitting next to me and doing interviews loved him your audience probably knows the cloud cast which is i've been on it i've been on it brian i'm a big fan of his it's one of the ones people ask me well what pop what do you listen to i was like well uh it's it's definitely the cloud cast you know it's definitely when it's in cncn as well but um you know so those are the ones i watch and and one more one more name drop i'll give you here it's like in the cloud community now everybody knows corey quinn i cannot believe like i connected with corey a few years ago and you know it was at an amazon uh one of their regional summits in san francisco i i like sent him a dm on twitter i'm like hey corey you want to come do a little analysis segment with you it's like yeah that'd be great we finished it and he's like you know this is the first video i've ever done and i'm like no you're kidding you were great so i had him on again he actually he he came and co-hosted kubecon in barcelona with me uh and did an amazon summit in uh um in new york city so he'd done a bunch of that but i mean corey now is like you know the top cloud you know influencer out there he's got his own podcast he's always on webcast and things like that cory's a great guy and just part of the community and that's why as i said you know community people another good friend of mine john troyer uh people in the virtualization community know him he started the the expert program so people like that i loved you know building out my guest host bench um because all i look for is people that are even more connected and smarter and better at this than i am because eventually it's like hey i love to be able to pyramid out and grow that and build that brand fan of corey stop avoiding me corey anyway uh so he's a good dude like i said i just i think i find his um he's he's a very witty guy and he doesn't he doesn't you know it doesn't hide that i love that by that guy oh my god and he knows his stuff so well and you and he could probably just tell him he's allowed to curse as much as you want on your program so you know that that'll bring him in he might not like the yankee hat but uh yeah tough all right so uh what is let me ask you this the question is what does community mean to you yeah so community i love community so you know this is i i tell you one of the things i pride myself on is i want to be as much as i can part of this community i used to have a disclaimer as an analyst look i don't touch hands-on gear but i have enough background you know i i did programming back before it was coding you know learned foretrain and pascal when i was in high school um you know i understood enough technology i could really hang out with the geeks and help translate uh what they're doing but you know you don't just you know most journalists um and this isn't necessarily bad things they would watch a community from the outside i really try to as much as possible i want to be in the community uh there's actually a friend of the cube a friend of dave vellante's um a guy that also does um jesus his program he does is called the ground truth it's how do you bring into countries to enable the local populace to create journalism there so and i mean we're talking in like egypt uh in africa and the like uh and it was just a phenomenal program to help enable because reporting from in those communities and understanding the cultures of those communities it's best if you can do it from there so in many ways you know look as i said you know i never consider myself a journalist uh i was a media person and an analyst and i did embrace that uh you know analyst role eventually uh but as much as i could i tried to you know get to know the locals in all of the communities and those watering holes so you know i didn't just show up you know some shows i'd go to the oracle show uh you you go to you know the intel show and some of the you know big tv media brands they show up they set up their thing they do three five-minute interviews and then they all leave you know we spend the week in there i go to the keynotes i go to you know q and a sessions you do the breakouts uh you know i didn't have enough you know it's not like i'm doing the hands-on lab but as most you can you talk to the people there nothing better than like stopping at like breakfast or lunch and sitting down with somebody it's like hey who are you and what do you do and you know how you find in the show and you know you get just great intel um it was one of those things that you know this year was just like so tough like keeping the connection to the community when you can't be with them physically has has definitely been a challenge that's why i do the show it's basically again it's like trying to connect to people between behind the code to the people you know at a human level right and and again like you said you don't find out anything but you know if you sit down with somebody and talk to them and like you said in your interviews was like wow you know i got to know this person i got to know this person and that's what i love about the community that's one thing if one thing i you know the forefathers that started this you know if you think of like you know uh novotny and you think of all those folks that like kind of you know i love the fact it's so inclusive and everybody wants to learn from somebody else and like you know you're you're you're you know right now you're giving me your time and it's so precious to me because i'm learning so much just by you know you didn't have to do this and that's what i love about this community it's so open and it's it's and and we need to perpetuate that we need more stews we need more pops you know they're doing those things so that's it's amazing that's amazing so i want to talk to you a little bit about why look we we've got cube we did all these interviews and we're like okay i'm gonna go to red hat and and i know it makes complete sense to me because i love you know i'm unabashed like redhead fanboy you know that and and i'm like and also openshift openshift to me is the best curated version of kubernetes out there you talked about earlier you were talking about hey you know there's people that want to have these upgrades in place i mean that acquisition of core os dynamite amazing right i want to have pulvey and brandon on that's another thing we'll talk about uh but basically again i want to know why i want to know hey i had this amazing career and i still i'm going to perpetuate this but why did we go to red hat working on openshift cloud platforms you know it was funny i was catching your your interview you did with clayton and he was talking about uh when he first met brandon um and i think you know i probably met brandon uh you know within like you know an hour of when he did because i was at that first dockercon uh and the coral west team was there you know i've i think i actually have a corvus sticker like right over my shoulder there um and it was funny because you know coros was going to kill red hat you know take them down we need less operating system and it's going to be the chrome model of updating and all this stuff but first of all like i've actually worked with red hat for two decades uh you know my first interactions were back you know i said back in my early days at emc i was the product manager for linux and it was the wild west days so big supporter of open source loved the idea you know we've gotten past calling it free software um and it kind of had that open source development model but you know linux going from the 2.4 kernel the 2.6 kernel there's patches everywhere and our ability to be able to support at emc linux attach was a nightmare trying to we were working with va and turbo uh you know susa and red hat came out and when red hat first created red hat advanced server and then red hat enterprise linux they gave a solution that actually we could say hey red hat supports it we're okay with you doing it you know thumbs up and went there and you know so that was my early days really appreciated what red hat had done to bring linux to the enterprise um and you know back doing the cube about you know seven eight years is yeah about seven years ago we you know when when openshift started we engaged and started working with them we went to red hat summit for a bunch of years but it's it's the cloud group you know that's you know what what really drew me uh living in the the the kubecon uh environment you know we know you know you said you weren't gonna mention kubernetes that much because you know kubernetes is at the center and it's super important but it's everything else around wiz so i'm not gonna mention it at all i'm not gonna mention it at all um so we know that you know what a companies need they need more simplicity uh that they need somebody to help them pull these pieces together and really today you know red hat is just head and shoulders above beyond the rest of the market i had the opportunity to interview not just red hat people but i knew the ecosystem and i talked to a lot of customers i talk to openshift customers i talk to customers from some of the other companies out there and there's just so many more red hat ones and there's stories of how they can move their their business forward and work through their transformations and modernizations that was just really attractive and i tell you the culture is another thing so i happen to live in massachusetts you know red hat's got a big presence here they built a couple of years ago just a beautiful briefing center in the seaport district which is you know hot and everything like that um so you know the culture uh where they sit in this ecosystem um and i'll tell ya it was you know a couple of years ago it was like ah but ibm bought them oh well and it actually hasn't been in oh well at least not yet uh i i i tell you there's a fierce protection of the red hat brand and the red hat culture and i love that arvin became ceo of ibm he's a super smart guy knows his technology he brought jim whitehurst over to be his number two as president jim's awesome too um i had the opportunity to you know talk to him a bunch of time you know read his book got to interview him about his book so you know overall their place in the market their culture um and what's happening it was just something that's like hey you know here's here's here's a solution set in a group uh that's really going gangbusters and i felt that i could join have an impact and help them along what they're doing uh so and i actually even get to get a little bit deeper into this ecosystem that i've been having a lot of fun with for the last handful of years i mean it's like they're assembling the avengers they got you they got a shesh i mean you know paul chromier is awesome um you know i i've had zamsky on zumski is from coral as he's you know he's built some of the operating frameworks that dude should be the ceo of that company someday that dude is brilliant down to earth was technology he knows the community like that you know again kudos on this you know it's an amazing turn for you let me i want to ask you this kind of a follow-up to this where do you see red hat going forward now well so i you know you've talked to you know a bunch of those those leaders in the company as you said so you you know when i looked at the from the outside and i said hey why is ibm spending 34 billion dollars on red hat you know it was easy it's openshift you know that is the core of what they're doing um here's where i think you're going to look down the line you know this year i remember a couple people saying you know microsoft first bought github we thought they really overpaid for it we were wrong we think it was a steal and we think that was a great acquisition and microsoft had already gone through a transformation some with satya nadella but github really super charging i think we have the opportunity not only for people going forward to say hey wow you know cloud platform open shift all the things around this has that transformed for me to think of red hat as much more than a linux company uh you know red hat's vision is to be you know just the fundamental technology for you know for the industry and that can also be the catalyst to you know help ibm you know the the battleship that it is uh by the way you know i happen to have an mba and when you you study history and everything it's always like well whenever you know a new technology comes out you know it destroys everything before except for ibm they they really don't follow all the rules they've been around for 110 years and they've weathered all of these storms so i look at ibm they've managed to ride through a lot of changes and still drive a lot of innovation red hat as a company is built for the change environment i'd heard a chesh give a presentation two years ago that really resonated with me talked about just how many changes there are in linux how many changes there are in middleware how many changes there are um in kubernetes on a monthly basis and you know that's what everybody needs to deal with is the constant state of change and the question used to be how do you keep up with change and the answer is i need to be able to turn to my trusted partners my my my trusted suppliers so that's the opportunity for red hat to be uh you know really just says such a trusted important partner for enterprises in in this current debt in this current century it is the indemnity the identified version of kubernetes that is the default control plane that runs on any cloud i don't care and for any business you talk about what's good for the business right at the end of the day red hat has done it operating system-wise they even did with openstack back in the eye as days now they're doing with this this cloud control plane i think this move by you is one of your best among many many great decisions you've made in your career so and i wish you all the best of luck in this well thank you so much pop what work are you most proud of [Music] well pop um it's do you want it what's are you looking for my entire career you're looking for something you know more recent uh you know what what exactly the floor the floor is your stew the floor is yours oh boy it's so tough you know i spent i spent 10 years as an analyst and you know the usual answer to everything was always depends um so you know look you know i i think you know i i'm too fresh in my role at red hat obviously uh to have something there um if i talk about uh you know what i done uh at the cube um you know really it was it was building you know it was a body of work and helping that community um so you know the the feedback i've gotten from people including what you said is you know people turn to us for a source to say hey how do i learn about a technology how do i learn about a person you know how do i learn about certain partnerships uh some of these things you know in many ways one of our earliest clients called us the espn of tech but underneath the covers we you know there's one of those things that some people would look at this and be like how do you even talk about that stuff isn't that pretty boring and the answer is is you know there are no boring topics there are sometimes boring people um but you know how do i find the passion of the people because you know when you ask me about good and bad interviews it's the person that's excited about what they're doing you know in the open source world i mean there are people that get a little bit too far into it is the code is my life is like practically a religion on some of these things um but at the end of the day usually you find people that are excited that they're moving technology forward and they're sharing so that that's something overall uh that i was super proud of um i guess if i get a little specific um it was you know really you know i loved kind of collecting uh you know just personalities and pieces so certain people i got to know more you know i talked like you know james hamilton somebody like martine quesado uh who's the you know the founder of like software defined networking and nicira it's like hey martine i i met him before he was acquired by vmware i got to interview him a bunch of times when he's there some of these people i built relationships with and then hey some of the ones i was just a gag on i i mean uh you know i interviewed one of my favorite authors walter isaacson which is like a you know i had to like practically tackle him at a conference uh and like pull him to like do an interview and it was like only seven minutes and i only had like three questions and i wish i had done at least one of them over but i was so excited because like here's a guy that i've read almost every book that he's written uh you know just lots of biographies about amazing people um there so those or you know hey we we had on you know neat silver we had on um malcolm gladwell was one that i helped get i was so disappointed i wasn't at the event uh where we got to interview him or you know one of my all-time favorites that i was watching live remotely but wasn't there was like john cleese and i helped because my boss sent me a text he's like oh my god what do i ask john cleese and i literally in all caps text back are you kidding me john cleese of monty python and he's like yeah no what do i ask him because was it the parrot sketch yeah well it's funny but you know i i put it out to like twitter and facebook and everything what i asked and he he you need to go watch that interview i've sent that interview to more people than anyone i will just it ends almost like a monty python skit but they did ask him you know the the the twitter community of course said what is the average you know uh air speed of an unlated swallow and without even blinking john cleese just comes back and he said i believe i knew the answer to that in 1976.

you know and it was just like slam you know love it he is you know i i love you know that that british humor and sarcasm is why we like corey quinn uh you know it has some of those backgrounds too so you know some of those things and personalities and just great stories that we can tell uh from that we did so you know look it was it was a phenomenal rollercoaster of a ride uh for 10 years uh over a beer sometime i definitely have lots of stories i can tell and and love sharing them and uh you know looking forward to making some new stories uh with the new crew here well awesome and and again i i thank you for being on the show for sharing i thank you for also being a hero of mine um and you know just being so open with your time it's it's really awesome to see that and i appreciate you for being here hey pop and let's see just the advice i will give you i'll give you your audience the same advice that i gave corey quinn when he was thinking about starting a podcast i said rule number one you know be yourself as much as you can that's what we need we don't need you know more cloud podcasts we don't need this what we need is we need more people sharing their individual voice their viewpoints and digging in because that's where you know as you said the technology is great and everything but at the end of the day it's the people it's the community it's those interactions that's what makes it interesting uh at least from me and i know you you share some of that viewpoint too thank you so much for being on the podcast and everybody out there make sure you like and subscribe all right thank you you

2021-04-06 04:15

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