Software Defined Interviews

Episode 102: The brilliant dummy in my pocket, with WhitneyGPT

June 11th, 2025  |  1 hr 8 mins

In this episode, Whitney and Coté discuss Whitney's newfound enthusiasm for AI.

Episode 101: A Passion for Politics, with Taegan Goddard

May 29th, 2025  |  57 mins 36 secs

In this episode, Whitney and Coté talk with Taegan Goddard, founder of Political Wire. They talk about what drives people to go above and beyond in their work, especially journalism like Tegan does. There's some fun conversation about how Tegan runs the business, keeping up his never ending coverage. Having run the site for well over two decades, they also talk about how the back-end stack has evolved over the years. And, some notes on how to make a great cup of coffee.

Episode 100: "I used to eat 7-Eleven pizza," startups, open source, and more, with Sarah Christoff

May 14th, 2025  |  1 hr 2 mins

After an extensive discussion of 7-Eleven pizza cuisine, in this episode, Whitney and Coté talk with Sarah Christoff. They discuss working at startups, the point of startups, working in open source and balancing commercial and community interests, moving to Europe, and more!

Episode 99: Catering to Startups, with Robert Reeves

May 1st, 2025  |  1 hr 8 mins

Whitney and Coté talk with Robert Reeves about startups, catering, the Austin's tech scene, and the business of open source over the past 20 years.

Episode 98: From OpenStack to Kubernetes, extreme transparency at GitLab, tech startup marketing, with Melissa Smolensky

April 16th, 2025  |  1 hr 5 mins

Whitney and Coté tour through a couple decades of tech infrastructure history with Melissa Smolensky
, whose marketing career spans Rackspace, GitLab, CoreOS, and the CNCF, among other places.

Episode 97: The Business and Ethics of Open Source, with Emily Omier

April 2nd, 2025  |  1 hr 22 mins

In this episode, Whitney and Coté talk with Emily Omier, a consultant specializing in open source strategy and product management for businesses.

Episode 96: Learning, teaching, tech certifications, and napkin culture in Singapore, with Mumshad Mannambeth

March 22nd, 2025  |  1 hr 1 min

In this video, Coté and Whitney talk about tech education and learning with Mumshad Mannambeth. There's talk about certifications, but also how teaching online works and what it's like when it scales up to millions of people. Plus, Coté tries to figure out how to get access to more napkins.

Episode 95: Success in Tech, Content Creation, & Corporate Influence, with Hazel Weakly

March 6th, 2025  |  1 hr 3 mins

In this episode, Whitney and Coté talk with Hazel Weakly about the unexpected success of content, the influence of corporate interests in open source, her experiences transitioning as a trans woman in tech, and the importance of emotional vulnerability in the tech industry.

Episode 94: Adding more condiments to the 7 layer networking burrito, with Marino Wijay

February 20th, 2025  |  1 hr 5 mins

Why do we keep adding new layers and frameworks instead of just fixing the ones we have? They also talk about the challenges of platform engineering, the importance of empathy in tech, the difficulties of integrating multiple layers in tech stacks, the essential role of effective communication and prioritization, and EmpathyOps.

Episode 93: 10x People, AI Trends, and Career Management, with Richard Seroter

February 6th, 2025  |  59 mins 23 secs

Episode 92: What went wrong with PaaS, and many other topics with Brian Gracely

January 23rd, 2025  |  1 hr 16 mins

In this episode of Software Defined Interviews, Coté and Whitney host Brian Gracely, co-host of the Cloudcast podcast and head of portfolio strategy at Red Hat.

Episode 91: Learning to learn, with Sasha Czarkowski

January 9th, 2025  |  1 hr 4 mins

What’s it really like to do all that DevOps-y transformation at companies? That’s what we talk about this week with Sasha Czarkowski…mostly.

Episode 90: Community management, event nightmares, and domestic Tupperware diplomacy, with Katie Greenley

December 26th, 2024  |  58 mins 28 secs

Katie Greenley shares her experiences managing events and community programs like the CNCF Ambassadors.

Episode 89: How platform engineering is different than DevOps, plus, narwhal teeth and spider digestion, with Viktor Farcic

December 11th, 2024  |  1 hr 11 mins

In this episode, Whitney and Coté talk with Viktor Farcic, Developer Advocate at Upbound, about platform engineering, the evolution of DevOps, project managing a content creation engine of one, and the virtues of imperfection. Also, the strategic avoidance of asking for directions, or, really, talking with people in general.

Episode 88: Platform Engineering and UK Digital People, with Abby Bangser

November 28th, 2024  |  1 hr 19 mins

Sure, we talk about platform engineering, but more importantly, business cards.

Episode 87: Platform Engineering, AI, and Community - Whitney's KubeCon NA 2024 Adventures

November 25th, 2024  |  48 mins 6 secs

Whitney is back from KubeCon and shares what she saw. Topics include: platform engineering, AI integration with Kubernetes, and community engagement.