Exploring Mapping and Enterprise Inertia – The Goat Farm – S2E2

In this episode of The Goat Farm we are in wonderful Copenhagen, Denmark for Kubecon/CloudNativeCon EU 2018 where we sat down with three guests to talk about organizational inertia and overcoming that inertia.

First we talk to Simon Wardley. Simon has long been a prominent figure in the world of Cloud computing, and spends much of his time talking about mapping. We chat with Simon about what mapping is, and he introduces concepts regarding forces at play when technology adoption evolves.

Next we talk to Kris Nova of Heptio. Kris is a long time contributor to projects such as Kubernetes and Go, and has recently been researching moving stateful applications to Cloud Native platforms. Kris gives us some good insights into the adoption of technology in enterprises.

Finally we catch up with Sebastien Goasguen. Over the years, Sebastien has been involved in many open source projects, and currently maintains Kubeless, an open source project that enables FaaS on top of Kubernetes. Sebastien touches on why platforms such as Kubernetes are so powerful for overcoming inertia, and how they help increase organizational velocity.

Music: “Marty, Ladies and Gentlemen!” by Doctor Turtle

Show notes:


simon

Simon Wardley – LinkedInTwitter

Simon Wardley is a Researcher for Leading Edge Forum, a global research and thought leadership programme dedicated to helping large organizations reimagine their organizations and leadership for a technology-driven future. Simon is also lead practitioner for LEFs Wardley Maps Advisory service which helps client anticipate market and ecosystem developments so they know where to go and why.
Simon’s focus is on strategic play both at an industrial and global level. He is the author of multiple reports including Clash of the Titans: Can China Dethrone Silicon Valley?, a pioneer in the use of topographical intelligence within business, a former executive and an advisory board member for several successful start-ups. He has twice been voted as one of the UK’s top 50 most influential people in technology. Simon has spent the last 20 years defining future strategies for companies in the FMCG, Retail and Technology industries. He is a passionate advocate in the fields of strategic play, organizational structure, open source and leadership and is a regular presenter at conferences worldwide.

kris2

 

Kris Nova – LinkedInTwitter

Kris Nova is a Senior Developer Advocate for Heptio. She is a Kubernetes maintainer and contributor. She wrote the book on cloud native infrastructure. She spends her free time climbing mountains.


seb

Sebastien Goasguen – LinkedInTwitter

Seb has been working on Kubernetes since June 2014, he is the author/co-author of the O’Reilly Docker cookbook and the Kubernetes cookbook. With many years of experience teaching computer science he stills enjoys teaching people Kubernetes and getting them off the ground and on their container journey. Currently he works at Bitnami where he oversees all things Kubernetes, he prototyped Kubeless, the Kubernetes native serverless framework and other community tools like kompose and Cabin. In 2008 he was selected for the first round of Astronaut selection by ESA but sadly is still stuck on earth.

 

Continuous Improvement at Nordstrom – The Goat Farm – S1E7

We are back with a great episode. Ross and I talk to Courtney Kissler and Jason Josephy about Nordstrom’s Continuous Improvements practices. We touch on ideas such as DevOps and Mainframes, Lean principles, the envelope game, and incremental vs disruptive change.

Download MP3 – iTunesStitcherRSS

Links from the show:

Guest Info:

kisslerCourtney Kissler – @ladyhock – Courtney has been with Nordstrom since 2002, when she joined the company as a security engineer. By 2004, she had moved into a leadership role supporting the direct operations team, and went on to additional leadership positions in infrastructure/operations, supporting the integration competency center, corporate center delivery teams, and e-commerce program management. In 2012, Courtney assumed her current role supporting program management, delivery, and support for the store and digital technology teams, and continuous improvement program. Courtney graduated with a B.S. in Computer Information Systems from Eastern Washington University. Post graduation, Courtney worked for two startup companies, CyberSafe and WorldStream Communications, in helpdesk, sysadmin, and networking positions.


Jason Josephy – @jjosephy – I have been working in software for the jjosephylast 18 years. While still attending the University of Washington, where I was studying Computer Science, I started doing web development building web pages and light weight ASP applications. right after college I joined Microsoft where I stayed for 16 years. While there I was exposed to many different Software Engineering Methodologies, primarily agile, and worked on a number of Products and Services from Web to Desktop and built a broad base of experience across stacks. In 2005, I began my evolution with agile, receiving my certification as a Scrum Master and went on to run and facilitate a number of agile Teams. My passions are in Services and Distributed Systems as well as Mathematics.

I have lived in the Pacific Northwest my entire life, growing up in Idaho and moving to Seattle in 1993 where I have been ever since. I love the outdoors and really enjoy skiing and fly fishing. Most of my time these days is spent with my two young boys Aven and Micah who are 4 and 2 respectively.