Software People Stories

My guest today is Mike Bowers, Chief architect at FairCom. We had a very interesting conversation that we decided to publish in two parts. In the first part of the conversation , MIke shares his career path and his perspective on how to approach software development. He emphasizes the importance of understanding the customer's needs and designing systems that are flexible and scalable. He also discusses the importance of data in software development and his experience working with different data models.

Here are the key points from the conversation:

Mike Bowers is the Chief Architect at FairCom with over 35 years of experience in software development and architecture. As the driving force behind FairCom's architecture and product roadmaps, Mike specializes in high-performance NoSQL and SQL databases, IIoT platforms, and legacy system modernization solutions. His wealth of knowledge extends to topics like database revolution, manufacturing 4.0, IIoT, edge computing, and data integration. With a deep understanding of the tech landscape, he actively contributes to the development of industry standards through his membership in the INCITS technical committee, focusing on SQL and GQL. Mike's insights resonate particularly well with audiences comprising CEOs, IT managers, software architects, software engineers, and controls engineers.

In this conversation with Ms. VijayashreeCTO - Shikshalokam | Director- Onlineengineer Inc.she talks about her career trajectory and how she approaches technical challenges. Here are the key points:

Vijayashree talks about the challenges and the transition from working in the commercial sector to the social sector.

Key takeaways for designing for the social sector:

Metrics for success in the social sector:

There are also a few interesting career advices by her

https://www.linkedin.com/in/vijayashree-urs/

Today, my guest is Shekhar Chandra - the Global Practice Head at Irs Software Inc.

Here are the key themes from the conversation: 

https://www.linkedin.com/in/shekhar-chandra-740953/

Shiv our host is in conversation with Harpreet SIngh, CO-founder and co-CEO of Launchale Inc. Harpreet has been associated with conceiving and launching many innovative products that have become a standard among developer community. 

In today's conversation he talks about

Harpreet is an entrepreneur, innovator, developer, and creative product leader who has dedicated his life to building new solutions for software teams. His latest iteration isLaunchable Inc, an AI/ML company to help developers and QA. A seasoned DevOps leader, Harpreet has been building products for developers for the last 25+ years.

Previously, he was GM for Atlassian Bitbucket and VP of Product at CloudBees. At CloudBees he helped create the Jenkins business that scaled to multi-millions in ARR.

He has an MBA from Santa Clara University, an MS in CS from the University of Cincinnati, and a Bachelors in Computer Engineering from Pune University, India.

Today, my guest is Vinaya Mallya, is a seasoned IT professional, who has played leadership roles in the corporate sector, then was an entrepreneur building a team and moving on to create solutions to impact the social sector.

In this conversation, :

Early Career in IT

Finding Passion at Infosys

Work-Life Balance Challenges

Leaving Infosys and Starting a Startup

Starting an Animation Franchise

Work in the Social Sector

Challenges of an All-Women Team

Career Advice

Overall

Vinaya has close to 24 years of varied experience in the IT services industry, and more recently in the social sector. She started her career with Infosys, where she spent a decade amassing technical knowledge and honing her management and customer relationship skills. During her stint in Infosys, she got the opportunity to work in different geographical cultures spanning America, Europe & Asia. During the phase of motherhood, she shifted from the hectic corporate job to founding her own startup, a design services company for training and development of multimedia solutions. She was selected for Goldman Sachs-ISB sponsored – “10000 World Women Entrepreneurs Management Program” in 2011. 

Through a common network, she found an opportunity to get associated in the social sector. At Dhwani Foundation, Vinaya engages with NGOs to help them adopt technology platforms to smoothen their operations. Her motto in life has been to keep an open mind and contribute towards any opportunity that comes along. This attitude has helped her have a very diverse career in her 2+ decades of professional life and hence has not had a boring moment so far !

Handles:

Linked in:linkedin.com/in/vinaya-mallya-a30109a

EMail: kvnyak@hotmail.com

Today, my guest is Amita Ardha, an enterprise architect who has been focusing on sustainable development solutions.

In this conversation;

the coding.

IT and software engineering.

explore sustainability.

connecting business with sustainability.

Being a Woman in Tech

enjoying the journey.

recognizing individual journeys.

Sustainability in Computing

resource utilization.

benefit of providing antifungal cream.

remotely.

You can see some of her work athttps://www.instagram.com/bharatireusestudio/

Every year, the Software People Stories dedicates the month of March to women guests, to call out their contributions and highlight some women’s perspectives.

Today, I am very happy to introduce our guest, Krishna Kumari, who is also a podcaster, hosting the New Indian Woman podcast.

In this conversation, Krishna talks about:

Listen on!

More about Krishna Kumari:

I am Krishna and I currently live in Bangalore.​

I have been interested in planning, productivity and time management related topics, right from my middle school.​

Over the years, this expanded to a journey of continuous improvement and learning from others and examining of how I can live my life in a better way. Better for myself and for the people I care.​

These learnings have helped me a lot, no doubt. I have been looking for ways to share the same with the larger community of people around me and learn more and more. And that is the genesis of this blog 'New Indian Woman' and many more things to come…​

And if you are wanting to know more about my background. I come from a small town called Alleppey(now Alappuzha, famous for its backwaters), in Kerala. My mother tongue is Tamil. On the academic front, I have done Engineering in Computer Science and then worked in the new IT industry. I started as a software developer, worked many roles in a leading IT organization. When I was performing the role of General Manager, I decided to leave the corporate world and explore. 

This led me to start volunteering for different causes . During this period, I have

My learnings come from the 2 decades in the IT world (after a simple small town upbringing), my current explorations and interactions with a wide variety of people from all backgrounds . My learning also comes from being a mother to a young adult daughter and teenage son.

Get in touch

Website : http://thenewindianwoman.com

Facebook : http://facebook.com/newindianwoman

Email : krishna@thenewindianwoman.com

Twitter : https://twitter.com/thenewindianwo1

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/thenewindianwoman

Happy Women's Day!

This whole month we have all women's special podcast.

Today, Malini Gowrishankar , Founder and CEO of F5escapes is in conversation with Chitra sharing her experiences as below

 - Describes herself as a nerdy 1st bencher with interest in music poetry, screen tested with Doordarshan

- Support role resolving backend issues, strong fundamentals in delivering high quality software

- the disconnect between developers v/s requirements and realizing business value, software products v/s services

- An understanding of the "why" as key to building good software

- Building software is NOT a transaction, empowering people to encourage curiosity

- A process of keeping many identities, thriving and not just surviving

- Voice acting, scripting and weekend hobbies becoming her career

- Starting f5 travels post the Nirbhaya incident to create an impact

- A trip to Sikkim to prove some perceptions otherwise and travel as a transformation

- create feeling of safety through establishing local connections and traveling in groups, solo women travel

8 years in IT as a techie / project manager, 10+ years in media as voice-over/dubbing artist and creative writer, 8+ years in travel as Founder/CEO of F5 Escapes. Passionate about women empowerment, entrepreneurship and sustainable travel. Lover of rains, books, music, nature, performing arts, animals and children. In her free time, she also trains people in voice-overs; mentors young professionals and women wanting to return to the workplace.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/malini-gowrishankar-40210515/

In second part of this episode, Gayatri Kalyanaraman is in conversation withBharath Kumarwho is a Marketeer from a Technologist,Head Of Marketing & Cx - Zoho Creatorand he’s a Marketing and Content Specialist.

Bharath considers himself as an entrepreneurial marketeer.Bharath has 14+ years of professional work experience that helped him develop expertise in the areas of Lead Generation, Marketing communications, Brand management, Marketing strategy & Content marketing. 

Bharath is the marketing head for Zoho Creators for the last 5 years. Prior to that, Bharath was in the product marketing team for Ramco system and TinyOwl. He was the head of communication of Tamil Nadu Circle for Airtel where he was responsible for the content delivery and creating the brand promise for Airtel. Bharath was a software engineering in Infosys for 3 years. 

Bharath graduated from College of Engineering Guindy in Mining Engineering and Great Lakes Institute of management. 

Bharath can be contacted athttps://www.linkedin.com/in/bharathkumarb-marketer/ 

You can listen to the Part1 of the podcast below

https://pm-powerconsulting.com/blog/creating-your-great-day-every-day-with-bharath-kumar/

In this special episode, as part of our book launch "A Practitioner's guide to Enterprise Agility", we had a panel discussion on Enterprise agility. As part of this panel Sivaguru was in conversation with 3 eminent guest from IT industry, Ramkumar Venkatesan, CTO Cashfree payments, Vandana Malaiya, Partner Semcostyle and S Gopalan, MD Global automation Pvt Ltd.

Listen to this episode to know what were the views on enterprise agility of our guests .

Hope you enjoy the episode!



In today's special episode we have our authors in conversation with our host Chitra. They share their experiences and thoughts with Chitra about the story behind this book. Here is what Chitra has to say about this podcast.

The five tantras of enterprise agility which emerged from real coaching, business and consulting experiences of PM Power Consulting authored by Paramu Kurumathur only meant a sequel was a matter of time.

So when co-author and former colleague of mine Sivaguru asked if I be the host for a podcast on the new book,

I jumped at the chance.

In this conversation, the three co-authors of a practitioner's guide to enterprise agility, J.Veeraraaghavan, Paramu and Sivaguru shared their experiences around the process of creating this piece of work and what embodies its essence, working with their individual styles and ideas especially for which PM Power is a powerhouse and how it eventually all came together.

Apparently, a trio of authors makes for the perfect book recipe. They tell listeners not only about what the practitioner's guide is but also how it enables enterprises on their agility path practically with converting philosophies of the five tantras using tried and tested tools and practices backed by over 15 years of PM Power experience. Listen to this episode of the Software People's Stories podcast.

Listen on...

In the second part of the conversation with my friendPrema Dhas Mohunraj- aka Prem, Automotive Engineer, Product Leader in the Automotive Space, Electrobit(EB), we touched upon his career and reflections, including:

Premadhas started his career with Robert Bosch and moved to Wipro where he led several roles for 14+ years. His most recent role was being the Quality Lead/Project Manager for a client. Premadhas moved to Electrobit (EB) as an automotive engineer and then to lead their quality practices and now in Product lead role. 

Premadhas is currently in the Detroit Metropolitan Area. 

Premadhas did his engineering in REC (now NIT) Trichy in Electronics and Communication Engineering. 

Premadhas can be connected atlinkedin.com/in/premadhas

In the first part of conversation with my friendPrema Dhas Mohunraj- aka Prem, Automotive Engineer, Product Leader in the Automotive Space, Electrobit(EB), we touched upon his career and reflections, including:

Premadhas started his career with Robert Bosch and moved to Wipro where he led several roles for 14+ years. His most recent role was being the Quality Lead/Project Manager for a client. Premadhas moved to Electrobit (EB) as an automotive engineer and then to lead their quality practices and now in Product lead role. 

Premadhas is currently in the Detroit Metropolitan Area. 

Premadhas did his engineering in REC (now NIT) Trichy in Electronics and Communication Engineering. 

Premadhas can be connected atlinkedin.com/in/premadhas

In this conversation with my colleague Srinivasan Sundararajan - aka Srini, we touched upon many topics related to personal finance as well as non-financial planning, including:

The link to the blog post referred to by Srini on the four words related to motivation:https://pm-powerconsulting.com/blog/4-words-test-motivational-level/ 

In this conversation, my colleague Mohan Ram shares how

As we approach the end of a calendar year, many of us have the practice of looking back on the year that was, reflecting on the highs and lows of the year - and shape our dreams and aspirations for the coming year.

At Software People Stories, we are running a special series of conversations with people on their own approaches as well as practices and stories of how their thinking has changed over the years.

Today, it is a conversation between the two co-hosts of the podcast, Chitra and Gayatri. 

In this conversation, they touch upon:

Listen on, to be inspired.

As we approach the end of a calendar year, many of us have the practice of looking back on the year that was, reflecting on the highs and lows of the year - and shape our dreams and aspirations for the coming year.

At Software People Stories, we are running a special series of conversations with people on their own approaches as well as practices and stories of how their thinking has changed over the years.

Today, my guest is Paramu Kurumathur, a colleague and a published serial author.

He talks about

You can reach him on

https://www.linkedin.com/in/paramu-kurumathur-01489a6/

As we approach the end of a calendar year, many of us have the practice of looking back on the year that was, reflecting on the highs and lows of the year - and shape our dreams and aspirations for the coming year.

At Software People Stories, we are running a special series of conversations with people on their own approaches as well as practices and stories of how their thinking has changed over the years.

Today, I am in conversation with S Gopalan, my colleague from PM Power and an industry veteran. He prefers to be called Gopal.

In this conversation he shares

As we approach the end of a calendar year, many of us have the practice of looking back on the year that was, reflecting on the highs and lows of the year - and shape our dreams and aspirations for the coming year.

At Software People Stories, we are running a special series of conversations with people on their own approaches as well as practices and stories of how their thinking has changed over the years.

Today, I am in conversation with Anantha Natarajan, my colleague from PM Power and an accomplished coach. He prefers to be called Anand.

In this conversation he shares

For more details on the i-fi model, check out Anand’sblog post.

Accessible at:https://pm-powerconsulting.com/blog/i-fi-a-model-for-designing-your-future-and-personal-change/

I hope you got some ideas to help you reflect and plan for the coming year.

If some other practices have worked for you - or possibly not worked for you, would you like to share your story?

Reach us onpodcasts@pm-powerconsulting.com  and please do share with your networks to spread the word.

In this episode, Gayatri Kalyanaraman is in conversation withBharath Kumarwho is a Marketeer from a Technologist,Head Of Marketing & Cx - Zoho Creatorand he’s a Marketing and Content Specialist.

In his career spanning over two decades, he shares very interesting stories –

Bharath considers himself as an entrepreneurial marketeer.Bharath has 14+ years of professional work experience that helped him develop expertise in the areas of Lead Generation, Marketing communications, Brand management, Marketing strategy & Content marketing. 

Bharath is the marketing head for Zoho Creators for the last 5 years. Prior to that, Bharath was in the product marketing team for Ramco system and TinyOwl. He was the head of communication of Tamil Nadu Circle for Airtel where he was responsible for the content delivery and creating the brand promise for Airtel. Bharath was a software engineering in Infosys for 3 years. 

Bharath graduated from College of Engineering Guindy in Mining Engineering and Great Lakes Institute of management. 

Bharath can be contacted athttps://www.linkedin.com/in/bharathkumarb-marketer/ 

In this episode, I asked Tom Pierce, the president and founder of Integrated Information Systems (I2S) responds to my question on how the ‘integrated’ in his company name is internalized by his clients. He responded to that question and shared many more interesting thoughts in this episode. He shared:



Tom Pierce is the president and founder of Integrated Information Systems (I2S) of Louisville, Kentucky. He holds a bachelor’s degree in mathematics from Wake Forest University (1981) and a Master’s in Divinity (1993) from Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. 

After serving as an officer in the US Army, Tom has been immersed in the design and support of manufacturing software, as well as in the data-driven analysis of business and financial systems, primarily in large manufacturing facilities within the Aerospace Defense sector. 

A self-described MRP philosopher and ERP contrarian, Tom is a passionate advocate of simple approaches to complex problems. As a stubbornly resolute moderate, his company seeks to promote intelligent integrity by avoiding the opposing traps of overly simplistic naivety and overly complicated sophistication. 

For roughly four decades, Tom has focused his career and his company on the pursuit of trustworthy clarity and practical understanding of information, which is the light of all human pursuits. 

In this episode, Tom Pierce, the president and founder of Integrated Information Systems (I2S), shares:

Tom Pierce is the president and founder of Integrated Information Systems (I2S) of Louisville, Kentucky. He holds a bachelor’s degree in mathematics from Wake Forest University (1981) and a Master’s in Divinity (1993) from Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. 

After serving as an officer in the US Army, Tom has been immersed in the design and support of manufacturing software, as well as in the data-driven analysis of business and financial systems, primarily in large manufacturing facilities within the Aerospace Defense sector. 

A self-described MRP philosopher and ERP contrarian, Tom is a passionate advocate of simple approaches to complex problems. As a stubbornly resolute moderate, his company seeks to promote intelligent integrity by avoiding the opposing traps of overly simplistic naivety and overly complicated sophistication. 

For roughly four decades, Tom has focused his career and his company on the pursuit of trustworthy clarity and practical understanding of information, which is the light of all human pursuits

I continue my conversation with Jeremy Snyder, the founder and CEO of FireTail.io, an end-to-end API security startup. Towards the end of the first part, I asked Jerermy ‘how a developer should think, when using APIS - with so many moving parts - from security and performance aspects’

He answers that and continues to share his story relating to:

Social media:https://twitter.com/halffinn,https://www.linkedin.com/company/77663520,https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeremysnyder/

Jeremy is the founder and CEO of FireTail.io, an end-to-end API security startup. Prior to FireTail, Jeremy worked in M&A at Rapid7, a global cyber leader, where he worked on the acquisitions of 3 companies during the pandemic. Jeremy previously led sales at DivvyCloud, one of the earliest cloud security posture management companies, and also led AWS sales in southeast Asia. Jeremy started his career with 13 years in cyber and IT operations. Jeremy has an MBA from Mason, a BA in computational linguistics from UNC, and has completed additional studies in Finland at Aalto University. Jeremy speaks 5 languages and has lived in 5 countries. Jeremy was once kicked off a train in central Sweden, and another time went several days without seeing another human, but did see lots of reindeer.

Link to my podcast:https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/ask-a-ciso/id1596056884

In this conversation, Jeremy Snyder, the founder and CEO of FireTail.io, an end-to-end API security startup, shares his professional journey and perspectives. Specifically, 

Social media:https://twitter.com/halffinn

https://www.linkedin.com/company/77663520

https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeremysnyder/ 

Jeremy is the founder and CEO of FireTail.io, an end-to-end API security startup. Prior to FireTail, Jeremy worked in M&A at Rapid7, a global cyber leader, where he worked on the acquisitions of 3 companies during the pandemic. Jeremy previously led sales at DivvyCloud, one of the earliest cloud security posture management companies, and also led AWS sales in southeast Asia. Jeremy started his career with 13 years in cyber and IT operations. Jeremy has an MBA from Mason, a BA in computational linguistics from UNC, and has completed additional studies in Finland at Aalto University. Jeremy speaks 5 languages and has lived in 5 countries. Jeremy was once kicked off a train in central Sweden, and another time went several days without seeing another human, but did see lots of reindeer.

In this episode, Gayatri Kalyanaraman is in conversation withNanthakumar Arumugamwho is a Technologist,Delivery Lead at ThoughtWorks and he’s a Quality Engineer and Financial Expert.

In his career spanning over two decades, he shares very interesting stories –

Nantha is the delivery lead and project manager in ThoughtWorks. He has been working with ThoughtWorks for a decade. He has played several roles including Quality Analyst, Quality Lead, Architect and Chennai Chapter lead prior to taking the current role. Nantha has done his PG in BITS Pilani and B.E. in University of Madras 

Nanthakumar can be contacted athttps://www.linkedin.com/in/nanthakumara/

In this episode, Gayatri Kalyanaraman is in conversation withSaikatChakrabartywho is a Technologist,Director, Engineering at Mihup and he’s a AI/ML and Computer Vision Enthusiast.

In his career spanning over a decade, he has been a Telecom engineer, prompt engineering, Interaction designer and conversational AI. 

Saikat has been instrumental in Mihup's success as one of the leading Conversational AI companies in India. He leads the entire tech organisation at Mihup, with a team of almost 20 people working under him, ranging from Devops to MLEs, overseeing the end to end development and shipping of the Mihup products.

Saikat Chakrabarty is a dynamic leader and Senior Engineering Manager at Mihup, a pioneering conversational AI platform founded in 2016. Mihup's revolutionary approach empowers individuals to seamlessly interact with the digital world while prioritizing inclusivity and accessibility, regardless of language, accent, or dialect.

Technical Leadership:

At Mihup, Saikat has successfully managed and mentored cross-functional teams in machine learning, R&D, product development and DevOps. His expertise in managing the development of Mihup's conversational AI products has positioned him as a trusted leader in the industry. With a deep understanding of a wide range of technologies, including Java (Spring Boot), NodeJs, Golang, Angular, Python, RabbitMQ, PostgreSQL, Redis, Kubernetes, and more, Saikat has played a pivotal role in building highly scalable cloud microservices and optimizing premise-based applications.

Diverse Experience:

Saikat's wealth of experience extends beyond his role at Mihup. He has previously worked with renowned companies like Lexmark and Polaris Network Inc., where he honed his skills and passion for AI/ML and computer vision. His contributions to these cutting-edge fields have resulted in 2 patents and 6 paper publications, consolidating his exceptional knowledge and expertise.

Recognition and Awards:

Saikat's exceptional contributions and dedication to his craft have earned him notable accolades throughout his career. Notably, he was awarded the prestigious Digital Transformation Award at Lexmark Focus-2-Future, alongside the Manager Appreciation Award and several other commendations. At Mihup, he has regularly been the recipient of special rewards for his undying passion and dedication towards delivering products that customers love to use.

Saikat can be contacted atSaikat Chakrabarty:

In this episode, I continue my conversation with Presenjit Sarkar, who is a Technologist, Innovator, Disruptor - and  distinguished engineer with Rubrik inc.

In his career spanning over 25 years, he has been a researcher, inventor, startup founder among other key roles he has played.

I asked Prasenjit, if an entrepreneur should take outside help in building teams and people..

The answer to that question and a lot more in the second part of the conversation.

Today, he talks about:

I asked Prasenjit in building teams and people, if an entrepreneur should take outside help..

The answer to that question and a lot more in the second part of the conversation.

Stay tuned in for the next episode.

Prasenjit Sarkar is a Distinguished Engineer at Rubrik responsible for the architecture and development of relational, NoSQL, and Big Data backup and recovery products. He has previously led initiatives to formulate product strategy, deliver industry-leading backup and recovery features, and superior performance at scales of thousands of databases.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/psarkar24/

On X - @psarkar24

In this episode, Sivaguru is in conversation with Presenjit Sarkar, who is a Technologist, Innovator, Disruptor - and  distinguished engineer with Rubrik inc.

In his career spanning over 25 years, he has been a researcher, inventor, startup founder among other key roles he has played.

Today, he talks about:

The answer to that question and a lot more in the second part of the conversation.

Stay tuned in for the next episode.

Prasenjit Sarkar is a Distinguished Engineer at Rubrik responsible for the architecture and development of relational, NoSQL, and Big Data backup and recovery products. He has previously led initiatives to formulate product strategy, deliver industry-leading backup and recovery features, and superior performance at scales of thousands of databases.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/psarkar24/

On X - @psarkar24

In this episode, Gayatri Kalyanaraman has the conversation with Kamala Srinivasan who is a Technologist, Founder & CEO, Upahara, and women in tech influencer.

In her career spanning over 25 years, she has been a STEM engineer, fintech developer, women in tech influencer and startup founder among other key roles she has played.

A technologist and an exec coach with more than 20 years of experience in both nonprofit organizations and technology industries. Kamala’s broad areas of expertise include global technology product delivery and operations, go-to-market strategy, digital transformation, and SAAS in Fintech, retail, legal, and media.

Kamala’s expertise in non-profit and philanthropic fields, and in information technology has led her to seek a solution using emerging technology to create a robust platform that serves the needs of both donors and charitable organizations: a personalized, curated, discovery-based interface, connecting organizations and donors without extensive effort on both sides, like Fintech investment management products. 

www.linkedin.com/in/kamalasrinivasan/ 

https://twitter.com/Kamalasrini

In this episode, my co-host Gayatri continues her conversation with Dan Balcauski, founder and chief pricing officer at product tranquility, a company thathelps high-volume B2B SaaS CEOs define pricing and packaging for new products

Gayatri asked him what challenges he faced when he became a consultant

Dan shares

Dan Balcauski, the founder and Chief Pricing Officer at Product Tranquility, dispels B2B SaaS Pricing Illusions.

Dan is an expert in helping high-volume B2B SaaS CEOs define pricing and packaging for new products. He has 15 years of experience managing multiple products throughout their life cycles, from start-ups to publicly traded multinationals. A fun fact about him: before founding the company, he took a sabbatical and completed a solo, round-the-world expedition to 21 countries.

Linkedin:https://www.linkedin.com/in/balcauski/

In this episode, my co-host Gayatri is in conversation with Dan Balcauski, founder and chief pricing officer at product tranquility, a company thathelps high-volume B2B SaaS CEOs define pricing and packaging for new products

In this conversation he talks about

Listen on!

The answer to that question and a lot more interesting stuff in the next episode.

Dan Balcauski, the founder and Chief Pricing Officer at Product Tranquility, dispels B2B SaaS Pricing Illusions.

Dan is an expert in helping high-volume B2B SaaS CEOs define pricing and packaging for new products. He has 15 years of experience managing multiple products throughout their life cycles, from start-ups to publicly traded multinationals. A fun fact about him: before founding the company, he took a sabbatical and completed a solo, round-the-world expedition to 21 countries.

Linkedin:https://www.linkedin.com/in/balcauski/

I continue my conversation with Shailaja Venkatasubramanyan.

In the first part, she talks about how she got into Information systems and her career spanning education and startup sectors. 

How she balanced professional and personal demands and challenges.

How she never hesitated to get into new areas and was always ready to learn.

In this part of the conversation Shai talks about

Shailaja "Shai" Venkatsubramanyan is an Associate Professor Emeritus at the School of Information Systems and Technology at San Jose State University (SJSU), where she has taught and researched for over 15 years. She has a Ph.D. in Management Information Systems (MIS) from the University of Arizona, and is a Fellow of the Salzburg Global Seminar and a Master Teacher Award recipient.

Shai is passionate about using technology and data to solve real-world problems and to make the world a better place. She has also worked as a General Manager at theCoderSchool, a franchise that teaches coding and programming skills to kids and teens, and as a Knowledge Engineer at Kanisa, a Silicon Valley start-up that developed innovative solutions for online customer service. She has expertise in MIS, data analysis, databases, online customer service, and coding education. She enjoys writing, teaching, and learning about various topics related to MIS and beyond.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/shailaja-venkatsubramanyan-b47742

I am in conversation with Shailaja Venkatasubramanyan, who is an Associate Professor Emeritus at the School of Information Systems and Technology at San Jose State University. She is also a Fellow of the Salzburg Global Seminar and a Master Teacher Award recipient.

A special note on this episode: during this conversation Shailaja talks about some very personal moments in her life that some may find disturbing or moving.

In this conversation, she talks about:

Shailaja "Shai" Venkatsubramanyan is an Associate Professor Emeritus at the School of Information Systems and Technology at San Jose State University (SJSU), where she has taught and researched for over 15 years. She has a Ph.D. in Management Information Systems (MIS) from the University of Arizona, and is a Fellow of the Salzburg Global Seminar and a Master Teacher Award recipient.

Shai is passionate about using technology and data to solve real-world problems and to make the world a better place. She has also worked as a General Manager at theCoderSchool, a franchise that teaches coding and programming skills to kids and teens, and as a Knowledge Engineer at Kanisa, a Silicon Valley start-up that developed innovative solutions for online customer service. She has expertise in MIS, data analysis, databases, online customer service, and coding education. She enjoys writing, teaching, and learning about various topics related to MIS and beyond.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/shailaja-venkatsubramanyan-b47742

This is a continuation of the conversation with Kishore Kumar.

Kishore Kumar is a youtuber with a unique youtube channel called @ahargana. This channel has the singular purpose of explaining the astronomical basis of the Hindu panchanga using custom-built planetary orbital simulations.

Kishore was not always a youtuber. In his previous avatar, Kishore was a software professional for over thirty five years playing a variety of roles from programmer to program manager, general manager and vice president in leading companies such as Tata Unisys, Cognizant and Siemens. He has earned a masters degree in computer science from SUNY at Buffalo, USA and a bachelors degree in Electronics and Communication Engineering from NIT Trichy. A lifelong self-learner, Kishore has leveraged all his learnings from his education and professional experience in the making of @Ahargana and contrary to appearance, considers it an entirely logical continuation of his life journey.

Kishore may be reached at:

Email: kishore.kumar@counterpointconsultants.com

Youtube: youtube.com/@ahargana 

LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/kishoresridharakumar

Kishore Kumar is a software professional turned youtuber. He shares his career journey with Sivaguru

Kishore Kumar is a youtuber with a unique youtube channel called @ahargana. This channel has the singular purpose of explaining the astronomical basis of the Hindu panchanga using custom-built planetary orbital simulations.

Kishore was not always a youtuber. In his previous avatar, Kishore was a software professional for over thirty five years playing a variety of roles from programmer to program manager, general manager and vice president in leading companies such as Tata Unisys, Cognizant and Siemens. He has earned a masters degree in computer science from SUNY at Buffalo, USA and a bachelors degree in Electronics and Communication Engineering from NIT Trichy. A lifelong self-learner, Kishore has leveraged all his learnings from his education and professional experience in the making of @Ahargana and contrary to appearance, considers it an entirely logical continuation of his life journey.

Kishore may be reached at:

Email: kishore.kumar@counterpointconsultants.com

Youtube: youtube.com/@ahargana

LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/kishoresridharakumar

In the second part of the podcast episode, Gayatri Kalyanaraman is in conversation withMathan Ramanujam, Product Influencer and Hardware Designer and Director atSiMa.ai, shares his career journey

Mathan Ramanujam is the director in SIMa.ai. SiMa.ai™ is a machine learning company delivering the industry’s first software-centric purpose-built MLSoC™ platform. Mathan is a front-runner, growing high performance team ground-up! He’s is using his versatile nature and cross-functional experience to to build CoE for Infrastructure IPs for ML SoC, while Challenging himself to learn ML/AI.

Mathan has over 27 years of total industry experience with 17+ years of Team responsibilities. Mathan has taken multiple Si from concept to production, specialized in Digital design, with FPGA in the semiconductor industry. Mathan started his career in Atlaz Telecom and moved to the bay area for Arasan Chip Systems Inc.in the role of USB Device, Ethernet controller and XGMII IP development - RTL. 

Mathan later moved back to India took up team leadership roles in Nokia, Texas Instruments, QualComm, Western Digital and STMicroelectronics. 

Mathan Ramanujam has done his B.Tech in Bharathidasan University in Electronics and Communication Engineering. 

 Mathan can be contacted athttps://www.linkedin.com/in/mathan-ramanujam-4495082/ 

In the first part of the podcast episode, Gayatri Kalyanaraman is in conversation withMathan Ramanujam, Product Influencer and Hardware Designer and Director atSiMa.ai , shares his career journey

Mathan Ramanujam is the director in SIMa.ai. SiMa.ai™ is a machine learning company delivering the industry’s first software-centric purpose-built MLSoC™ platform. Mathan is a front-runner, growing high performance team ground-up! He’s is using his versatile nature and cross-functional experience to to build CoE for Infrastructure IPs for ML SoC, while Challenging himself to learn ML/AI.

Mathan has over 27 years of total industry experience with 17+ years of Team responsibilities. Mathan has taken multiple Si from concept to production, specialized in Digital design, with FPGA in the semiconductor industry. Mathan started his career in Atlaz Telecom and moved to the bay area for Arasan Chip Systems Inc.in the role of USB Device, Ethernet controller and XGMII IP development - RTL. 

Mathan later moved back to India took up team leadership roles in Nokia, Texas Instruments, QualComm, Western Digital and STMicroelectronics. 

Mathan Ramanujam has done his B.Tech in Bharathidasan University in Electronics and Communication Engineering.  

Mathan can be contacted athttps://www.linkedin.com/in/mathan-ramanujam-4495082/ 

Matt Genovese Founder and CEO ofPlanorama Designcontinues his conversation with Chitra and shares his thoughts on-

–Matt Genovese is the founder and CEO of Planorama Design, bringing over 25 years of career experience in high-tech, spanning semiconductors, hardware, IoT, IT, and software product development. He has a strong track record of planning, launching, and shipping products that work. Matt’s company, Planorama Design, is a software user experience design professional services company, designing complex, technical software that is simple and intuitive to use. Staffed with seasoned engineers and user experience (UX) designers, the company is headquartered in Austin, Texas, USA.

Matt earned a B.S. in Computer Engineering from the Rochester Institute of Technology and an M.S. in Electrical Engineering from The University of Texas at Austin. He began his career at Motorola-Freescale Semiconductor in product & test engineering and moved into design verification of RISC processors and SoCs. Matt has also held product leadership roles for complex and technical software development. As a result of his deep professional experience, Matt strives to “get it right the first time” starting with the software application’s user experience design, down to the hardware at the bottom of the stack. Planorama helps drive product development processes that create products that work out of the gate.

Social Media Handles:

Matt Genovese Founder and CEO ofPlanorama Designshares how he -

Matt Genovese is the founder and CEO of Planorama Design, bringing over 25 years of career experience in high-tech, spanning semiconductors, hardware, IoT, IT, and software product development. He has a strong track record of planning, launching, and shipping products that work. Matt’s company, Planorama Design, is a software user experience design professional services company, designing complex, technical software that is simple and intuitive to use. Staffed with seasoned engineers and user experience (UX) designers, the company is headquartered in Austin, Texas, USA.

Matt earned a B.S. in Computer Engineering from the Rochester Institute of Technology and an M.S. in Electrical Engineering from The University of Texas at Austin. He began his career at Motorola-Freescale Semiconductor in product & test engineering and moved into design verification of RISC processors and SoCs. Matt has also held product leadership roles for complex and technical software development. As a result of his deep professional experience, Matt strives to “get it right the first time” starting with the software application’s user experience design, down to the hardware at the bottom of the stack. Planorama helps drive product development processes that create products that work out of the gate.

Social Media Handles:

URL:  https://aiproducthive.com/

This is part 2 of the conversation celebrating the milestone of 250 episodes, with our guest host Gopalan.

Gopalan was the first guest on the show and agreed to play host and have the hosts as guests!

In part 1, he was exploring aspects related to how the hosts prepare for an episode and how different formats worked for the Software People Stories.

In this part, he continues to explore his curiosity of how the minds of podcast hosts work, in handling planned and unplanned situations.

He asks

We hope you enjoyed some of our experiences in bringing you 250 episodes of stories of software people.

We believe that everyone has a story to tell that will inspire or educate others.

When would you like to tell your story?

Or, if you would like to submit somebody else’s story, and be a guest host, please record a sample or the full conversation and share it with us.

This a very special episode for all us, hosts - and assume, for you, our listener as well.

This is the 250th episode of the Software People Stories.

About 5 years ago, A desire to learn something new and leverage that learning to pay it forward to the community, led to the launch of this podcast.

What started as Software Lifecycle Stories pivoted to Software People Stories and thanks to all your encouragement and love, we are at 250.

This episode is a little different from the usual episodes in that we have reversed the roles.

The very first guest on the show, Goplan, plays the host and the three co-hosts, me, Chitra and Gayatri are the guests.

In a freewheeling conversation, Gopal had many questions about what happens behind the scenes and inside our minds in the context of being associated with the podcast.

The topics covered include:

Gopal asked for some examples of things that went right and some things that did not go as per plan.

The answers to that questions and more interesting questions, listen to the next episode, which is part 2 of this special conversation, to celebrate the milestone of 250 episodes.

In the second part of the podcast episode, Gayatri Kalyanaraman is in conversation withWoody Zuill, Expert Coach and co-author of Mob Programming, shares his career journey

Woody has been programming computers for almost 40 years, and have 20+ years of experience as an Extreme Programmer, and 15+ years as an Agile Guide of some sort. He truly believes that code must be simple, clean, and maintainable so that we can realize the Agile promise of Responding to Change, and that we must constantly "Inspect and Adapt".

Woody is a co-author with Kevin Meadows of the book "Mob Programming, A Whole Team Approach". He’s a prolific speaker on this topic at conferences, user groups, and meet-ups all over the world.

More generally, I've delivered workshops, trainings, and coaching sessions on Agile Software Development, Mob Programming, and Software Development Practices for a number of firms including Ericsson, Schneider Electric, Qualcomm, Intel, H & M, King Games, Capital One, Twitter, and Spotify.

Woody can be connected athttps://www.linkedin.com/in/woodyzuill/ 

In the first part of the podcast episode, Gayatri Kalyanaraman is in conversation withWoody Zuill, Expert Coach and co-author of Mob Programming, shares his career journey

Woody has been programming computers for almost 40 years, and have 20+ years of experience as an Extreme Programmer, and 15+ years as an Agile Guide of some sort. He truly believes that code must be simple, clean, and maintainable so that we can realize the Agile promise of Responding to Change, and that we must constantly "Inspect and Adapt".

Woody is a co-author with Kevin Meadows of the book "Mob Programming, A Whole Team Approach". He’s a prolific speaker on this topic at conferences, user groups, and meet-ups all over the world.

More generally, I've delivered workshops, trainings, and coaching sessions on Agile Software Development, Mob Programming, and Software Development Practices for a number of firms including Ericsson, Schneider Electric, Qualcomm, Intel, H & M, King Games, Capital One, Twitter, and Spotify.

Woody can be connected athttps://www.linkedin.com/in/woodyzuill/ 

In the second part of the podcast episode, Shiv Sivaguru continues his conversation with Mohan Ram

Mohan talks about

Mohan Ram is a Principal Consultant at PM Power Consulting, he works with Clients in their Agile Transformation initiatives, Digital Innovation and Transformation journey and helping build Individuals and Teams that are capable of effectively Delivering outcomes and Managing these Transformations in a Confident and Sustained manner. 

In the first part of the podcast episode, Shiv Sivaguru is in conversation with Mohan Ram, a senior professional in the IT industry who has played various roles related to networking software development to business line management and now a coach with PM Power Consulting.

Mohan shares

I asked him about how he was able to work in zones of abstraction or ambiguity, while interacting with customers - to understand requirements and come up with an approach or solution and create a project plan to execute, when his strength of attention  to detail.

The answer to this question and a lot more in part 2 of the conversation.

Mohan Ram is a Principal Consultant at PM Power Consulting, he works with Clients in their Agile Transformation initiatives, Digital Innovation and Transformation journey and helping build Individuals and Teams that are capable of effectively Delivering outcomes and Managing these Transformations in a Confident and Sustained manner. 

In the second part of the podcast episode, Shiv Sivaguru is in conversation withVadeesh Budramane,Founder and CEO of AlgoShack, shares his career journey

Vadeesh is currently CEO at AlgoShack and he has held several roles such as Senior Vice President at Sutherland Global Services,  Director & Head of Healthcare Vertical at Computer Sciences Corporation and Managing Director at FCG.

Vadeesh has 32 years of experience focused on product engineering, innovation & IP creation. In his 15+ years of experience in senior leadership positions, Vadeesh has been responsible for strategic planning, end-to-end operations, and P&L. He has built globally competitive leadership teams, orchestrated strategic customer engagements, and created significant value for stakeholders.

Vadeesh is a leader with experience in managing offshore delivery center and vertical delivery with a team size of 3000+ people & $250m P&L. He has experience across healthcare, ISVs, telecom, and real-time embedded systems industry verticals and North America, UK and Europe markets that include global delivery, customer engagement, business development and P&L responsibilities.

A leader with hands-on experience in seeding and developing globally competitive leadership teams, developing competencies, transforming delivery organizations and driving business models for outcomes.

Vadeesh can be contacted athttps://www.linkedin.com/in/vadeeshbudramane/ 

In the first part of the podcast episode, Shiv Sivaguru is in conversation withVadeesh Budramane, Founder and CEO of AlgoShack, shares his career journey

Vadeesh is currently CEO at AlgoShack and he has held several roles such as Senior Vice President at Sutherland Global Services,  Director & Head of Healthcare Vertical at Computer Sciences Corporation and Managing Director at FCG.

Vadeesh has 32 years of experience focused on product engineering, innovation & IP creation. In his 15+ years of experience in senior leadership positions, Vadeesh has been responsible for strategic planning, end-to-end operations, and P&L. He has built globally competitive leadership teams, orchestrated strategic customer engagements, and created significant value for stakeholders.

Vadeesh is a leader with experience in managing offshore delivery center and vertical delivery with a team size of 3000+ people & $250m P&L. He has experience across healthcare, ISVs, telecom, and real-time embedded systems industry verticals and North America, UK and Europe markets that include global delivery, customer engagement, business development and P&L responsibilities.

A leader with hands-on experience in seeding and developing globally competitive leadership teams, developing competencies, transforming delivery organizations and driving business models for outcomes.

Vadeesh can be contacted athttps://www.linkedin.com/in/vadeeshbudramane/ 

In the second part of the podcast episode, Gayatri Kalyanaraman is in conversation withFred George,Consulting Developer in Scienta AS and master change agent, shares his career journey

Fred can be contacted athttps://www.linkedin.com/in/fred-george/ 

Fred considers himself a hands-on software developer with executive responsibilities and experience. Early experimenter in micro-service architectures from 2005, and father of the post-Agile process termed Programmer Anarchy. Earlier implementer of new technology for his entire career, including computer networking in the 70's, LAN's and GUI in the 80's, and OO and Agile in the 90's. Very early adopter of Kanban processes. He has used over 70 programming languages in his career.

In the first part of the podcast episode, Gayatri Kalyanaraman is in conversation withFred George, Consulting Developer in Scienta AS and master change agent, shares his career journey

Fred can be contacted athttps://www.linkedin.com/in/fred-george/ 

Fred considers himself a hands-on software developer with executive responsibilities and experience. Early experimenter in micro-service architectures from 2005, and father of the post-Agile process termed Programmer Anarchy. Earlier implementer of new technology for his entire career, including computer networking in the 70's, LAN's and GUI in the 80's, and OO and Agile in the 90's. Very early adopter of Kanban processes. He has used over 70 programming languages in his career.

In the second part of the podcast episode, Gayatri Kalyanaraman is in conversation withKarl Scotland,Agile Transformation Services Practice Manager at TEKsystems Global Services and a master facilitator, shares his career journey

Karl can be reached athttps://www.linkedin.com/in/kjscotland/ 

Karl helps businesses become Learning Organisations. Karl has held several engineering and management positions in Neural technologies, BBC, Cisco, Yahoo and Rally software. 

Over the last 20 years Karl has been an advocate of Lean and Agile approaches to achieve this, working with companies including the BBC, Yahoo!, EMC Consulting, Rally Software, Cisco, SDL, Legal & General and Alegis. During this time, he has been a pioneer of using Kanban Systems and Strategy Deployment for product development, a founding member of both the Lean Systems Society and Limited WIP Society, as well as being active in the community and a regular conference speaker.Karl is a co-founder of the Lean Agile in Brighton.

In the first part of the podcast episode, Gayatri Kalyanaraman is in conversation withKarl Scotland,Agile Transformation Services Practice Manager at TEKsystems Global Services and a master facilitator, shares his career journey

Karl can be reached athttps://www.linkedin.com/in/kjscotland/ 

Karl helps businesses become Learning Organisations. Karl has held several engineering and management positions in Neural technologies, BBC, Cisco, Yahoo and Rally software. 

Over the last 20 years Karl has been an advocate of Lean and Agile approaches to achieve this, working with companies including the BBC, Yahoo!, EMC Consulting, Rally Software, Cisco, SDL, Legal & General and Alegis. During this time, he has been a pioneer of using Kanban Systems and Strategy Deployment for product development, a founding member of both the Lean Systems Society and Limited WIP Society, as well as being active in the community and a regular conference speaker.Karl is a co-founder of the Lean Agile in Brighton. 

In this podcast episode, Gayatri Kalyanaraman is in conversation withVikrant Viniak,Senior Managing Director of Accenture and a prolific speaker on Technology at the frontier, shares his career journey

Vikrant V is a Senior Managing Director in Accenturefor the last 16+ years.In his current role as Senior Managing Director at Accenture Strategy, he has worked in Telecom, Media and Technology Industry. He’s a dynamic business leader who is passionate about challenging myself to solve complex problems using creative thinking; bold and iconoclastic action; and data-driven analysis and decision making. He enables his clients with their most strategic imperatives including Digital Transformation, Driving Growth through Digital Operating Models, Everything As a Service (EaaS) transformations, ESG, and Strategic Partnerships.

An avid runner and fitness enthusiast who loves people and technology. In his professional and personal life, he has committed to going the extra mile in supporting, mentoring and coaching people to achieve their goals. I like to push my physical and intellectual boundaries.

Vikrant started his career as a software engineer in Wipro and moved to become a supply chain consultant. After completing his management graduation in Quinlan School of Business, Loyola university in Chicago, he became a consultant. He has a degree in Mechanical Engineering in NIT Trichy, India.   

Vikrant can be contacted here -https://www.linkedin.com/in/vikrantviniak/or 

Follow in twitter -https://twitter.com/vviniak?lang=en 

In the second part of the podcast episode, Gayatri Kalyanaraman is in conversation withDave Farley,Independent Software Developer and Consultant, Founder and Director of Continuous Delivery Ltd.

Guest Introduction

Dave Farley is a pioneer of Continuous Delivery, thought-leader and expert practitioner in CD, Devops, TDD and software development in general.

Dave has been a programmer, software engineer and systems architect for many years, from the early days of modern computing, taking those fundamental principles of how computers and software work, and shaping ground-breaking, innovative approaches that have changed how we approach modern software development. Dave has challenged conventional thinking and led teams to build world class software.

Dave is co-author of the - Continuous Delivery, and a popular conference speaker on Software Engineering. He built one of the world’s fastest financial exchanges, is a pioneer of BDD, an author of the Reactive Manifesto, and a winner of the Duke award for open source software with the LMAX Disruptor.

Dave is passionate about helping development teams around the world improve the design, quality and reliability of their software, by sharing his expertise through his consultancy, YouTube channel, and training courses.

Dave can be contacted here - https://www.linkedin.com/in/dave-farley-a67927/ 

Published works - ​​https://continuousdelivery.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/The-Deployment-Pipeline-by-Dave-Farley-2007.pdf

https://www.amazon.com/Continuous-Delivery-Pipelines-Better-Software/dp/B096TTQHYM 

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCCfqyGl3nq_V0bo64CjZh8g

In the first part of the podcast episode, Gayatri Kalyanaraman is in conversation withDave Farley,Independent Software Developer and Consultant, Founder and Director of Continuous Delivery Ltd.

Dave Farley is a pioneer of Continuous Delivery, thought-leader and expert practitioner in CD, Devops, TDD and software development in general.Dave has been a programmer, software engineer and systems architect for many years, from the early days of modern computing, taking those fundamental principles of how computers and software work, and shaping ground-breaking, innovative approaches that have changed how we approach modern software development. Dave has challenged conventional thinking and led teams to build world class software.

Dave is co-author of the - Continuous Delivery, and a popular conference speaker on Software Engineering. He built one of the world’s fastest financial exchanges, is a pioneer of BDD, an author of the Reactive Manifesto, and a winner of the Duke award for open source software with the LMAX Disruptor.

Dave is passionate about helping development teams around the world improve the design, quality and reliability of their software, by sharing his expertise through his consultancy, YouTube channel, and training courses.

Dave can be contacted here - https://www.linkedin.com/in/dave-farley-a67927/ 

Published works - ​​https://continuousdelivery.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/The-Deployment-Pipeline-by-Dave-Farley-2007.pdf

https://www.amazon.com/Continuous-Delivery-Pipelines-Better-Software/dp/B096TTQHYM 

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCCfqyGl3nq_V0bo64CjZh8g

In this episode, Shiv continues his conversation with a colleague in PM Power, Venu Subrmania Iyer.

In the previous episode, he asked Venu if testing should always be independent or it can be embedded in the development process itself

He shared his answer to that question and more

Venu has been in the embedded technology space for 24 years, working on cutting-edge R&D in the areas of Consumer Electronics, Display Systems, Semiconductor & Automotive domains. Starting his career as a Hardware Engineer in Philips,later switched to Software Testing due to his passion for finding software defects. He was 1st independent software testing engineer in Bosch Car Multimedia, Bangalore and later played several leadership roles in testing, Project Management and Quality assurance.

Prior to joining PM Power consulting, I was Director, Delivery and test in Harman for Automotive Digital cockpit and Telematics software solutions. I have played leadership role for delivery management, software testing and supplier delivery management.

More about Venu : https://pm-powerconsulting.com/experts/venu/

In this episode, Shiv is in conversation with a colleague in PM Power, Venu Subrmania Iyer. Venu, who started his career as a systems engineer, shares

Venu has been in the embedded technology space for 24 years, working on cutting-edge R&D in the areas of Consumer Electronics, Display Systems, Semiconductor & Automotive domains. Starting his career as a Hardware Engineer in Philips,later switched to Software Testing due to his passion for finding software defects. He was 1st independent software testing engineer in Bosch Car Multimedia, Bangalore and later played several leadership roles in testing, Project Management and Quality assurance.

Prior to joining PM Power consulting, I was Director, Delivery and test in Harman for Automotive Digital cockpit and Telematics software solutions. I have played leadership role for delivery management, software testing and supplier delivery management.

More about Venu :https://pm-powerconsulting.com/experts/venu/

In this episode, I continue my conversation with our guest Robert Cooke, founder of 3forge, a provider of data virtualization and visualization technology. In this conversation, Robert shares 

Robert Cooke is the Founder and Principal Architect at 3Forge, a New York-based provider of data virtualization and visualization technology. 3Forge has achieved significant growth over the years as a result of increasing demand for its award-winning, web-based browser AMI platform.

Robert’s accomplishments have spanned across electronic trading, middle and back office, regulatory reporting, compliance and risk management.

His LinkedIn profile:https://www.linkedin.com/in/robert-cooke-a7835b69/

In this episode, our guest is Robert Cooke, founder of 3forge, a provider of data virtualization and visualization technology solutions. In this conversation, Robert shares 

More on his entrepreneurial experience, tips on defensive coding and a whole lot more in the next episode

Robert Cooke is the Founder and Principal Architect at 3Forge, a New York-based provider of data virtualization and visualization technology. 3Forge has achieved significant growth over the years as a result of increasing demand for its award-winning, web-based browser AMI platform.

Robert’s accomplishments have spanned across electronic trading, middle and back office, regulatory reporting, compliance and risk management.

His LinkedIn profile:https://www.linkedin.com/in/robert-cooke-a7835b69/

In this podcast episode, Gayatri Kalyanaraman is in conversation withSat (Sathyanarayanan) Vijayaraghavan,Founder and CEO at Adept Labz AKA "Ajira.Tech" and CASA Retail AI

Sathyanarayanan (SAT for his friends) did his bachelor engineering in Venkateshwara college in Chennai and post grad in Cincinnati college. Started working for Cognizant. Moved on the Diamond Cluster and later to Wpro. He became the General manager and the vertical head for Retail in ThoughtWorks.

Sat has about 23 years of overall IT management and delivery experience with 4 years in management (P&L responsibility, operations etc), 6 years in technology strategy and 9 years in global software sourcing; 8+ years in US working with ‘C’ level executives of Fortune 500 firms

He has been a Founder and CEO of Ajira, General Manager of Chennai at ThoughtWorks, Retail practice development at Wipro and created Retail practice at ThoughtWorks

Sat shares a passion for enterprise architecture having architected some of the largest online and trading platforms for Fortune 500 customers. He has also defined strategic enterprise architectures for several Fortune 100 customers

He is a true Thought leader with international publications in global retailing, customer experience, cross channel retailing, supply chain and eCommerce

Sat can be contacted athttps://www.linkedin.com/in/satvijayaraghavan/ 

In this podcast episode, Gayatri Kalyanaraman is in conversation withBindu Sunil,Sector Head and Engineering Director - Cloud Data Platforms and AI in Wipro. 

Bindu Sunil is theDirector of Engineering with 21 years of experience, developing and applying new technologies to manage and deliver complex projects spanning Internet Scale Computing, Cloud platforms, AI/ML in Medical Devices and Healthcare, Consumer Electronics, Electrical manufacturing domains on Data platforms, AI, Cloud (AWS), Embedded Systems, and Firmware technologies. R&D leadership in various roles - engineering manager, program manager, delivery manager, cloud consultant, and practice lead.

Bindu can be reached athttps://www.linkedin.com/in/bindusunil/

In this podcast episode, Gayatri Kalyanaraman is in conversation withPramitha Ramaprakash, CEO of Transcend Satellite Technology 

Pramitha Ramaprakashis an industry leader in the field of Satellite education, She’s the CEO of  Transcend Satellite Technology. She’s a co-author ofPayload design and System design for CubeSats (1U to 27U) and Microsatellites. She’s also designed Payload Design for EO, Remote sensing, communication and IoT Payloads as well as Designed the Payload Interface Computer using Raspberry Pi for MirrorSat of AAReST Satellite Mission as part of MSc Space Engineering dissertation. 

She had held several hardware engineer roles in Wipro, BAE systems, Concurrent Technologies, Cadac holding, Intel and Dell prior to starting her own firm in the field of Space education

Pramitha can be reached at -https://www.linkedin.com/in/pramitharamaprakash/

In the this podcast episode, Gayatri Kalyanaraman is in conversation with Puja Issar, Managing Director of AnitaB.org India

Puja Issar is a Result driven senior executive with proven ability to evaluate ,identify and execute meaningful business across national and international boundaries. Skilled imaginative analytical strategist with excellent track record in creating strategic objectives and developing value creating business models.Wealth of experience and knowledge and awareness of alternate management approaches has been a key to success. Extensive experience in planning ,implementing and managing strategic initiatives and building and scaling of business lines across Financial services,hospitality ,real estate and not for profit sectors. 

Puja is a chartered accountant with CFA and MBA from Henley business school

Puja Issar can be contacted athttps://www.linkedin.com/in/puja-issar-a2264a48

In this podcast episode, Gayatri Kalyanaraman is in conversation with Vaishali James, ex-CMO of OpenTap, Community Director for AnitaB.org and mentor at HopeWorks Foundation

Vaishali is the brand aficionado and a deep understanding of developing products. She has worked for 19 years in different roles as a marketeer for Servion Software. Later she became the co-founder and CMO for OpenTap for 5 years. 

Vaishali has the additional benefit of understanding / working on designing and aligning organizational strategy across all functions with the brand strategy to ensure that brand conversations externally and internally talk the same language. So that, the entire organization works towards living and breathing a single ideology to ensure that the promise and the experience is consistent – both internally and externally.

Vaishali can be reached inhttps://www.linkedin.com/in/vaishali-james-25066815/ 

In this episode, Gayatri Kalyanaraman is in conversation with Palashi V, research scholar with Cornell University

Palashi’s research interests lie at the intersection of Information Science, Science and Technology Studies and South Asian Studies. For her dissertation research, she focused on the relationship between computing, gender and caste in India. 

She’s a trained Information and Communications Technology engineer with experience in SAP and core java development. Her work focuses on the social impact with the background of gender and technology, specifically with feminist organizations and initiatives in India closely engaged with issues of women's rights and technology. 

Palashi has worked in technology consulting, marketing and non-profit sector before starting her PhD. 

She was also the founder and editor-in-chief at Fangirl.in, an collaborative e-zine that promotes independent art/music and artists in India.

More information about me on her website - https://palashi.xyz/ 

For more details and contact Palashi herehttps://www.linkedin.com/in/palashiv/

In this episode, I continue my conversation with Jeremy Kriegel. He talks about

Jeremy Kriegel is a UX leader, very active on various professional forums.He is also the host of the podcast ‘Saving UX’

https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeremykriegel/

In this episode, I am in conversation with Jeremy Kriegel, a UX leader and the host of the Saving UX podcast.

Jeremy shares

Jeremy Kriegel is a UX leader, very active on various professional forums.He is also the host of the podcast ‘Saving UX’

https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeremykriegel/

In the second part of the podcast episode, Gayatri Kalyanaraman is in conversation with Rohit Salecha, Security Engineering Manager in Disney+Hotstar and book author of GitOps

Rohit Salecha is a technology geek who loves to explore anything that runs and understands binary. As a security engineer he is passionate about learning the length,breadth and depth of technology.

Being more on the defensive side he has evangelised secure software development at various organizations for more than a decade.

Rohit is driven by “everything as code” mantra and strongly believes that the security team must strive towards making themselves irrelevant. In his free time he is either readingbooksor watchingmovies. He is a fitness freak who loves to jog,swim and cycle on different terrains.

More details checkout his linked in page - 

https://www.linkedin.com/in/rohitsalecha/

https://rohitsalecha.com

In the first part of the podcast episode, Gayatri Kalyanaraman is in conversation with Rohit Salecha, Security Engineering Manager in Disney+Hotstar and book author of GitOps

Rohit Salecha is a technology geek who loves to explore anything that runs and understands binary. As a security engineer he is passionate about learning the length, breadth and depth of technology.

Being more on the defensive side he has evangelised secure software development at various organizations for more than a decade.

Rohit is driven by “everything as code” mantra and strongly believes that the security team must strive towards making themselves irrelevant. In his free time he is either readingbooksor watchingmovies. He is a fitness freak who loves to jog, swim and cycle on different terrains.

More details checkout his linked in page - 

https://www.linkedin.com/in/rohitsalecha/

https://rohitsalecha.com

In this second part of my conversation, Bill Hall, President of Simulation Studios shares

Bill partners with companies and individuals to build highly strategic mindsets resulting in accelerating change. Utilizing business simulations, leadership development, and business coaching, Bill helps shift mindsets and build skillsets resulting in driving positive change more quickly and with less friction. Currently President of Simulation Studios, Bill closely partners with companies and people in all types of corporate development scenarios. Bill has successfully worked for and with companies such as Apple, Sony, Boeing, Lockheed Martin, Korn Ferry, Caterpillar, Sephora, and many more. Prior to Simulation Studios, Bill managed Skype’s global strategic software business, was in executive marketing roles at AOL and Nortel, and enjoyed working with Steve Jobs on various strategic projects during his 15+ years working with Apple where he was a five-time Apple MVP, and a Golden Apple Award winner. Bill authored a #1 Training and Development Amazon best-selling book, been featured in major publications and podcasts, and earned an MBA in Entrepreneurship and a Strategy Execution certificate from Harvard Business School. Bill spends the majority of his time with his family in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Book Link:

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00CMBP1TA

Forbes Articles:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbescoachescouncil/people/billhall1/?sh=373b957726aa

Contact Info:

Contact at SimulationStudios.com and ask for Bill

LinkedInwww.linkedin.com/in/wphall

In this conversation, Bill Hall, President of Simulation Studios shares

I asked how simulations help with individual contributors taking up transformation leadership roles.

The answer to this question and more in the next episode.. When Bill starts taking about some failures he had faced in his career

Bill partners with companies and individuals to build highly strategic mindsets resulting in accelerating change. Utilizing business simulations, leadership development, and business coaching, Bill helps shift mindsets and build skillsets resulting in driving positive change more quickly and with less friction. Currently President of Simulation Studios, Bill closely partners with companies and people in all types of corporate development scenarios. Bill has successfully worked for and with companies such as Apple, Sony, Boeing, Lockheed Martin, Korn Ferry, Caterpillar, Sephora, and many more. Prior to Simulation Studios, Bill managed Skype’s global strategic software business, was in executive marketing roles at AOL and Nortel, and enjoyed working with Steve Jobs on various strategic projects during his 15+ years working with Apple where he was a five-time Apple MVP, and a Golden Apple Award winner. Bill authored a #1 Training and Development Amazon best-selling book, been featured in major publications and podcasts, and earned an MBA in Entrepreneurship and a Strategy Execution certificate from Harvard Business School. Bill spends the majority of his time with his family in the San Francisco Bay Area.

 Book Link:

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00CMBP1TA

 Forbes Articles:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbescoachescouncil/people/billhall1/?sh=373b957726aa

Contact Info:

Contact at SimulationStudios.com and ask for Bill

LinkedInwww.linkedin.com/in/wphall

In this episode, I continue the conversation with Steven Aberle, founder of a company in stealth mode, working on domain aware, large language model based processing for very niche applications.

In the previous episode, Steven spoke about his origin story and also how he got into and some of the technical challenges related to a domain aware large language model solution - and his patent in that area.

He continues to share about

Steven Aberle is the Co-Founder of The Rohirrim, a start-up bringing Domain-Aware Generative AI to the Enterprise. He has 18 years of leadership and executive-level technology capacities and is a recognized expert in unstructured data processing at scale. Steve holds the patent for Domain-Aware Generative AI, Generative Stitching and Vector-Attributable Large Language Models.

Hope you had a wonderful start to the new year.

This episode is special for multiple reasons.

This is one of the few episodes when I had the conversation with a guest in person - and that was also video recorded, with a fireplace in the background, on a cold day!

You would be able to watch this conversation as a video on the PM Power youtube channel.

This episode was recorded in November, 2022 - much before ChatGPT was made available to the public and the subsequent increased interest.

My guest today, Steven Aberle, is a founder of a company that is in stealth mode, working on domain aware, Large Language model based processing for very niche applications.

In this conversation, Steven shares

His answer to that question and a lot more - including questions he asked me, related to startups - effectively making role reversal - the guest becoming the host!

Steven Aberle is the Co-Founder of The Rohirrim, a start-up bringing Domain-Aware Generative AI to the Enterprise. He has 18 years of leadership and executive-level technology capacities and is a recognized expert in unstructured data processing at scale. Steve holds the patent for Domain-Aware Generative AI, Generative Stitching and Vector-Attributable Large Language Models.

This is another year end special episode.

As coaches engaged with various organizations and teams, PM Power coaches are always learning, adapting, helping others internalize good practices in work and life situations.

We have the personal reflections of some of the coaches at PM Power Consulting on what they have learnt during the year and what they plan to learn in the coming year.

As Shiv - Sivaguru - reflected on 2022, these were his thoughts

Anantha Natarajan, or Anand, as he likes to be called, shared this

This is what JV, had to say

Next, here are the thoughts from Zafar Ahmed

Always Mindful, Vishu's reflections are next.

Below is the link to know more about our PM Powerian’s

https://pm-powerconsulting.com/experts/

Also, watch what our PM powerian’s have to say  on YouTube 

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC3F2N5Abhcz-OEcqg9B20OQ

This is a special episode.

After a long time, the co-hosts of the show had an opportunity to get together to reflect on what the impact of this podcast has been on our own lives and ways of working.

We also talk about what else or more we can do for you, our listeners in the coming year.

We hope that this podcast has brought cheer and some inspiration over the last 200+ episodes and thank you for the love and support.

Do share your reflections as well with us.

You can subscribe to this podcast on your favorite podcast client, so that you don't miss any of the exciting episodes.

You can also subscribe to the PM Power newsletter, S-curve - on LinkedIn. 

Thank you

In this episode, the conversation continues with Bhaktha Muralidhran, AVP, Unified Communications at Sompo International..

In the first part, he shared:

We continue the conversation with Murali sharing 

Over three decades of experience in software development in computer networking technologies and support. Experienced in managing a team of engineers. Led several projects from concept to delivery. 

Specialization: VoIP, Cisco Collaboration technologies, UNIX, Embedded Programming, TCP/IP, QoS, SNMP, Wireless, ATM, Frame Relay

https://www.linkedin.com/in/baktha-muralidharan-2221344/

In this episode, Bhaktha Muralidhran, AVP, Unified Communications at Sompo International shares:

Over three decades of experience in software development in computer networking technologies and support. Experienced in managing a team of engineers. Led several projects from concept to delivery. 

Specialization: VoIP, Cisco Collaboration technologies, UNIX, Embedded Programming, TCP/IP, QoS, SNMP, Wireless, ATM, Frame Relay

In this episode, the conversation continues with Maha Mahadevan, CEO of BOSS Solutions - a company providing technology solutions for ITSM, Help desk and 811 ticket management for the damage prevention industry. Maha talks about

Maha Mahadevan is the founder CEO of BOSS Solutions, an Atlanta GA based company providing SaaS solutions BOSSDesk for service management and BOSS811 for Onecall ticket management for the damage prevention industry. The company started off as an IT staff augmentation business and transformed into developing innovative solutions providing SaaS solutions to a sizable customer base across the US. Maha has a bachelors in engineering from the Indian Institute of Science Bangalore and Masters from the Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay. He is a regular tennis player and practices yoga. He enjoys traveling and spending time with family and friends.

In this episode, Shiv is in conversation with Maha Mahadevan, CEO of BOSS Solutions - a company providing technology solutions for ITSM, Help desk and 811 ticket management for the damage prevention industry. Maha shares

Maha Mahadevan is the founder CEO of BOSS Solutions, an Atlanta GA based company providing SaaS solutions BOSSDesk for service management and BOSS811 for Onecall ticket management for the damage prevention industry. The company started off as an IT staff augmentation business and transformed into developing innovative solutions providing SaaS solutions to a sizable customer base across the US. Maha has a bachelors in engineering from the Indian Institute of Science Bangalore and Masters from the Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay. He is a regular tennis player and practices yoga. He enjoys traveling and spending time with family and friends.

In this episode, the conversation continues with Jutta Eckstein, an independent coach, consultant and trainer, based in Germany. 

In the first part, she shares-

We continue the conversation with: 

The understanding for leaders to introspect and understand their own responsibilitiesThat it is not always only technical aspects, but also the social aspects

Diversity, inclusion, accessibility, equity Carbon footprint, wasteHolistic picture of the product: is or product improving lives everywhere or in a limited area

Jutta Eckstein works as an independent coach, consultant, and trainer. She has helped many teams and organizations worldwide to make an Agile transition. She has a unique experience in applying Agile processes within medium-sized to large distributed mission-critical projects. Jutta has recently pair-written with John Buck a book entitled Company-wide Agility with Beyond Budgeting, Open Space & Sociocracy (dubbed BOSSA nova). Besides that, she has published her experience in her books Agile Software Development in the Large, Agile Software Development with Distributed Teams, Retrospectives for Organizational Change, and together with Johanna Rothman Diving for Hidden Treasures: Uncovering the Cost of Delay in your Project Portfolio.

Jutta is a member of the Agile Alliance (having served the board of directors from 2003-2007) and a member of the program committee of many different American, Asian, and European conferences, where she has also presented her work. She holds a M.A. in Business Coaching & Change Management, a Dipl.Eng. (MSc.) in Product-Engineering, a B.A. in Education, and is trained as pollution control commissioner on ecological environmentalism.

links: https://www.linkedin.com/in/juttaeckstein/ https://www.jeckstein.com/

https://www.agilebossanova.org

https://jeckstein.com/sustainability

In this episode, Jutta Eckstein, an independent coach, consultant and trainer, based in Germany, shares 

Jutta Eckstein works as an independent coach, consultant, and trainer. She has helped many teams and organizations worldwide to make an Agile transition. She has a unique experience in applying Agile processes within medium-sized to large distributed mission-critical projects. Jutta has recently pair-written with John Buck a book entitled Company-wide Agility with Beyond Budgeting, Open Space & Sociocracy (dubbed BOSSA nova). Besides that, she has published her experience in her books Agile Software Development in the Large, Agile Software Development with Distributed Teams, Retrospectives for Organizational Change, and together with Johanna Rothman Diving for Hidden Treasures: Uncovering the Cost of Delay in your Project Portfolio.

Jutta is a member of the Agile Alliance (having served the board of directors from 2003-2007) and a member of the program committee of many different American, Asian, and European conferences, where she has also presented her work. She holds a M.A. in Business Coaching & Change Management, a Dipl.Eng. (MSc.) in Product-Engineering, a B.A. in Education, and is trained as pollution control commissioner on ecological environmentalism.

links: @JuttaEckstein |https://www.linkedin.com/in/juttaeckstein/ | https://www.jeckstein.com/| https://www.agilebossanova.org | https://jeckstein.com/sustainability

In the previous episode, Scott Ford, the co-founder and CTO of Corgibytes, a company focused on modernizing legacy code, shared

This is the second part of the conversation with Scott Ford, where he shares

M. Scott Ford is the Co-Founder & CTO of Corgibytes, where he has quietly led a software maintenance revolution for the past decade. Where most people find nothing but frustration, shame, and bugs in legacy code, Scott has centered his work around his genuine love of software modernization and helping others use joy, empathy, and technical excellence to make their systems more stable, scalable, and secure. Scott’s ideas have been featured in books such as The Innovation Delusion and as a guest lecturer at Harvard University. Scott is the author of three courses on LinkedIn Learning and he is the host of the Legacy Code Rocks! Podcast.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/mscottford/ 

In this conversation with Shiv, Scott Ford, the co-founder and CTO of Corgibytes, a company focused on modernizing legacy code, shared

Scott’s experience and thoughts on being an entrepreneur will be covered in the next episode.

M. Scott Ford is the Co-Founder & CTO of Corgibytes, where he has quietly led a software maintenance revolution for the past decade. Where most people find nothing but frustration, shame, and bugs in legacy code, Scott has centered his work around his genuine love of software modernization and helping others use joy, empathy, and technical excellence to make their systems more stable, scalable, and secure. Scott’s ideas have been featured in books such as The Innovation Delusion and as a guest lecturer at Harvard University. Scott is the author of three courses on LinkedIn Learning and he is the host of the Legacy Code Rocks! Podcast.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/mscottford/ 

This is part 2 of a repeat episode of one of my conversations, first published in 2019. Since then, we have crossed 200 episodes and the listenership has also grown.

Some of you have been asking how you can know more about some of the topics covered in recent episodes.

We felt that there could be related points shared by other guests in earlier episodes, but for new subscribers, it may not be easily discoverable.

So, we thought that we would bring you select past episodes from time to time, to discover more people and their stories.

Also, over time, the formats of the intro and show notes have also changed.

This conversation with Dorai Thodla is the second of two parts. The first part was published last week and Dorai spoke about his serial entrepreneurship experience and how he innovatively finds problems to solve etc. In this part he continues to share his thoughts and experience on:

Dorai is the founder and CTO of Technology Strategies LLC, based in the United States. He is a mentor at KCG College of Technology Chennai. He is passionate about teaching students and mentors product startups. Dorai also gives talks on emerging technologies and their impact while consulting with companies on how to build tech communities. He believes in the paradigm of “building to learn” by encouraging teaching via “doing” so students see their learning transform into a product that extends around a complete stack.

Dorai lives in Chennai and spends time in the Bay Area and Seattle outside of India. He is currently involved with the following initiatives : 

Build2Learn (http://www.build2learn.in/ )  and

InfoAssitants ( http://infoassistants.com/ ) – a set of tools for collecting and analyzing information.

Dorai can be reached via

[LinkedIn]( https://www.linkedin.com/in/doraithodla/)

[@dorait]( https://twitter.com/dorait ) 

This is a repeat episode of one of my conversations, first published in 2019. Since then, we have crossed 200 episodes and the listenership has also grown. Some of you have been asking how you can know more about some of the topics covered in recent episodes.

I felt that there could be related points shared by other guests in earlier episodes, but for new subscribers, it may not be easily discoverable.

So, we thought that we would bring you select past episodes from time to time, to discover more people and their stories. Also, over time, the formats of the intro and show notes have also changed.

This conversation with Dorai Thodla will be published in two parts, to keep the episode length to around 30 minutes.

In this first part, Dorai shares

The answer to this question and more stories from Dorai, do not miss the next episode.

In part 2 of my conversation with Dorai Thodla, he shares more details about his Build to Learn concept, to help students learn programming by doing. Do not miss next week.

Dorai is the founder and CTO of Technology Strategies LLC, based in the United States. He is a mentor at KCG College of Technology Chennai. He is passionate about teaching students and mentors product startups. Dorai also gives talks on emerging technologies and their impact while consulting with companies on how to build tech communities. He believes in the paradigm of “building to learn” by encouraging teaching via “doing” so students see their learning transform into a product that extends around a complete stack.

Dorai lives in Chennai and spends time in the Bay Area and Seattle outside of India. He is currently involved with the following initiatives :

a set of tools for collecting and analyzing information.

Dorai can be reached@

https://www.linkedin.com/in/doraithodla/

[@dorait] https://twitter.com/dorait

In part 2 of my conversation with, Yev Khessin, CTO and founder of DIMO (Digital Infrastructure for Moving Objects) - with a goal to ‘build something disruptive’,  continues to share his story and shares his thoughts and experiences related to

Yev is the CTO and founder of DIMO (Digital Infrastructure for Moving Objects) - with a goal to ‘build something disruptive’.

Yev has spent 10 years working in lead engineering and technical product with automotive manufacturers and suppliers on IoT connectivity, embedded software, self driving and electric vehicles. As a car lover through and through, he believes that we are at a crossroads similar to the moment when we went from horses to cars. Creating a better connected device protocol, governed by the people who use it, is the only sane way to advance how we get around. 

In this episode, Yev Khessin, CTO and founder of DIMO (Digital Infrastructure for Moving Objects) - with a goal to ‘build something disruptive’,  shares his thoughts and experiences related to

Yev is the CTO and founder of DIMO (Digital Infrastructure for Moving Objects) - with a goal to ‘build something disruptive’.

Yev has spent 10 years working in lead engineering and technical product with automotive manufacturers and suppliers on IoT connectivity, embedded software, self driving and electric vehicles. As a car lover through and through, he believes that we are at a crossroads similar to the moment when we went from horses to cars. Creating a better connected device protocol, governed by the people who use it, is the only sane way to advance how we get around. 

https://www.linkedin.com/in/yevgeny-khessin/

In this episode, Sam Fonoimoana, Founder and CEO of Datajoin – a B2B marketing analytics company, shares his thoughts and experiences related to

Sam Fonoimoana started his career in Finance (FP&A) and transitioned into Marketing Analytics helping companies such as Adobe, DOMO and Ancestry.com. He also taught Marketing Analytics at BYU Hawaii in beautiful Laie, HI.Today, he is the Founder and CEO of Datajoin – a B2B marketing analytics company that is the go-to solution for connecting first-party data across the MarTech stack through their proprietary “Micro Integrations”. Their customers include Cisco, ARM, Adobe and Equifax.Sam is the first VC-backed tech Founder and CEO of Polynesian descent in Utah having closed a seed round led by Sepio Capital.Sam and his wife Sabrina never have a dull moment with their children. They have 3 beautiful daughters and 4 wonderful sons. All 4 of their sons have been diagnosed with autism. When Sam is not at his computer, he can be found with his family at the park, rec center, restaurant, or on a road trip!Sam received his MBA in Finance from Brigham Young University.

You can reach him at

Twitter.com/samfonoimoana

Linkedin.com/in/sam-fonoimoana

We continue our conversation with Ramesh Rajagopal, a coach at PM Power Consulting. In the first part he shared his origin story and also experiences of his childhood and career. In this episode, he continues to share more details about

He started my career as an R&D engineer at the Engineering Research Centre at Tata Motors (TELCO) in 1981, then he joined L& T during 1984, initially as a Design Engineer for Earthmoving machines. Later, he moved into Manufacturing Planning. He joined GE India Technology Center during end 2000, as a Project Manager-Delivery and stayed with the organization as it later changed hands to become GXS and OpenText. He also worked as a consultant for the Agile Transformation group for 4 years at Standard Chartered Bank, Kuala Lumpur helping teams and teams of teams to adopt to the new ways of working – from Technology teams, Retail Teams to Data and Privacy teams.

With over four decades of experience which includes over 20+ years in software Product development, Delivery, Quality and several years in manufacturing domains of Automobile and Earth moving equipment, mow a Principal consultant at PM Power, part of Agile Transformation and DevOps Service lines.

This is part 1 of a 2 episode conversation. In this episode, Ramesh Rajagopal, a Coach at PM Power Consulting, shares his experience related to

He started my career as an R&D engineer at the Engineering Research Centre at Tata Motors (TELCO) in 1981, then he joined L& T during 1984, initially as a Design Engineer for Earthmoving machines. Later, he moved into Manufacturing Planning. He joined GE India Technology Center during end 2000, as a Project Manager-Delivery and stayed with the organization as it later changed hands to become GXS and OpenText. He also worked as a consultant for the Agile Transformation group for 4 years at Standard Chartered Bank, Kuala Lumpur helping teams and teams of teams to adopt to the new ways of working – from Technology teams, Retail Teams to Data and Privacy teams.

With over four decades of experience which includes over 20+ years in software Product development, Delivery, Quality and several years in manufacturing domains of Automobile and Earth moving equipment, mow a Principal consultant at PM Power, part of Agile Transformation and DevOps Service lines.

In this episode, K Ramkumar, known as Ram or Kram - Director Product Mangement, Salesforce, in conversation with Gayatri shares 

Ramkumar is an engineering graduate of BITS Pilani, with management education from IIM B, certification from ISB. Ramkumar is the Director of Product Management for Salesforce. He specializes in the field of security. 

Ramkumar started his career in India in Novell, Siemens before moving to the US to join startup boom in ecommerce. 

He leveraged his email/collaboration experience in Cisco and released several notable products for Cisco Systems. His products have won several awards. 

Ramkumar joined the product management in Cisco systems as an experiment. Ramkumar is a recipient of Presidents’ award for Salesforce along with several coveted awards.

Ramkumar can be contacted at https://www.linkedin.com/in/ramkumarkaleeswaran/

We continue our conversation with Sowmya Gopalan and Ramya Gopalan, the first software twins to be featured on this podcast.

In the first part they shared their origin story and also experiences of working in cutting edge technologies.

We paused with a question on how they pay it forward to nurture young professionals.

In this episode, Sowmya and Ramya continue to share

Sowmya Gopalan has 12+ years experience in researching and developing computer vision technologies for consumer electronics. With a formal background in signal processing, I specialize in researching, prototyping and developing robust software solutions for image and video understanding. I tend to be most satisfied when I have the opportunity of seeing a product through its entire lifecycle - from concept, to PoC, to production software. I thrive in collaborative, kind and multi-disciplinary settings where interest and drive matter more than qualification. Outside work, you will find me trying out new recipes in the kitchen with Ramya, or reading a book in the historical fiction genre - I am curious about the world wars and modern history in general, so if you have a good book to recommend, feel free to drop in a line at

https://www.linkedin.com/in/sowmya-gopalan-1840719/ 

Ramya Goplan is a software engineer who has worked on various consumer electronic products during her 12 year tenure in Amazon. Her interests and expertise include working on applications that are rooted in traditional signal processing and machine learning science. Having worked on the speech enhancement pipeline for the first gen and next gen Echo and Alexa products, she is slightly partial to speech and audio tech. She finds taking an idea from prototype to optimized embedded C/C++ implementation extremely enjoyable and satisfying. Outside work, Ramya loves to cook, sketch and listen to podcasts about health and wellness; Huberman Lab being her current favorite.

You can reach Ramya at https://www.linkedin.com/in/ramya-gopalan-b3bb506/

First, our heartfelt thanks to all you listeners for the love you have shown and for permitting the Software People Stories to be part of your listening time over the last 200 weeks!

Your wishes and encouragement is what has kept us going and will continue to do so.

Thank you

This is a very special episode for the Software People Stories. This is the 200th episode.

So, for this occasion, we have 2 guests - Sowmya Gopalan and Ramya Goplan - twin sisters, now working at two of the IT giants, doing leading edge work. They have very interesting stories of their careers and perspectives.

This episode is also special, as we have all the three hosts present!

We will be publishing this conversation in 2 parts.

This is part 1 , where Sowmya and Ramya share

We conclude this episode with the question of how they nurture or develop younger professionals.

The answer to that question and a lot more insights, some technical and many on the softer aspects such as work life harmony will be in part 2 of this conversation. Do not miss the next episode, coming up in a week.

Sowmya Gopalan has 12+ years experience in researching and developing computer vision technologies for consumer electronics. With a formal background in signal processing, I specialize in researching, prototyping and developing robust software solutions for image and video understanding. I tend to be most satisfied when I have the opportunity of seeing a product through its entire lifecycle - from concept, to PoC, to production software. I thrive in collaborative, kind and multi-disciplinary settings where interest and drive matter more than qualification. Outside work, you will find me trying out new recipes in the kitchen with Ramya, or reading a book in the historical fiction genre - I am curious about the world wars and modern history in general, so if you have a good book to recommend, feel free to drop in a line at

https://www.linkedin.com/in/sowmya-gopalan-1840719/

Ramya Goplan is a software engineer who has worked on various consumer electronic products during her 12 year tenure in Amazon. Her interests and expertise include working on applications that are rooted in traditional signal processing and machine learning science. Having worked on the speech enhancement pipeline for the first gen and next gen Echo and Alexa products, she is slightly partial to speech and audio tech. She finds taking an idea from prototype to optimized embedded C/C++ implementation extremely enjoyable and satisfying. Outside work, Ramya loves to cook, sketch and listen to podcasts about health and wellness; Huberman Lab being her current favorite.

You can reach Ramya at https://www.linkedin.com/in/ramya-gopalan-b3bb506/

This is the second part of the conversation with Janakiraman Srinivasan, known as Jani.

In the first part, Jani spoke of his initial years in IT and the long career he had with Wipro. We ended that episode when it was a segue into his entrepreneurial roles.

In this episode,Jani continues to share more stories related to 

Janakiraman Srinivasan is currently the Chairman of Nuvepro Technologies, a startup in Cloud Technologies and also President of Indo Japan Chamber of Commerce and Industries (IJCCI) - Karnataka. 

Prior to above, Janakiraman was the President & CTO of Mindtree Ltd, and was one of the Co-Founder and Board Member too. He served Mindtree from 1999 to 2014. 

Prior to Mindtree, Janakiraman served as the Chief Executive of Global R&D Unit of Wipro where he started his career as one among first five employees in 1980. 

Janakiraman was one of the Co-Founder of India Semiconductor Association (ISA) in 2002 and served for six years in its executive council, and later as its Chairman and Advisor too. 

Janakiraman did his BE at Regional Engineering College - Trichi (1973-78) and MTech from IIT-Chennai (1978-80). He is a Distinguished Alumni of REC for his Entrepreneurial Excellence. 

Janakiraman has served the board of Yokogawa India Ltd till March 2019 for four years. Currently a Board Member in startups Nuvepro Technologies, Innohub Technologies, Sanohub Technologies and Netra Accelerator Foundation. He is actively involved in promoting startups and entrepreneurial environment in Karnataka.

Jani may be contacted at janiuma @ gmail.com

In this episode, Janakiraman Srinivasan, known as Jani - an IT industry veteran, in conversation with Shiv shares 

In part 2, we hear Jani’s story with mindtree and beyond.

Janakiraman Srinivasan is currently the Chairman of Nuvepro Technologies, a startup in Cloud Technologies and also President of Indo Japan Chamber of Commerce and Industries (IJCCI) - Karnataka. 

Prior to above, Janakiraman was the President & CTO of Mindtree Ltd, and was one of the Co-Founder and Board Member too. He served Mindtree from 1999 to 2014. 

Prior to Mindtree, Janakiraman served as the Chief Executive of Global R&D Unit of Wipro where he started his career as one among first five employees in 1980. 

Janakiraman was one of the Co-Founder of India Semiconductor Association (ISA) in 2002 and served for six years in its executive council, and later as its Chairman and Advisor too. 

Janakiraman did his BE at Regional Engineering College - Trichi (1973-78) and MTech from IIT-Chennai (1978-80). He is a Distinguished Alumni of REC for his Entrepreneurial Excellence. 

Janakiraman has served the board of Yokogawa India Ltd till March 2019 for four years. Currently a Board Member in startups Nuvepro Technologies, Innohub Technologies, Sanohub Technologies and Netra Accelerator Foundation. He is actively involved in promoting startups and entrepreneurial environment in Karnataka.

Jani may be contacted at janiuma @ gmail.com

In this episode, Victor Jayakaran- shares his story and experiences related to:

Victor Jayakaran, did his B.Sc (Physics), at A.M. Jain College, Madras. He then did his graduation in Electronics From the Madras Institute of Technology. He then did his M.E. from  the School of Automation,  at the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, in 1979.  He then started with Wipro as their first employee, to be part of Wipro’s Information Technology Business. He was with Wipro for more than 20 years, from 1979 starting off as their first employee (R&D Engineer),  till 2000, when he was the Vice President of Engg at EnThink, Wipro’s startup venture.   He then left them in May 2000, to join SCM India as President of its India operations, which was one of the  two core development centers, worldwide,  in the domain of Digital Media and   Smart Card readers and terminals. Then in 2006 he stepped out of SCM to create SCOLIS Technologies which later was acquired by the Identiv Group and merged with his former company SCM. He   headed  the new  Identiv Tech Center in India, located in Chennai till 2016, when he retired from hands-on operations.

Victor is married to Sunithy,  and they have two grown up children, both of whom are married and are blessed with four grand children.   Victor and Sunithy  as  part of the  team of trustees, started and are  running  Amazing Love Home, a home for the elderly  near Chennai, since 2009.

Victor may be contacted at: vjayakaran@gmail.com

In this episode, Sai Krishna, a serial entrepreneur, who calls himself a metaverse plumber, loves creating interesting applications based on emerging and maturing technologies. In this conversation, he shares

Sai has spent more than 9 years in building deep tech startups. He was an early believer and pioneer in the Metaverse, and built & backed startups in the domain. Notably:

- His Virtual & Augmented Reality venture, Scapic was acquired by Walmart/Flipkart

- He backed a venture studio for the Metaverse, Cope. Studio, which was acquired by Polygon/Matic

- His marketplace for Metaverse assets, Reality Tools, was acquired by MotionPage

Sai currently leads Flipkart Labs, where he focuses on new deep tech initiatives such as Camera (Augmented Reality) & Firedrops (NFTs & Web3) in the Walmart Group. He is currently an advisor at Polygon & Polygon Studios. He is alum of Stanford University Graduate School of Business, recipient of the Indian National Startup Awards and a fellowship recipient from Ondeck. 

He's been awarded by organizations such as Facebook, the Global Student Entrepreneur Awards, Wharton and IIM. Sai has delivered 80+ keynotes at international conferences, IIT-Bombay, NSRCEL & more. 

When it's not about work, Sai is quintessentially south Indian, with an affinity to dosas and filter coffee. You can reach out to Sai at oho@5saitec.com on anything around building moonshots.

In this episode, Sai Krishna, a serial entrepreneur, who calls himself a metaverse plumber, loves creating interesting applications based on emerging and maturing technologies. In this conversation, he shares

Sai has spent more than 9 years in building deep tech startups. He was an early believer and pioneer in the Metaverse, and built & backed startups in the domain. Notably:

- His Virtual & Augmented Reality venture, Scapic was acquired by Walmart/Flipkart

- He backed a venture studio for the Metaverse, Cope.Studio, which was acquired by Polygon/Matic

- His marketplace for Metaverse assets, Reality Tools, was acquired by MotionPage

Sai currently leads Flipkart Labs, where he focuses on new deep tech initiatives such as Camera (Augmented Reality) & Firedrops (NFTs & Web3) in the Walmart Group. He is currently an advisor at Polygon & Polygon Studios. He is alum of Stanford University Graduate School of Business, recipient of the Indian National Startup Awards and a fellowship recipient from Ondeck. 

He's been awarded by organisations such as Facebook, the Global Student Entrepreneur Awards, Wharton and IIM. Sai has delivered 80+ keynotes at international conferences, IIT-Bombay, NSRCEL & more. 

When it's not about work, Sai is quintessentially south Indian, with an affinity to dosas and filter coffee.

You can reach out to Sai at oho@5saitec.com on anything around building moonshots.

In this episode, Usha from PM Power Consulting is in conversation with Chitra and shares her 3 plus decades of experience in software and technology around -

Usha is a Consultant with PM Power. She has worked for companies like Tech Mahindra, Siemens and Mindtree before founding LastMile Consulting Technology Solutions.

She has been a practitioner of Agile for 15+ years. She trains and helps large teams adopt agile methods

In this episode, Abhay Havaldar shares his story and experiences related to:

Experienced Board Member with a demonstrated history of working in the venture capital and private equity industry. Skilled in Corporate Finance, Venture Capital, Investment Banking, Strategy. Strong business development professional with a MSc (Sloan Fellow) focused in Business Administration and Management, General from London Business School.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/abhay-havaldar-a4a46523/